It’s no secret that Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn’t exactly the most beloved arc in the long-running, and still wildly successful film franchise. With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania kicking off Phase Five, the next era didn’t exactly get off to a swimming start either. With all eyes now turning to James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to see whether or not the director’s Marvel swansong can start steering the ship back in the right direction, Gunn himself chimed in on the matter of superhero fatigue.
While Gunn may be heading off to different pastures following his appointment to Co-Head of DC Studios, the Suicide Squad director maintains he is still rooting for the MCU as a whole. He claims that when Marvel succeeds, as does DC – and vice versa. On the matter of superhero fatigue, Gunn had the following to say to Rolling Stone:
“It has to do with the kind of stories that get to be told, and if you lose your eye on the ball, which is character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because they’re these incredible characters that we have in our hearts. And if it becomes just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring. But I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story.”
This comment piggybacks Gunn’s recent justification of GotG Vol. 3’s lengthy runtime, in which he offers that he wanted to ensure that every single key character gets their arc resolved. If we were signing up for two and a half hours of quippy one-liners and gun blazing in the direction of The High Evolutionary and his cronies, then we’d indeed not be all that bothered to head out to see it. Hopefully Gunn’s final contribution to the MCU delivers the kind of emotionally grounded story he is pitching to fight back superhero fatigue.
All will be revealed when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 arrives in theaters in just a few weeks time, on May 5.