James Gunn is everywhere you look these days after setting the DCU fandom ablaze with his recent call to show Henry Cavill’s Superman the exit, but let’s not forget the writer and director still has to say goodbye to the Marvel Cinematic Universe first, with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 coming to theaters in May.
Of course, there’s a real danger of the cosmic misfits being overshadowed by whatever headlines Gunn decides to grab for the competition over the next five months, and you can guarantee he’ll be fielding just as many questions about DC as he does Marvel when the press trail kicks off in earnest.
First of all, there’s the small matter of rounding out what’s sure to be arguably the MCU’s finest trilogy should Vol. 3 deliver on the expectations to have been building in everyone’s heads for the last half a decade. Fortunately, Gunn is well aware of the hype, and he explained to Entertainment Weekly how he’s planning to turn the so-called “curse” on its head.
“The amount of good third episodes in a trilogy, I can count them on one hand. Basically, there’s the Before Sunrise series. Lord of the Rings. Maybe Spider-Man. But there’s just not too many good third ones. This is the big one. This is where things really happen. This is where we get to know the truth about who these characters are, and we face the biggest stakes.”
It’s going to be a bizarre few months for the filmmaker and executive as he fields questions from both sides of the divide with increasing regularity, but based on the first trailer that dropped recently, it’s beginning to feel as though Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will provided a fitting farewell to not just the current lineup of the team, but Gunn’s tenure as part of the MCU.