Any filmmaker who spends a lot of time with a certain group of characters is going to become emotionally attached and invested, but James Gunn was forced to sit by and watch from the sidelines as his beloved Guardians of the Galaxy appeared in Avengers: Infinity War, Endgame, and Thor: Love and Thunder.
While he was happy to offer suggestions to the writers over how to maintain a consistent tone in terms of the interpersonal dynamics that have defined the team over the last decade, he did admit to The Hollywood Reporter that he wouldn’t have made some of the creative changes that ended up being implemented by the Russo brothers and Taika Waititi.
Most notably, he states that Star-Lord definitely would have killed Gamora without hesitation had she asked him to, while he’s firmly in the camp that Peter Quill definitely wouldn’t have doomed the universe by losing his cool in the battle against Thanos on Titan. In fact, his exact words are “they did some things that I wouldn’t have wanted,” which pretty much says it all.
Even after that, though, Gunn is more than open to the prospect of Joe and Anthony Russo becoming the latest high-profile names to jump ship from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to DC, even if fans don’t want them anywhere near another superhero franchise – especially if they even glance in the direction of impending Batman reboot The Brave and the Bold.
Bygones can always be bygones in Hollywood, but we’d love to hear what he made of Love and Thunder, which instantly became one of the MCU’s least popular installments after Waititi went a little too far with his self-indulgences.