In between working on the second and third Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel Studios, James Gunn popped over to tackle 2021’s The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker Season 1, and it proved to be a wise course of action. Now, along with overseeing the upcoming DC movies and upcoming DC TV shows as the co-chariman and co-CEO of DC Studios with Peter Safran, he’s also helming 2025’s Superman and showrunning Peacemaker Season 2. However, that’s not to say that everyone is pleased about Gunn’s leadership role at DC, as evidenced by someone putting his cinematography up against Zack Snyder’s. This in turn, though, led to a lot of DC fans pushing back against the person’s post.
This all started on X (formerly known as Twitter) when @RizviAzaad posted a video that starts off showing various epic-looking scenes from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and then cuts to a few scenes from Peacemaker Season 1 (which can be streamed with a Max subscription) that have farting sounds playing throughout. See for yourself:
A perfect example of the difference between Zack Snyder and mediocre James Gunn. pic.twitter.com/6ECQ6vBWtgSeptember 2, 2024
Now, when it comes to cinematography, the overall consensus in the comments section for the X post is that Zack Snyder does indeed have James Gunn beat. However, there were also many who came to Gunn’s defense to say that in the story department, he’s the one who comes out on top between these two. Here are some of those supportive comments:
- Cinematography is a waste if the film is shit and that’s the case for Zack Snyder’s films - @jimlogans
- But Season 1 of Peacemaker was better than anything DC that Snyder ever made. And by a lot. - @CousinNicky3
- To all the Snyder bros here: If what Zack gave us was so great and wonderful, why did it fail to garner much love outside the Snyder cult? The only people who loved those overly dark slow motion heavy films were the Snyder bros 🫤 - @kevin_meiz1988
- honestly got more enjoyment out of the back half of that video - @AristotleDreher
- I love zack but he can’t tell a story to save his life - @NanaQuame_jo
- One couldn't Crack the billion dollar mark with arguably the greatest heros of all time and one turned c list characters in to mainstream heroes. - @Kgahlis20808921
All this isn’t to say that Zack Snyder fans didn’t throw their two cents in and share that they still care more for his work than James Gunn. And again, when it comes to cinematography, one could argue that Snyder definitely has more memorable visual moments in his movies. But James Gunn fans turned out in force on this post to back up the filmmaker’s strengths. Wherever you stand on this, one thing that can’t be debated is that Snyder won’t be jumping back into the DC pool anytime soon, if ever at all.
Instead, the next project Snyder has coming up is the animated series Twilight of the Gods, which will premiere to those with a Netflix subscription on September 19, and he’s also hoping to keep the Rebel Moon franchise going past the original two movies and their director’s cuts. As for Gunn, we’ll see how his Superman movie turned out when it flies into theaters on July 11, 2025.
