The saga of Marvel Studios and James Gunn is about to come to a resounding conclusion with the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Before being able to make the movie Gunn had actually been fired from the job, leading to significant questions regarding whether we’d ever see the movie at all. As it turns out, even if Gunn had not returned as director he would have been involved as the movie was still going to use his script, something that Chris Pratt couldn’t believe.
It’s been almost five years since a series of offensive James Gunn tweets, that the director had already apologized for, were brought back into the spotlight by people angry with Gnn’s criticism of then President Trump. At the time, a script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had already been completed, and a new in-depth story in THR confirms that even after Gunn was fired plans were in place to still use the script, something that Chris Pratt found to be more than a little hypocritical. He explained…
I was like, ‘Oh, so we can use the script written by James Gunn, but we just can’t have him direct?’ The script is so good that you’re going to be like, ‘Yeah, we had to get rid of him because we couldn’t associate with that man. But we will make his script.
The relationship between directors and their films, especially with Marvel projects, has always been an interesting question, but it’s always been clear that the Guardians of the Galaxy movies were personal projects for James Gunn. But this led to a question regarding how the movie would be approached. Would a new director want to write their own script? Would other writers do rewrites on Gunn’s script? Would another director really give us the same movie?
It was made clear early that Disney was still interested in using Gunn’s script, which did seem strange considering the studio was otherwise distancing itself from him publicly. Behind closed doors, however, Gunn had a lot of support. The open letter from the Guardians of the Galaxy cast asking Disney to bring Gunn back was apparently spearheaded by Chris Pratt, and he and Zoe Saldana met with Marvel head Kevin Feige. Gunn says that the entire thing happened because then Walt Disney Studios head Alan Horn felt very strongly that Gunn's tweets were wrong. The director explained…
It’s a hundred percent because Alan Horn felt sick. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.
Gunn doesn’t seem to blame Horn for his decision, knowing that the studio chief believed he was making the right call. And while Horn isn’t talking much about the decision to fire Gunn, he says that the director did everything right after that decision was made, and he now says he holds Gunn in “high regard.” Horn said…
Everything he did subsequently was first class. He was such a gentleman about it in the ensuing months that we just brought him back. It felt like the right thing to do. I hold him in absolute high regard.
I think nearly everybody is in agreement that bringing back James Gunn was the right thing to do, and now fans get to see the director bring his trilogy to a conclusion, and based on early reactions to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the wait was very much worth it. But one way we can pass the time is by watching the Marvel movies in order while we wait.
