Part of the purpose of creating this blog is to cover topics that I would not normally cover on my youtube channel. However, I have always had very strong opinions about things that never had anything to do with gaming, and as a result of that I felt that talking about them would dilute my actual core message and appeal of my channel. As such it hasn’t really been in my best interest to criticize people in my own field and the industry as a whole.
However, it needs to be said: the modern entertainment industry is trash. Nothing good is getting produced anywhere outside of Japan, and it hasn’t been for a very long time. Far longer, I think, than most people are comfortable acknowledging. Anyone with an IQ over 60 has been exclusively consuming Japanese media for decades now, but the rest of society was perfectly happy to live in their idiocracy where their entire lives revolved around sportsball and porn.
I don’t think anything sums up the decline in culture better than the ‘Superhero’ move phenomenon, in which a bunch of basement dwelling nerds tried to say that The Dark Knight should win all of the Oscars because the guy who played the Joker died or something. I know people who still make unfunny ‘we kill the batman’ jokes in like 2024. The strangehold this film had on the culture, at the time, was absolutely disgusting. Especially because it wasn’t even as good as the Tim Burton movies.
And what did we get out of ‘celebrating’ The Dark Knight? An even worse sequel with an even more unfunny meme. (“For You…”) The Snyder verse which was an incompressible mess that people wanted to pretend were masterpieces for some reason, and then that one where that cast Edward Cullen to be Batman.
Now that isn’t even going into other issues with the brand- how no one reads comics anymore and how no one knows any of the characters outside of the ones who you see in movies, we’re talking about JUST the films. If the Dark Knight truly was this deep dark introspective masterpiece that really highlighted the value of comic book characters- why did we stop getting good comic book movies?
People may argue that Joker was good, or that the MCU was good, or even try and defend something like Supergirl for political reasons but the long and short of it was that the superhero film thing was a FAD that the masses just ate up because it was an excuse to go to the theater and consume a product. No one who went to go see any of these movies grew to care about any of these characters, or wanted to learn more about them or became more passionate about them. No, in pretty much every case the movies are so divorced from the comic material that they may as well be separate brands. And that has led to situations where you have fanboys like Angry Joe defending Supergirl JUST because it’s a DC branded thing, even though the movie itself has NOTHING to do with Supergirl herself.
The character in the movie is so far divorced from what Supergirl should be that it isn’t worth seeing if you were a fan of the character. But the comic book crowd only knows how to CONSUME product with no regard for the actual quality. As long as it’s stamped with a brand that they approve of (Which is usually something they recognize from their childhoods) they’ll eat it up regardless of how low quality it is. Again we see a lot of these same people eating up absolute slop like Invincible and the Boys for the same reason. “It’s something from my childhood, but it’s more ADULT.”
It’s an interesting situation because at a certain point everyone admits that this stuff sucks and that no one likes it: but usually it takes failure after failure and red flag after flag for even the most die hard fans to give up on it. And then usually these people just flock to the new thing, like locusts. There is no accountability, there is no thought put into their actions. They see something like Game of Thrones Season 8, hate it more than anything, and then turn around and hype up House of the Dragon.
Now I bring all this up because the core mindset about this is that viewers have to consume endless amounts of slop in order to get something ‘good.’ What that something ‘good’ is never quite quantified or explained, but it’s basically a carrot on a stick that these people use to justify going to the theater or being subscribed to every streaming service no matter how bad they get.
And that brings me to James Gunn.
James Gunn might be the poster child for this mindset, because for a long time people were insisting that he was some major player in the world of comic book movies and that he was going to do great things with DC. Well, after the failure of Superman, and the giga failure of Supergirl, it’s safe to say that Gunn’s time at DC is on the ropes. Any serious company or any serious fanbase would have demanded that he step down a long time ago, but this is the DC audience we’re talking about here. No, they’ll keep lapping up anything he spits out. Even now, the cope is that he didn’t ‘direct’ the Supergirl movie, even though he approved the script for it. How difficult exactly is it to blame everyone person involved in the production for its failure?
This guy has been involved in high level super hero movie production for over a decade. And we’re really supposed to believe that this sixty year old man ‘needs time to cook’ or ‘find his footing’ or ‘deal with the suits.’ The simple fact of the matter is he has not and never has produced movies that anyone actually wants to see. I’m not obligated to go see Supergirl because I want to see more DC live action films. In fact, I hate Supergirl so much that I would be insane to go in and give them money to be disappointed.
But plenty of people do that! Plenty of people happily give their money and time to these people in the hopes that their empty meaningless lives will feel fulfilled! To someone like Angry Joe Supergirl succeeding is very important to him. He was begging people to go see it before he even saw it himself. Because he was not a fan of DC, or James Gunn, or Superman, but because he was a follower of the BRAND.
There are infinitely better things he could be doing with his time- such as reviewing the new Star Fox Remake or watching anime or anything else- but he chooses to spend his time worshipping SUPERGIRL because it is that important to him that this movie is financially successful. And everyone else who still consumes this slop is cut from the same cloth, even if it’s not to as extreme of a degree.
James Gunn has made two movies for DC now and both of them are garbage. Do we have to wait for a third before calling it a wash? Should we for him to change companies and try something else? Everything this guy touches turn to slop. He couldn’t even make a good Scooby Doo film. Even as a young child I was very quick to realize that James Gunn’s Scooby Doo adaption followed very similar beats to the 90’s Scooby Doo on Zombie Island movie. The kids are older, settled into their careers, and have gone their separate ways. But Zombie Island feels very much in line with the original show, where the characters are all genuinely friends and have this sort of camaraderie that feels genuine and timeless. James Gunn’s version, in comparison, is weirdly mean spirited and oversexualized. With Fred constantly making weird sex jokes towards Daphne, and very heavily tried to push Velma as a lesbian. (Which is a meme that weirdoes have been trying to make happen for decades in order to indoctrinate fans of the show into the ideology)
Zombie Island is genuinely regarded as an all time classic for the brand, while James Gunn’s Version has been pretty much forgotten by anyone who didn’t grow up with it. I admit at the time that the idea of Scrappy Doo being the villain was hilarious- but as I get older my feelings have shifted. To a certain extent back then I was willing to accept both versions as valid interpretations of the characters, but these days I love Zombie Island more and more while the stupid live action version is something that I have no intention of ever revisiting the movie.
I think superhero fiction is in the same boat. The mindset among the film industry is that it is the live action films carrying the industry, but the reality is that among actual fans and creators the animated films have left a far stronger impression. I think anime films have left more of an impression. People like them more. They’re high quality, and tell better stories. The industry believes that people will endlessly keep lining up to go watch live action superhero movies JUST because they are live action superhero movies, without really being concerned about the quality. Anyone serious about this stuff will end up watching the better versionso the films from the 80’s, or watch animated films featuring the characters, or reading classic comics. They do not necessarily have to watch or care about the live action films.
I feel as if the industry does not realize just how much of the ‘Superhero movie’ phenomenon was just a fad, similar to how westerns were endlessly successful in the 50’s. Once mainstream audiences tap out, they are going to be entirely reliant on people who actually care about the characters. And if that happens, inevitably, the concerns about the overall quality are going to leak out into the mainstream, and then no one will see your movie. We’ve already seen this happen with Supergirl, but I don’t think it’ll be the last major failure to come out of the Superhero movie genre.
In short, executives believe that fans will turn out for films no matter how bad the films get, but at a certain point even they get fed up and leave. We are seeing that now with the superhero genre as a whole, but James Gunn is a little bit different. The image he built of ‘not being like the other guys’ seems to be temporarily shielding him from the fallout of what’s going to happen, It is very important, if you care about film or care about DC at all, to get frauds like this out of power and to install someone who actually wants to produce good films.
Superhero movies will never really ‘recover’ as in, be as big as they were in the past decade- but I think we may get something better. We may actually see smaller, better movies get produced by talented people instead of these industry frauds. Maybe we’ll see more experimentation, or less interference from woke culture, or maybe they’ll just be niche products targeted towards a niche demographic. However, we have no obligation to support a brand or a creator if the product sucks.
James Gunn has had more than enough time to good movies, and he has failed. It is time to stop being so invested in him as a creator. He sucks.