It is infuriating being a fan of any large franchise at this point. There are so many properties coming out today that many of us feel like we can do far better. Whether that is true or not is not the point. The point is, James Gunn got one of the greatest toyboxes in history and he pulled out some of the most mind boggling action figures and made them start puking all over each other. It is flat out exhausting to try and follow these storylines and try to put all of these ideas together in some sort of cohesive series. Here we are seeing Gunn fire Henry Cavill only to replace him and then take DC in the most sporadic, random directions he could apparently think of.
This is no real surprise, given how he handled The Suicide Squad. Call that movie what you want, but it did not scream "I can make DC movies better!" Then he gave us a bit of a dud in the ways of yet another Suicide Squad. It was named Creature Commandos, but let's be real here. So, he basically thought he could Guardians of the Galaxy the DCU and just pull C characters out of nowhere. This way no one would care what sort of character he makes them. Yeah, news flash, it didn't work.
He apparently wanted his own Supergirl as well. Superman didn't do great in theaters but it did well enough to at least look like it did well. The real problem with this was he already gave us a sneak peek at this new Supergirl. The line "thanks for watching my dog, bitch" immediately told me that I didn't want to watch her movie. This was the correct instinct. Supergirl turned out to be one of the ugliest, grimiest, most morally backwards movies ever created. It wasn't good and it bombed at the box office.
Creature Commandos didn't do anything on HBO Max but.... Yeah, animated movies mean literally nothing to cinematic universes. Well, News Flash: There are an entire plethora of animated DC movies that are infinitely better than anything Gunn has made, animated or not. Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, JL: Doom, Superman vs Doomsday, Son of Batman, Batman vs Robin, all of these movies were varying in actual quality, but all of them are multiple times better than Lanterns and Creature Commandos. This was coming off of the Snyderverse. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly made a lot of mistakes and did not end well at all. This could have been the opportunity to pick up the torch and bring back Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and THEN maybe try a Supergirl. Nope! Green Lantern gets a terrible haircut, a TERRIBLE TV series written by the same hack as the Watchman TV Series, then they come out and tell us Clay Face is on the horizon.
James Gunn was not the right one for the job. Let's call a chicken a chicken and stop tip toeing around the issue. This is the same guy who wrote the first two Scooby Doo live action films! That should have been enough of a clue that he only got success from having the right movie at the right time. Guardians of the Galaxy killed his career in the long run. He tried so hard, over and over again, to redo that formula that got him so much praise in 2014. While we're waiting for the next big Batman and Superman team up done correctly, he's off in left field trying to have John Stewart tell us why we're all racists. They didn't want a superhero universe, he wanted a circus that he can change around at his own whim. He wanted all of his own characters in the spotlight and he wanted a free ticket to change whatever he wanted when he wanted.
It was this thinking that destroyed Supergirl and made Superman a complete and total mess. Superman was good, but it was NOT the bombastic start of a cinematic universe. Once again, they tried to set up so many heroes, tried to tell us that these heroes are right here along with Superman, but it doesn't work in ONE SINGLE film! Green Lantern was a better cinematic start than this! Ryan Reynolds has buried that role, along with the Origins Deadpool, but it is still less of a disjointed mess than what we are getting with whatever this DCU is supposed to be. Gunn was so worried about the comparisons he had with Snyder, when he should have been concentrating on making an awesome Superman movie, then throwing out the cast for a new Batman and Wonder Woman. A true fan would have been finding a way to bring the true Justice League together in a sound, story-driven way, so it's pretty obvious that he was just in it for the money. That's all it's ever about, the money. Well, their problem is that they don't know what fans know and they will never relate as a result. They built all of this on the promise that it would be better than the DCEU, better than the MCU, but it has delivered nothing and promises to continue thusly. Gunn, you were handed the keys to the kingdom and they are rightfully going to be taken away. Maybe eat some crow and wash it down with some water.
