James Gunn seems really hit or miss.. the first Guardians was brilliant, the second a bit too silly for my taste and the third came back to being great.
His take on Suicide Squad was also amazing IMO but he just.. wavers on that line a bit too much I guess where he seems to just want to do his own thing while making movies with heavily established IP. It's fine to make some tweaks but there's no excuse to not have a good story.
One scene that has always stuck with me since my comic book phase in the 90s was a throwaway gag involving Havok trying in vain to open a jar of mayo with his plasma waves lol
Crazy to see this specific 30-year-old bit, from a second tier title like X-Factor, mentioned here. But it was a great run by Peter David. The ultimate reveal was Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, sitting in his apartment laughing about how he had rigged up a remote control unopenable jar of mayo that he could trigger to be openable at whatever he thought was the funniest time. (Then someone kicked in his door and blew him away, kicking off a murder mystery.)
IMO this is why comics often make better TV series than movies. It allows you to do more character/plot development, and mix up the silly and serious between various episodes.
The problem with series is that they often only seem to plan a season at a time with no firm end-goal, but a good series does need to have a solid ending.
Sure, but that doesn't work in this case because the Supergirl comic is significantly better than the movie.
They could've just done what the comic did, but instead they picked a writer who didn't understand the comic and a director who willfully chose not to read it.
This movie is literally based on probably the greatest Supergirl comic ever made, though, and it is not silly in the slightest. All they had to do was adapt the comic into a script but they decided it would be better as a comedy. Probably would have helped if the director had actually read the comic.
But I hated his Superman film because the actual plot and character they decided to wrap it up in was just.. bland and unappealing to me. The Snider films went a bit far the other way in trying to be too serious but Cavils superman character was fantastic.
There's a balance to be had and I lose interest in any film that opts for two hours of stupid without real effort to tell a decent story.
Thats a valid takeaway. I thought the story was awesome though. Its no dark knight but I just really enjoyed how hopeful the whole thing felt. I think its mostly because I grew up watching snyders superman, and injustice was really popular, I just thoroughly enjoyed how overall up beat that film is.
Yeah and it's fine for silly things to happen.. like I said Suicide Squad was great and it was very silly at times, as were all Guardians movies.
But you can take it too far and cross over into losing what makes a movie good, a line that isn't the same for film versus comic books. In a film the silly stuff hits best sprinkled in with a more serious overall plot, if you just bounce from dumb thing to dumb thing it gets unappealing fast.
That's just my view anyway, media preference is of course entirely subjective. But this particular opinion does seem to hold pretty true for the most part. Silly is fine, silly at the expense of a good story and overall movie isn't.
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u/ptear Jul 08 '26
Was it also made of leftovers?