James Gunn Has the Job. Has He Earned the Myth?

I grew up reading DC.

I collected Superman, while my brother nominally collected Batman. In reality, he did not care much about comics, but he was willing to pretend that he did and then trade them with me. It was an arrangement that worked rather well from my perspective.

I am telling you that because this is not the view of someone waiting for the superhero film business to collapse under the weight of its own continuity.

Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are, for me, the archetypal characters. Batman's collection of villains is almost a fictional universe in its own right. The Flash has a better and more varied group of recurring enemies than many publishers have across their entire catalogue. Green Lantern opens the door to a cosmic mythology that could support a police procedural, political drama, horror and space opera without needing to borrow anyone else's furniture.

DC has no shortage of winning cards.

What I am increasingly less convinced by is the person being presented as the man who knows how to play them.

Reputation before evidence

Kevin Feige and James Gunn acquired authority in very different ways.

Feige joined Marvel long before the MCU existed, working on the early X-Men films and across several other Marvel adaptations. He was promoted to president of production at Marvel Studios before Iron Man had demonstrated that the larger proposition could work.

So, it would be wrong to suggest that he was handed the job after all the risk had passed. He was not.

But his public mythology came later.

The early Marvel films were sold through their characters, actors and the emerging Marvel Studios identity. The posters did not ask audiences to see Iron Man because it was a Kevin Feige production. The Avengers was not marketed as the culmination of one executive's personal vision. Feige was present, influential and increasingly powerful, but most of the audience came to understand his significance by watching the system deliver.

For the first few years, Jon Favreau was probably a more recognisable creative name to the general audience.

Iron Man worked. The Incredible Hulk was a commercial disappointment, even though I personally enjoyed it. Iron Man 2 made money but was hardly perfect. Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger established two difficult and very different characters, directed by filmmakers with very different instincts.

Then The Avengers proved that the larger proposition was real.

The trumpets followed the work.

Gunn's arrival at DC felt like the reverse. Warner Bros. Discovery appointed Gunn and Peter Safran as co-chairmen and chief executives of DC Studios in 2022, with responsibility for a long-term plan across film, television and animation. Before their new universe had delivered anything, Gunn had already become its public personality, principal explainer and presumed answer to Feige.

He also appeared unusually willing to make himself the face of the recovery. Sometimes the personality selling the future of DC seemed more visible than the properties he had been appointed to recover.

That does not mean he came from nowhere.

Gunn had made Slither and Super. He had written Dawn of the Dead. More importantly, he had turned the Guardians of the Galaxy into major cinematic characters. He then made The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker for DC. Those last two projects were a credible audition. They showed that he could rehabilitate damaged material, move between film and television, and find emotional value in characters designed to appear ridiculous.

He had earned the opportunity.

I am less persuaded that he had earned the mythology.

The distinction became particularly visible in the marketing for Superman. "A James Gunn Film" was not an improper credit. Gunn wrote and directed it, and filmmakers with a distinctive body of work are routinely marketed in this way.

But he was not only the filmmaker. He was also the studio co-head who had approved the project, a producer responsible for the wider continuity, and the public figure asking audiences to trust the new DC.

In that context, the credit felt less like ordinary authorship and more like advance confirmation of a status that had not yet been earned at DC.

The problem is not involvement

It is tempting to turn this into a simple contrast between Feige, the restrained and hands-off producer, and Gunn, the interfering creative.

That would be too convenient.

Feige was heavily involved in casting, scripts, continuity and the selection of directors. Marvel's early films did not emerge from complete creative freedom. The studio later became notorious for a house style that could overwhelm the filmmakers working within it. Edgar Wright's departure from Ant-Man remains the most obvious example of where the boundary sat.

The more useful difference is structural.

Feige generally acted as curator, producer and architect. Favreau directed Iron Man. Kenneth Branagh directed Thor. Joe Johnston directed Captain America: The First Avenger. Joss Whedon directed The Avengers. Feige set boundaries, protected the larger plan and decided what belonged, but he was not also the principal writer and director of the foundational films.

On Superman, Gunn was studio co-chief, writer, director, producer, continuity owner and chief public advocate for his own interpretation.

That concentration can produce clarity. It can also remove useful resistance.

If Gunn's interpretation of Superman is wrong, who inside the structure has both the authority and confidence to tell him?

Safran can challenge the commercial or operational position. Warner Bros. can intervene when money becomes uncomfortable. Other writers and DC specialists can advise. But there is no obvious creative counterweight when the person writing and directing the film is also the person who approved it.

This is not a theoretical complaint about corporate governance.

It becomes visible in the character.

Captain America and the moral centre

The MCU's Steve Rogers is, for me, one of the finest superhero adaptations put on screen.

Chris Evans deserves enormous credit, but the performance works because the writing understands the governing principle of the character. Steve is not made good by the serum. The serum gives physical force to the person who was already willing to jump on a grenade.

Across his films, that moral centre remains stable. He dislikes bullies, regardless of where they come from. He respects legitimate authority but will not surrender his conscience to it. He is prepared to stand alone, even when doing so is tactically foolish or personally costly.

The films test that position rather than quietly replacing it when the plot becomes inconvenient.

Good writing. Good architecture.

Captain America kills enemy combatants, so his moral rule is not pacifism. His underlying principle is that power must not turn him into a bully, or make obedience easier than conscience. The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier and Civil War place that principle under different forms of pressure. Steve can be stubborn, naive and wrong about tactics. He is never casually rewritten at the point where being Steve Rogers would make the action sequence more difficult.

Superman should receive the same discipline.

My Superman does not merely prefer that people remain alive. His preservation of life is a defining obligation. The more powerful he is, the fewer excuses he has for failing to find another way.

It is not an optional preference. It is part of the character's moral architecture.

There have been many versions of Superman across nearly ninety years, and they have not all followed an absolute prohibition on killing. Even the Christopher Reeve films become uncomfortable if every apparent death is examined literally. I am therefore describing the Superman I subscribe to, not claiming an entirely consistent rule across every comic, television programme and film.

But it is hardly an eccentric interpretation. Superman's refusal to kill has become one of the clearest expressions of what separates him from people who possess power but lack restraint.

Gunn appears to understand this in principle. Before the film's release, he described Superman as someone who believes that one should never kill, contrasting that position with Lois Lane's more pragmatic view.

The completed film is less certain.

During the kaiju attack in Metropolis, Superman tries to find a way to remove the creature alive. Mr Terrific instead sends his T-spheres inside it and kills it. Superman catches the falling body and objects, but the death is quickly surrounded by jokes. More revealingly, the official screenplay has Superman say that, if capture were impossible, he would at least have preferred a more painless euthanasia.

That is not an absolute rule. It is a preference for less suffering.

Nor is this a monster that has spent months plotting the destruction of Metropolis. It appears to be a confused creature lashing out, which we later discover is exactly the case.

The final fight makes the problem harder to dismiss. Superman deliberately propels Ultraman into a black hole. Ultraman screams and disappears. There is no serious attempt to establish survival, no visible moral consequence and no suggestion that Superman believes he has crossed a line.

This is not the same as Superman endorsing Mr Terrific's decision. He clearly does not.

But Gunn wrote the situation, the available choices, the outcome and the reaction. The binary did not arrive from outside the film. The filmmaker created it.

That was also my central problem with Henry Cavill's Superman killing Zod, and with the casual scale of civilian destruction, in Man of Steel. The defence is that Zod was about to kill a family and Superman had no alternative. But the writers designed a situation in which he had no alternative.

The imaginative challenge of writing Superman is to let everyone else see only two choices, then have Superman find the third.

Across decades of stories, writers have shown both Superman and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clark Kent thinking their way out of apparent binaries. The character is not interesting because he can punch harder. He is interesting because his power makes the moral demand greater, not smaller.

Gunn restores warmth, colour and human connection to Superman. No question. His Superman saves civilians, dogs and even a squirrel. Those choices are welcome, and they acknowledge the character's comic-book nature in a way several recent adaptations resisted.

But saving the squirrel is a signal of kindness. It is not a substitute for resolving the difficult moral problem.

In the kaiju sequence, the practical hero kills the creature while the idealistic hero complains that it could have been done more gently. That makes Superman sympathetic, but operationally ineffective. The best Superman stories allow him to be morally better and capable enough to make that morality work.

Many people saw in Gunn's film the hopeful Superman they had been missing. I understand why. It is warmer, brighter and considerably more affectionate towards the source material than Man of Steel.

It is still not the Superman I grew up with.

By that measure, Gunn fumbled the character.

Lobo and the card that should have been played

Lobo offers a different kind of example.

Jason Momoa as Lobo is almost suspiciously obvious casting. The character is violent, excessive, funny, anti-authoritarian and very difficult to kill. Momoa appears as natural a fit for Lobo as Ryan Reynolds is for Deadpool.

Lobo can also move through the stranger parts of DC's cosmic universe without requiring a lecture on the Green Lantern Corps before anyone is allowed to enjoy themselves.

More importantly, he is exactly the kind of character Gunn should understand.

A deliberately adult Lobo film could sit somewhere between Deadpool, Mad Max and a cosmic western. It would give Gunn room to use the violence, irreverence, damaged masculinity and grotesque humour that suit him, without asking Superman to carry those instincts.

Alternatively, Lobo could have been the principal antagonist in Supergirl. He need not be a villain who has to die. He could be an apparently unstoppable force whom Kara must defeat, outwit or eventually dissuade from the destructive purpose that brought him into her story. That would give Supergirl a meaningful moral and physical problem while leaving Lobo available for something larger.

Instead, he was used as a supporting attraction in an unsuccessful film.

The fumble was not Momoa's performance. His appearance was one of the elements that generated some energy. The fumble was deciding that a character with credible lead potential should provide a jolt to Supergirl rather than carry the stakes himself.

A first appearance is a finite piece of cultural capital.

Before Supergirl, "Jason Momoa is Lobo" could have been an event. Now a standalone film would be a spin-off built around a supporting character from a film that, at the time of writing, has earned about $122 million worldwide against a reported production budget of $170 million.

That does not make a future Lobo film impossible. It does make the route less clean.

For someone presented as a rainmaker, this is a revealing use of a very good card.

Marvel has stumbled, but I can see where it is going

None of this requires pretending that Marvel has spent the years since Endgame in excellent health.

The MCU expanded too quickly, particularly across Disney+. It introduced too many characters without establishing which ones mattered, confused quantity with momentum, and allowed the multiverse to become a mechanism for postponing consequence. Kang never acquired the weight required to organise the saga around him, even before events outside the films forced Marvel to change direction.

Marvel has damaged its own model.

Yet when I look forward, I feel something I do not currently feel for DC.

Interest. Perhaps even a little excitement again.

*Spider-Man: Brand New Day* arrives in July 2026. *Avengers: Doomsday* follows in December, with Robert Downey Jr. returning as Doctor Doom and Chris Evans among the announced cast. *Avengers: Secret Wars* follows in December 2027. The Fantastic Four, Avengers and legacy X-Men are being drawn towards the same event.

I have reservations.

Downey as Doom may be inspired, or it may make Doctor Doom feel like an elaborate comment on Tony Stark. Bringing Evans and other familiar actors back risks weakening endings that once had meaning. Rehiring the Russo brothers and gathering much of the old cast may be a creative reset, but it may also be a studio retreating towards the last place it remembers feeling safe.

Even so, the proposition is clear. Something large is coming, and characters I care about will be there.

And, well, if nothing else, I get a shot of nostalgia.

DC's current plan is much harder to feel.

Lanterns may be an excellent Earth-based detective series. Clayface could demonstrate that a comic-book film can operate as contained body horror. *Man of Tomorrow* will continue Gunn's Superman and Lex Luthor story in 2027. Matt Reeves' The Batman Part II remains interesting to many people, although not particularly to me, but it belongs to a separate continuity and cannot be used as proof that Gunn's central DCU is coherent.

Meanwhile, the main DCU Batman remains distant. Wonder Woman has no firm production date. The Flash has disappeared after the failure of the previous continuity's film. Several projects from the original ten-project announcement have stalled, changed shape or receded from view.

There may be a plan. I cannot see the destination.

Marvel currently offers convergence. DC offers a collection of potentially interesting, often sideways projects and asks the audience to infer why they belong together.

Connectivity is not momentum.

The cards are not the problem

DC's underlying material is not weaker than Marvel's.

Batman's villains can support crime stories, psychological horror, political thrillers and tragedy. The Flash's Rogues can carry a heist film before Barry Allen has put his boots on. Reverse-Flash offers one of the most personal hero-villain relationships in comics. Green Lantern brings Sinestro, the Manhunters and an entire emotional spectrum. Superman has Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro, Mongul, Parasite, Metallo and Mr Mxyzptlk. Wonder Woman's mythology has barely been explored on film.

Marvel's closest equivalents are Spider-Man and the X-Men, whose extended casts and enemies can sustain almost any kind of story. But Marvel's great cinematic achievement was not simply using its strongest properties. It was turning Iron Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy into properties that audiences assumed had always been important.

DC does not need to perform that trick with Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. They are already important. They are cultural icons before a script enters the room.

DC needs to understand them, sequence them and make audiences care about where they are going.

Gunn is plainly talented. Superman was a real commercial success, earning about $619 million worldwide, and many people saw in it precisely the hopeful character they wanted. Creature Commandos and Peacemaker show that his creative instincts can work exceptionally well in the right territory.

Peter Safran also deserves to be remembered whenever DC Studios is discussed as though Gunn operates it alone.

Nor is one underperforming film proof that the whole project has failed. Feige's MCU had The Incredible Hulk near the beginning. A portfolio must be judged across time, and rebuilding audience trust was never going to happen through a single successful release.

But the comparison with Feige remains premature.

Feige was given authority before the MCU was proven. He was given legendary status after it was proven. Gunn received the authority, public profile and much of the legend at the beginning.

Nearly four years after his appointment, I can see evidence that James Gunn can still make a successful James Gunn film. I can see some promising casting, several interesting projects and a willingness to embrace parts of DC that previous management treated as embarrassing.

What I do not yet see is evidence that he can build a DC universe broad enough to contain voices other than his own, disciplined enough to protect the moral centre of its greatest characters, and clear enough to make me care what happens three films from now.

Perhaps Lanterns, Clayface and Man of Tomorrow will supply that evidence. I would be quite happy to be wrong.

For now, DC has the characters. Whether Gunn can build the system around them remains unanswered.

The work still has to earn the trumpets.

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