Cult film director turned Marvel canon auteur James Gunn has something to say about the success of last week’s opening of Deadpool. The Slither director was responding to a quote from a Deadline article that suggested that Deadpool was the first film under the Marvel label to poke fun at the the comic universe.
In the Facebook post, Gunn, a Troma Film alum, attributed the quote to “the dumbest fucking Hollywood exec in the history of dumb fucking Hollywood execs.”
He continued:
“Let’s ignore Guardians for a moment, a movie that survives from moment to moment building itself up and cutting itself down – God knows I’m biased about that one. But what do you think Favreau and Downey did in Iron Man? What the fuck was Ant-Man??!”
Gunn praised Deadpool saying, “It’s original, it’s damn good, it was made with love by the filmmakers, and it wasn’t afraid to take risks.”
But Gunn later predicted what he fears Hollywood will do with the success of the Fox film:
“So, over the next few months, if you pay attention to the trades, you’ll see Hollywood misunderstanding the lesson they should be learning with Deadpool. They’ll be green lighting films “like Deadpool” – but, by that, they won’t mean “good and original” but “a raunchy superhero film” or “it breaks the fourth wall.” They’ll treat you like you’re stupid, which is the one thing Deadpool didn’t do.”
The separation between Hollywood business thinking and audience desire has been well documented. Remember what Warner Bros. did with Tim Burton’s Batman franchise before Christopher Nolan took over? But what’s more perplexing is the suggestion that Marvel is a company that is unable to poke fun at it’s own franchise? Maybe DC can be accused of this at times (not counting some of the excellent TV fare such as The Flash and Supergirl), but Marvel’s cinematic universe basically came out of the gates mocking the very characters they were putting on screen. It’s for this reason they tend to go with directors such as Jon Favreau and Peyton Reed, filmmakers known more for their comedic contributions to film, than directors like Christopher Nolan and Zach Snyder, directors popular for producing more epic fare.
Surely time can only tell if Hollywood will learn its lesson and we’re not left with a 3D film adaptation of The Tick where our hero engages the audience in a five minute tirade on why “Spoon” is a phonetically better catchphrase than “Spork.
