James Gunn is a curious figure in popular culture. As a young man, just rising in the film business, Gunn co-wrote the witty and disgusting Troma epic “Tromeo & Juliet” with Lloyd Kaufman, and it featured kinky sex, a bisexual Juliet, cow monsters, mutant penis creatures, and an opening narration by Lemmy from Motörhead. After that, Gunn took the piss out of the superhero genre with “The Specials,” a low-low budget film about what superheroes — petty jerks, mostly — do on their day off. He stayed aloft in Hollywood writing the screenplays for two surreal “Scooby-Doo” movies, and Zack Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead” before making his directorial debut in 2006 with “Slither,” another gross movie about body-invading worm monsters and wacko mutants.
Gunn then deconstructed superheroes even further with “Super” in 2010, a film that hypothesizes that superheroes are mentally ill and addicted to extreme violence. “Super” is bleak, tragic, and seemingly hates superheroes. He was, then, a very, very odd choice to direct the 2014 ultra-blockbuster “Guardians of the Galaxy,” one of the high-profile releases in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Guardians” was ostensibly meant to be “the irreverent one” in an otherwise stern comic book film series, but Gunn made a complete 180 from his usual tone, taking the material not only seriously, but sentimentally. “Guardians” was a light, fun, corporate-approved, effects-based comedy that proved Gunn had shed all his appealingly bitter punk sensibilities.
Since “Guardians,” Gunn has become a corporate powerhouse, directing multiple openly earnest superhero movies for both Marvel and DC Comics. As of this writing, he is the head honcho of the soon-to-be-launched DC Universe, a brand-new cinematic continuity centered on Superman. The punk is now the dominant paradigm.
So one must wonder: what does Gunn’s taste in movies look like? Luckily, IndieWire asked Gunn back in 2023 what his 12 favorite movies were, and he had an eclectic list to share. He included Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.”