With his Superman reboot about to hit screens worldwide, James Gunn has been explaining how the Star Wars movies, the Game of Thrones shows, and comics books themselves have guided his approach to the material.
James Gunn had us all loving a walking tree and talking racoon through Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, and now he plans to have audiences believing a man can fly in his first Superman movie.
David Corenswet plays a Man of Steel who kick-starts the new DC Universe in Superman, while Rachel Brosnahan is Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult is Lex Luther.
The movie’s huge ensemble features many more heroes and villains, and Gunn just appeared at a UK event to spill the beans about the forthcoming film, on the same day that his Superman was suspended above a London skyscraper.
James Gunn says “we can destroy anything at any time” in the DCU
While taking questions from the audience, Gunn revealed how he took a comic book approach to the first DCU movie, as well as thinking about how Star Wars and Game of Thrones built their worlds.
“I don’t think anyone who reads comics has started at the beginning,” says Gunn. “We all entered in the middle of these stories. That’s the magical world I love.
“I love the MCU and a lot of stuff that was happening in the DCEU. But I also love Star Wars and Game of Thrones and I wanted to create a universe that was different and one of the things that I always liked about DC was it wasn’t our world. It was another world. It was Gotham instead of New York. Metropolis and Evergreen and Star City and Central City and all of these places – it was like a fictional world.
“And so I wanted to create this other planet. This other reality. That’s what I love doing is that sort of world-building. It gives you the freedom to do anything. If you destroy New York in the MCU – well it’s heavy to destroy any city, but anything can happen in the DCU. We can destroy anything at any time. We can destroy a continent. It gives you the freedom to do what you want.
“I love the imagination of it. And I love the fact that we’re telling some stories that are going to be continuous over numerous pieces of media. But also we’re taking this big globe of stories over this big span of time and we can pick any piece out of it to tell any little story. And this is just one of those pieces.
“This is the first… well it’s the second one after Creature Commandos. But it’s the first movie piece and I love being able to approach it in that way.”
“Hopefully this will make it better”: NASA will stream future launches on Netflix