There's a lot in common between Marvel's latest box-office smash Captain Marvel and once-disgraced director of the Guardians of the Galaxy films James Gunn. They're both part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's "cosmic" corner, which came to prominence in last year's Avengers: Infinity War and will again be crucial in this year's Avengers: Endgame and certainly the films after it. Both of them employed Nicole Perlman, who wrote the screenplay for both Captain Marvel and the first Guardians movie. Another commonality they have is that both of them were targeted for destruction by trolls and finally, both of them came out on top.
Captain Marvel's success at the box office despite the dogged efforts of alt-right personalities like Jack Posobiec and even actor James Woods has been extensively written about so there's really no point in discussing it again, but with Disney making public its decision to reinstate James Gunn as director of Guardian of the Galaxy 3 after firing him in the middle of last year for social media posts made back in 2009, for which he had already apologized before Disney even hired him, it's worth revisiting how Gunn's public takedown came about.
Unlike Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey or even Louis CK, James Gunn wasn't exposed by someone he had abused. He wasn't exposed for raping or physically or even psychologically molesting any particular person. He wasn't even exposed for anything he had done in the last ten years. No, James Gunn was exposed through the efforts of two fanatical supporters of Donald Trump (one of whom was Jack Posobiec, the other I will not bother to name anymore) who took strong exception to Gunn's vocal criticism of Trump, and what was exposed were years-old tweets of terrible jokes making light of sensitive topics like pedophilia, rape and even the 9/11 tragedy.
On its face, these could have been regarded as fairly serious evidence of a deeply perverse mind, but there were extenuating circumstances, such as the fact that these tweets were, at least in part, a by-product of Gunn's tenure at Troma films, an independent film company known for its schlocky, in-your-face and downright offensive films, as well as the fact that Gunn had long ago acknowledged and apologized for these tweets well before Marvel had hired him to work on Guardians of the Galaxy. Whether or not Gunn's gestures were sufficient to absolve him of these utterly insensitive tweets, Disney made the decision to hire him with this information fully available to them.
As a result, Disney's decision to fire Gunn following the revisiting of the tweets by Posobiec and his co-conspirator was not at all well-received, whether by Gunn's cast on the GOTG films, all of whom signed a letter of support for him, or by a significant portion of fandom. Even conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who frequently takes opportunities to roast liberal personalities like Gunn on a spit, disagreed with Disney's decision, distinguishing it from the earlier decision to fire the resurgent Roseanne Barr from her popular show as a result of brand new racist tweets. Unlike Barr (or Trump, for that matter) Gunn did not deflect, deny or gaslight; he showed what appears to be genuine repentance, and even though he had already acknowledged his past, he apologized anew, and accepted Disney's verdict. Rival studio Warner Brothers had no problem with the revelations, and in fairly short order, they hired Gunn to write, and later on to direct, a reboot of 2016's Suicide Squad, titled simply The Suicide Squad.
Apparently, Disney didn't have that much of a problem rehiring Gunn either, because even though it was only recently revealed that Gunn would be returning to direct Guardians of the Galaxy 3 as soon as he had wrapped up work on The Suicide Squad, apparently the decision was made months ago.
What, then, was the reason for the timing? Well I'm sure Marvel has their reasons, but it's plain to see that they were riding on a high after Captain Marvel, cleaned up at the box-office, despite the pathetic efforts of right-wing personalities like Posobiec, who promoted the ludicrous #alitachallenge, to take it down.
In my humble opinion, the timing of Marvel's announcement regarding Gunn, especially on the heels of its auspicious success with Captain Marvel, was meant as a clear message to its haters like Posobiec, whose #alitachallenge campaign against Captain Marvel had failed quite spectacularly. To my mind, this wasn't just about welcoming a beloved director back into the fold, which they'd already done months before; it was about telling the trolls, and anyone else looking to tear them or their family down, that they're not going to bend over for anybody. When one looks at it, the pop-culture crusade of the alt right's personalities has never really been about one particular movie, be it Captain Marvel or Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It was ever and always about emphasizing how much they mattered. They could cause a beloved director to lose his job. They could crater a movie's box-office performance with their online venom. The sun rose and set on what they liked and what they didn't, and because their hero is in the Oval Office right now, they figured that, more than box-office figures and global audiences, they matter.
To me, announcing James Gunn's reinstatement as director of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise months after the deal was sealed, and on the heels of Captain Marvel surpassing all but the most optimistic box-office predictions was Marvel's way of telling Posobiec and his ilk, "No, you don't."
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