When it comes to superhero movies, for a long time, James Gunn was chiefly known for his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and for good reason. With the three Guardians of the Galaxy movies and The Holiday Special (available exclusively to Disney+ subscribers), he catapulted a team of previously obscure characters into pop culture icons. Nowadays though, Gunn is a DC man through and through thanks to his job co-running DC Studios with Peter Safran. And yet, #FireJamesGunn continues to be a viral hashtag on X (formerly known as Twitter), and I have some thoughts on this, though most of them boil down to confusion.
As you’ll see if you look through #FireJamesGunn, the hashtag has started trending again over the last few days. It’s unclear what exactly prompted this latest barrage, but it doesn’t take long to see that these many of these posts come from fans of Zack Snyder’s DC movies, i.e. Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (not to be confused with the theatrical cut of Justice League, which was largely put together by Joss Whedon during extensive reshoots). A good chunk of these posts are also accompanied by the hashtags #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, #boycottwbd and #SellSnyderVerseToNetflix, with the latter referencing these fans’ desire to see Snyder’s Justice League saga completed over at Netflix.
