James Gunn is opening up about cancel culture in light of the release of his upcoming movie “The Suicide Squad.”
“I’m always attracted to outsiders,” Gunn, 51, recently told Fox News, echoing his previous message of dismissing cancel culture.
The Marvel film director was famously fired from Disney back in July 2018 before being rehired to continue directing the blockbuster franchise.
In the Fox interview, Gunn shared that the sequel to the 2016 David Ayer-directed “The Suicide Squad” brings together the “worst of the worst” anti-heroes in the DC Comics Universe and reverses the script on their negative perceptions.
“I think these are all people that feel like they don’t matter, and there’s a lot of people in this world who are told that they don’t matter, they aren’t good enough or they aren’t the right color or they aren’t the right whatever,” he said. “And these are all people [in ‘The Suicide Squad’] who are considered the worst of the worst of the worst – total losers.”
Gunn noted that he is empowering people who feel that they have an “inner Polka Dot Man” to feel better about themselves.
“To be able to take a Polka Dot Man and give him some meaning and some purpose gives me great joy,” he said. “We all have our own inner Polka Dot Man. Most of us do not think, ‘Oh, I’m like Captain America.’ We walk around thinking, ‘Oh, I’m like Polka Dot Man.’ So, I’m giving a character to all the people that feel like that around the world.”
Back in March 2018, controversy swirled when dozens of the director’s tweets — which centered on topics of pedophilia and rape — resurfaced from nearly a decade earlier. Disney quickly removed Gunn from directing “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” asserting that the comments were unacceptable and out of line with Disney’s family-friendly image.
Support for Gunn was widespread immediately after, especially from “Guardians” cast members Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana. Both asked for Gunn to be reinstated in an open letter, and his UTA reps pushed hard for him to be given a second chance.
Sources said at the time that studio chairman Alan Horn stood by his decision to not reinstate Gunn as director.
But in March 2019, Gunn was subsequently reinstated and he apologized for his tweets, saying that his “words of nearly a decade ago were, at this time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative.”
Later the outspoken director took to Twitter again to dismiss cancel culture after it was announced that six Dr. Seuss books would be discontinued because of racist imagery. “Stop calling everything ‘cancel culture’ because you’re too dim to have a nuanced opinion,” he tweeted at the time. “People can be offended by something, or think something sucks, and that’s not ‘cancel culture’ – it’s free speech.”
While Gunn revealed that the firing made him more creative and focused his friends, relationships and the movies he’s making — one week before the big release of “The Suicide Squad” — Gunn opened up further about his views on cancel culture, which sparked controversy on social media.
“To all of those writing me about the times people get unfairly attacked – yes, that sucks!” he continued. “But that doesn’t mean every time someone is offended by something it’s ‘cancel culture.’ Calling EVERYTHING that is a knee-jerk response that destroys your point.”
In an Associated Press review of the upcoming movie, Gunn’s film “may go down as one of the greatest, and quickest, do-overs in blockbusterdom… a chaotic, freewheeling inversion of much of what’s expected in a comic book movie.”
“The Suicide Squad” is set to hit theaters nationwide and HBO Max a day earlier than expected on Aug. 6.
