When Marvel Studios tasked James Gunn with bringing Guardians of the Galaxy to the big screen, he was handed a group of characters who were, by mainstream standards, largely unknown. That gave him the freedom to do exactly what he wanted with the team.
Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot weren't close to being household names in 2014. Heck, even a lot of comic book fans didn't know too much about them. There wasn't a large audience demanding that Gunn faithfully reproduce decades of established characterisation. He could take these obscure comic book characters, inject his own personality into them and build something new. Spoiler alert: it worked.
The problem is that Gunn appears to be taking essentially the same approach with the DC Universe, except this time, he's playing with Superman, Green Lantern, Supergirl, and other characters whose identities have been established over decades. That's a completely different challenge.
The argument isn't that comic book adaptations should never change anything. They absolutely should. Gunn himself has demonstrated how effective reinterpretation can be. However, there's a difference between adapting a character and using a character as the foundation for something that primarily reflects your own creative sensibilities.
Lanterns is the best example of that. The HBO series has made significant changes to John Stewart's history and relationship with Hal Jordan, and its version of the latter is far removed from the heroic test pilot comic book readers know and love. The series has intentionally turned Green Lantern into a grounded murder mystery, with Hal and John taking centre stage in a story from a creative team that appears to have little reverence for the comics.
There are certainly elements that have been pulled from the source material. John is still an architect, and the cameos from Sinestro and Carol Ferris, while underwhelming thus far, suggest not everything is being disregarded. Still, the question is whether the familiar ingredients are enough when the fundamental characterisation and mythology are being reshaped around Gunn's very specific vision.
We hate to make the comparison, but the filmmaker is arguably on the same path as Zack Snyder; he read The Dark Knight Returns and what he took from that led to him building a comic book universe that took its cues primarily from the grim and gritty world featured in Frank Miller's story.
At Marvel Studios, Gunn was free to ask himself, "What do I want the Guardians of the Galaxy to be?" because relatively few people had a fixed answer. With Hal Jordan and John Stewart, there are millions of fans who also feel they know best. Like Thanos, that's inevitable. Marvel Studios, in comparison, has navigated that by picking and choosing from decades' worth of history to create well-rounded versions of its characters that are more general adaptations than Gunn's very specific interpretations.
In the DCU's case, we're left to wonder: how much can you change before the thing you're adapting starts to feel more like a James Gunn creation than a DC Comics creation?
Gunn didn't direct Supergirl—Craig Gillespie did—but as DC Studios co-CEO and a producer, his fingerprints are over everything, and he prides himself on being the one who greenlights these projects. The critically panned blockbuster plays like a bad Guardians of the Galaxy movie, while Gunn (who has waxed lyrical about only moving forward with finished, high-quality scripts) has taken a writer who fundamentally misunderstood the comic's ending and handed her the keys to Wonder Woman's kingdom. Oh, and The Flash creative team? Well, if you loved seeing the Scarlet Speedster place a baby in a microwave, never fear, because they're tackling The Brave and the Bold.
Gunn has an unmistakable creative voice. That's a good thing. His movies have personality, his characters tend to be eccentric, his soundtracks are important, and he clearly loves giving overlooked characters the spotlight. Now, though, that voice risks becoming overpowering.
When the DCU starts prioritising characters and ideas associated with Peacemaker while Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Arrow remain somewhere on the periphery, it creates the impression that Gunn is building the DC Universe around the corners of DC he personally finds most interesting rather than around the characters who have historically defined it.
That isn't inherently wrong, and a shared universe shouldn't simply recreate what came before; there is, however, a difference between building a new DC Universe and building "James Gunn's DC Universe."
What made Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy approach work so well wasn't simply that he changed those characters; it was that he gave audiences a reason to care about characters they knew little about in the first place. He took a relatively blank canvas and created definitive versions of Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot for a mainstream audience.
That's a very different challenge from reinventing Superman or Green Lantern, because audiences already care deeply about those characters and have decades of stories, relationships and characterisation informing their expectations. Gunn isn't introducing audiences to these heroes; he's asking them to accept his versions of characters they already know.
The question isn't whether James Gunn is a "true" comic book fan. That's impossible to answer from the outside, and his tendency to highlight a handful of comic runs or trade paperbacks wouldn't prove anything either way. What's more interesting is seeing how he's reshaping DC's characters—look at Jor-El and Lara, and his desire to portray Lex Luthor in a heroic light, given that Gunn relates so strongly to him as a person—to fit the stories he wants to tell. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't, but the DCU has proved a mixed bag three years in.
The Guardians of the Galaxy were perfect for Gunn's specific approach. The DC Universe's most iconic characters may not be.