Let's hear it for James Gunn!

We honestly have to give Director James Gunn top marks for finally producing a superhero movie that I, personally, have been waiting years to see. He has developed the “initial” movie in a planned ongoing mythology that bypasses the (so-called) “mandatory” (re)telling of the hero’s origin when the lead actor has been replaced and does what I’ve been talking about for quite some time now. Just tell a story.  In one interview, Gunn said it himself. “We don’t need to go there.” Gunn’s statement acknowledges that—for all intents and purposes—we all know the basic elements of Superman’s origin and his arrival here on Earth.

Needless to say, while there certainly are many superhero characters who are not known by the general public, there are quite a few whose origins are already known or already explained in previous films. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere (over and over) retelling a character’s origin is something oddly specific to superhero films. Rebooting a story and retelling the main character’s origin is just bad storytelling. By way of example, Let’s look at the cinematic history of James Bond, perhaps one of the most well-known fictional characters who doesn’t wear spandex.

Since his debut film, Dr. No in 1962, there have been 29 Bond films (including the original Casino Royal and Never say Never), seven actors (including David Nivin) who have played Bond, and some 27 villains. Further, we never got an actual origin story for Bond until Daniel Craig portrayed him in Casino Royal (2006). Compared to Lex Luthor appearing in five of the seven solo live action films; Green Goblin appearing in three of the Eight solo live action Spider-Man films; Magneto appearing in eight of the 14 X-Men films; and the Joker appearing in seven of the 13 Batman films.

My point here is that many of these comicbook characters have been around for 87 (Superman) to 62 (X-Men) years, and yet the films keep going back to the same legacy villains when each of the various heroes has around 100 (or more) villains, not every film has to go back to the same small group of villains when each of them have such a wide wealth of a rogues gallery. This is why Marvel introducing movies with The Guardians of the Galaxy (under Gunn), Ant Man, and Dr, Strange, are important.

Hopefully, now that Gunn has brought the Guy Gardner Green Lantern, Metamorpho, and The Engineer into the DC Cinematic Universe (with the promise of more of the same) we can all move past that there are only a few heroes with only one villain each.