BravestOfTheLamps posted:

With Gunn’s old Tweets, one has to keep in mind that Guardians of the Galaxy is a franchise that jokes about prison rape: the manchild hero receives unwelcome advances from a big gay alien, who then gets his comeuppance when his orifices are (literally) penetrated with wood.

Gunn never moved past the juvenility that’s so evident in the tweets. He simply toned it down and covered it with a veneer of family friendliness.

The Guardians franchise perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy of both fans and the Disney Corporation. The franchise is nominally about a bunch of killers and criminals trying to be better people, but they are simply asinine comic book characters, alternatively sources of cheap, insufferable comedy, or of transparent emotional manipulation. Gunn’s achievement has been to sentimentalize the lives of a manchild in space, two CGI toys, and a whole bunch Star Trek rejects as they go around killing people for money. This is the crux of the movement to get Gunn back on board - this is what people are fighting for.

It’s a movie series that’s perfect for people who want it both ways. It’s perfect for fans who want Gunn’s terrible, juvenile Tweets to be forgiven, so that he can direct another terrible, juvenile movie that infantilizes its audience. And it’s perfect for a corporation that demands a strict code of conduct from its employees while teaching children to sympathize with mercenaries because they feel bad about their mums.