These would all be strong choices that make a lot of sense on several levels. I personally think the Russos and Taika have better batting averages as filmmakers only because none of them have made something as bad as Cowboys & Aliens, which I feel bad even saying because I've been a big fan of Fav's since Swingers.
Taika seems like the most plausible one of the group because the Russos will be busy with preparing A4 until April and Favreau is currently filming The Lion King and will then need to polish it. I don't think Taika has any "big" projects on the table.
I want Taika to do his own original shit. He seemed to have quite a bit of free reign with ragnarok but seeds have already been planted for Guardians 3 and I don’t want to see him handcuffed to his hat, I also don’t want to see those seeds totally ignored. Just take a 5 year break on superhero movies after Avengers 4 please. I meant to say “handcuffed to that” but auto correct dropped a gift on us.
I would rather see Taika do The Eternals so that he doesn't have to fill in the shoes of someone else. Whoever directs will have to mix their style with Gunn's style. If he does this then I highly doubt he'll be able to do The Eternals or even want to.
I honestly just thought 'handcuffed to his hat' was like a regional term that I was unfamiliar with. It still made sense haha
If there's something I want to see now, at the top of my list is pretty much Taika handcuffed to his hat. He would rock that look.
Someone shared this interesting article in a comment section on another article I was reading with updates about this controversy, and thought it was worth sharing here. The Truth about James Gunn and the Pedophile in his Childhood.
Christ, that’s a lot of effort to protect a famous white guy’s reputation and explain away all of the gross things he said.
What exactly is Gunn’s “style”? Besides using 60s/70s music, which literally anyone could do, I’m not really sure what makes Guardians *so* much different than any of the other MCU movies.
It might be how he directs as in influences and motivates his team of actors as well as the crew and how he handles his tasks and such. There's a lot more than just how the movie appears on the screen, it's how it's handled behind the scenes.
He drove the "family of misfit assholes growing and learning from each other" theme to the forefront of the movies and developed and nurtured it strongly through the narrative. His humor is also mostly specific to the Guardians movies. And of course his relationship with the actors and crew, as well as the day to day of being a director. It's hard to know specifics, a lot of what good directors do goes unnoticed, unless they're an auteur, and the movie that Gunn made in the first Guardians, within the confines of the MCU, is a notable achievement, and GOTG2 is a strong follow up. It's refreshing how personal and human his movies were, because honestly the MCU lacks in movies that have specificity of situations to characters, developing a strong thematic throughline that has meaning because it's these characters experiencing these conflicts. I think there's an argument that Disney should have maybe never given him the movie in the first place for those tweets, and that his firing is justified in *that* way, where someone who said reprehensible things is finally facing real consequences for them. But it's very hard for me to divorce that from the fascist right wing spearheading of the campaign to get him fired being what actually got him fired.
Can you imagine how awkward and tense it is going to be to take over as director of the next film...? I would assume you would have to address the elephant in the room before production starts. I know I follow this much more closely than the average ticket-buying moviegoer, and this whole situation is very inside baseball for movie lovers, but I can't imagine it being the easiest thing to direct a comedic and natural performance from Dave Bautista while he's standing there glaring at you, knowing full well he has no desire to be on that set at all and is only there because he's a damn professional. I know actors are people too, and showing up on set is their job, and it is not realistic to think that all actors want to be on every set at all times during production, but I think this is a little bit different situation where some pretty big name people have made it clear they want no part of this film willingly and are only showing up because they are contractually bound. As impressive as what James Gunn pulled off with the first two GOTG films was, someone stepping in to this [clusterf---] situation and handling the production smoothly and delivering a quality film will be equally as impressive in my mind. I still think the best idea if they are going to go forward without James Gunn is to wait a few years before they make another one, and at that point start fresh with a new script and don't call it Vol. III.
As far as the last paragraph goes, I don't think you can do that. The MCU is a very well oiled machine, I don't think they'll deviate from their master plan.
Agreed. In spite of James Gunn's role in helping Infinity War, that film really messed up the story he was telling anyways. Don't know how easy it'd be at this stage to shuffle film release dates around, but even if they can't push Guardians 3 back that far, giving it a new title instead of Vol. 3 would feel pretty appropriate to me.
This is a good point. I wasn't really considering the overall MCU plan. I know pushing a 3rd GOTG film back pretty far would change their plans significantly, but I think they have a deep enough bullpen to make it work. You're probably right though.
It didn't mess up the story he was telling at all considering he was told about it and he planned the third entry around it...
He was more than told about it: he had a producer credit fairly early on in the process, and he got to contribute to his characters' dialogue. Ultimately, though, Infinity War wasn't his story. Feige, the Russos, Markus, and McFeely ran the show. I don't know how much power Gunn had, but looking at the arc Peter and Gamora were on together and what Infinity War did to that arc... There's definitely a brilliant vol 3 resolution that could've existed in a world where they didn't have to get pulled into this Thanos mess. I trust Gunn enough with the characters that I would've trusted him to stick the landing with 3 in spite of this event he had to write around. But, Infinity War absolutely messed up the best possible next step for this cast's journey. The story of Peter and Gamora overcoming enough of their baggage and trauma to be able to have a relationship forever has this abrupt detour.