Posted in: Movies | Tagged: disney, guardians of the galaxy, james gunn, Sean Gunn

Sean Gunn Defends Brother James Gunn After Guardians of the Galaxy Firing

Published Sat, 21 Jul 2018 22:35:46 -0500

Earlier this week, a shocking blow was dealt to the clickbait news industry when James Gunn was fired as director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, putting an end to his nonstop stream of tweets about Donald Trump that we relied on each week to fill slow news cycles with low-effort clickbait articles. Of course, a blow was also probably dealt to society itself as, however bad Gunn's jokes were, Disney still capitulated to pressure from alt-right operatives acting in bad faith. But hey, what are you gonna do, right?

Tasteless and offensive tweets from Gunn dating back to 2008 were unearthed and posted by Mike Cernovich, a conservative outrage peddler annoyed by Gunn's criticism of the president, working under the logic that the best way to combat the insidious political correctness destroying American freedom of speech is to get people you disagree with fired for their tweets. Gunn's tweets joked about rape, pedophilia, AIDS, the Holocaust, and 9/11, so it wasn't surprising that Disney was unhappy. Disney swiftly fired Gunn, issuing a statement that called the tweets "indefensible and inconsistent with our studio's values," a phrase which here means "likely to make Disney look bad and therefore not financially lucrative," because corporations are not people and therefore they do not have "values" other than the price of their stock.

In the wake of the controversy, Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista defended Gunn, saying "I'm NOT okay with what's happening to him." Now Gunn's brother Sean Gunn has spoken out, posting the following on Twitter:

2. Since he was a kid, it was clear he had a desire (maybe destiny) to be an artist, tell stories, find his voice through comics, films, his band. The struggle to find that voice was sometimes clunky, misguided, or downright stupid, and sometimes wonderful, moving, and hilarious.

— Sean Gunn (@seangunn) July 21, 2018

4. I saw firsthand as he went from worrying about "softening his edge" for a larger audience to realizing that his "edge" wasn't as useful of a tool as he thought it was. That his gift for storytelling was something better.

— Sean Gunn (@seangunn) July 21, 2018

6. In many respects this change in my brother was reflected in the change that the Guardians go through. I've heard my brother say many times that when Quill rallies the team with "this is our chance to give a shit"–to care–that it's the pep talk he himself needed to hear.

— Sean Gunn (@seangunn) July 21, 2018

8. This isn't new information, by the way. It's all stuff that James has explained many times in interviews, in more detail and more eloquently. It's not some new spin. It's always been part of the story.

— Sean Gunn (@seangunn) July 21, 2018

10. Working on those movies made my brother a better person, and they made me one too. I'm proud of that. Peace.

— Sean Gunn (@seangunn) July 21, 2018

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