I can't figure out the tone Gunn is going for yet with the character or DC universe...
James Gunn tells the exact same story over and over again - "Island Of Misfit Toys Unite For A Mission/Surrogate Family You Always Needed But Never Wanted"
GOTG3 even had multiple smaller "Misfit Toy" groups within the larger scope of the Guardians as a surrogate family. Peacemaker is often less about Peacemaker and more about the ensemble "group" he has around him. He's at the center, but he's not at the same time.
I just don't get the fandom handwringing here. Gunn only tells one kind of story, but he does it well. He made you all care about a violent PTSD ridden raccoon and a talking tree that only said one thing over and over again. Look at the Superman concept. Clark is an orphan. Raised by "surrogate" parents. You could argue in the Smallville conception, there were times that Lex Luthor was treated like a surrogate brother to Clark. The natural pathway is to form a Justice League, which again, is just another potential Island Of Misfit Toys. The potential here is basically built around the concepts where Gunn has shown pure strength.
From a screenwriting perpective, what does Gunn do well? He can compress exposition without losing an audience. That's huge. That's very very very hard to do at a high level and at speed. Anyone can write a good Hollywood screenplay if you give them 50 years to make a single one. The people who keep getting hired can churn one out at a rate 50 times faster than that. They can also write around a practical budget and understand the limits of the logistics in the other aspects of filmmaking. For example, a good executive , not just a director and writer, can assess that certain scenes are too expensive to film. Or it would be impossible to get the lighting correctly in the specific location/venue. Or how to place certain performers where they can optimize their strengths. Also which sub units on the film can be left alone, and which need to be micromanaged.
Gunn can tell a lot of story in a short amount of running time. He can generate a lot of character backstory without too much dialogue and without too much explaination. Again, this is not easy at all to do. He can squeeze out pretty good performances out of mostly middling performers at times. He understands the audience just want to have a good time and you have to create characters that the audience will care about in multiple ways.
Gunn was hired to create EXACTLY what he has always created. This is not Chubby Checker doing the macarena. It's just The Twist, over and over again.
I just don't see the problem here. It's not like the regular posters here are NOT going to watch the film. If you are going to watch the film anyway, then why not actually give it a real chance? You aren't obligated to like the film. But then again, you aren't obligated to decide the film is unworthy before anyone has actually seen it.
