In the aftermath of James Gunn being fired from working on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, multiple sources close to the filmmaker have shown their support for him on social media. Dave Bautista, who played Drax in the first two films, has once again voiced his support for Gunn by mocking the methods alt-right personalities took to cause Disney to fire him.
The actor shared on Twitter, “I think today I’ll find a good person who spreads the message of …Equality. Unity. Sacrifice. Responsibility. Love. Family. Forgiveness. Redemption. Misfit, Child, Female Empowerment and ruin his life. F-ck it! I’ll go ahead and empower some fascists while I’m at it! DISCLAIMER FOR MORONS AND FUTURE VIEWS: I’m JOKING!”
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The ordeal began when Gunn, an active member of social media, shared some insulting comments about Donald Trump. The response from prominent alt-right activists was to dig through all of Gunn’s tweets to find incriminating comments.
Dating back to 2009, tweets surfaced which featured Gunn making jokes about rape and pedophilia. After the messages resurfaced, Gunn apologized for the remarks and mentioned how much he had grown as a person in the time since the messages were posted, and noted that he had already apologized for making the remarks years prior.
After the comments were brought to the attention of Disney, they issued the statement, “The offensive attitudes and statements on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him.”
While there’s no debate that the comments were reprehensible, many issues have been raised about the comments having been posted before Disney hired Gunn to develop Guardians of the Galaxy. As compared to Disney’s firing of Roseanne Barr following racist remarks she made on Twitter, many thought it was a dangerous move to fire someone for what they did before being hired.
“What happened here is so much bigger than G3, James Gunn, myself, Disney etc. This was a #cybernazi attack that succeeded,” Bautista previously tweeted. “Unless we start to unite together against this crap, whether people are offended are not! …it’s going to get much worse. And it can happen to anyone.”
Guardians co-stars Karen Gillan and Pom Klementeiff both shared their support of the filmmaker, while Zoe Saldana and Chris Pratt have been more cryptic and vague in their messages. Star Michael Rooker has since deactivated his Twitter account.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is slated to land in theaters in 2020.
Stay tuned for details about Bautista’s involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
What do you think about the actor’s stance on the subject? Let us know in the comments below!
[H/T Twitter, DaveBautista]
