Guardians Of The Galaxy Director Hates Constant Killing And Bringing Back Of Characters

As comic fans know, the threat of death to a high profile comic book character, even one that is […]

February 9, 2021, 11:21pm

As comic fans know, the threat of death to a high profile comic book character, even one that is followed through, doesn’t always stick. Whether it’s in the pages of their comic books or within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just because a character dies doesn’t mean that they’re going to stay that way. Nick Fury alone has already “died” twice, once in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (a fake out) and again in Avengers: Infinity War’s post-credit scene (snapped by Thanos). Others that have died have stayed that way, and if it were up to filmmaker James Gunn they’d all be permanently off the table going forward.

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When asked by a fan during a Twitter Q&A if he worries about character resurrections taking away from the stories where they died, Gunn emphatically said yes. “Yes I do worry about that,” the filmmaker said. “For me there’s a difference between truly meaningful deaths & plot twist deaths where someone seems to die & then hasn’t. But if you milk that death – like, say, Yondu or Tony Stark – it’s cheap storytelling to bring them back.” After another fan chimed in and said that these resurrections would make the MCU “more accurate” to the comics, Gunn maintained they should be different things.

Lack of stakes in comics has really hurt comics for me. I hate the constant killing and bringing back of characters no matter what the format. The engine of storytelling is that life and death matter. https://t.co/JZuMkHK3UT
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) February 8, 2021

To that end we shouldn’t expect a sudden revival of Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Furthering Gunn’s point though, and tying it into his upcoming The Suicide Squad, DC Comics recently killed off longtime Suicide Squad member Deadshot in the most recent series featuring the team. The series is set to be rebooted in March, featuring Peacemaker as its leader and without Deadshot in sight, but this can’t stay that way for long and it will only prove Gunn right once again.

“But in The Suicide Squad, some of the characters end up being good, some end up being terrible,” Gunn previously told Empire about his upcoming film. “They don’t just get in fights and say they’re going to kill each other, they actually do get in fights and kill each other. You really don’t know who’s going to live and who’s going to die. I was given full freedom to kill anyone – and I mean anyone – by DC.”

The Suicide Squad is set to be released both in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6, 2021, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will debut sometime in 2023.