James Gunn said some disgusting things on Twitter many, many years ago and Disney fired him during the holiest holiday of all of geekdom, San Diego Comic-Con. That was the news that rocked the internet yesterday, and fans are still reeling from the shock.
The Tweets themselves came into the public eye after a user Gunn was having a Twitter-based kerfuffle with decided to besmirch his name by mining his post history and compiling them. They won’t be reproduced here, but they’re reprehensible, abhorrent and morally bankrupt. As Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios said, they’re completely “indefensible.”
There’s no doubt that Disney’s hand was swift and brutal, but many are left wondering if it was just?
Gunn himself took to social media after the firing to express his remorse and indicated that he would be accepting their decision and wants to move on. He notes that he had made those comments because he wanted to be “provocative” and admits that they “were stupid, not at all funny, [and] wildly insensitive.” The rest of his post indicated that he was willing to accept his punishment and pay his penance by walking away from his very coveted position within Marvel Studios, but his friends and supporters don’t want him to go quietly into the night.
Patton Oswald, Fede Alvarez and Justin Roiland, among many others, have all come to the defense of Gunn and note that his Tweets are close to a decade old and are in no way reflective of the man he is now.
https://twitter.com/fedalvar/status/1020713776780197888
https://twitter.com/JustinRoiland/status/1020399110501773313
Just so I don’t have to keep typing this over and over: I’m not defending his old jokes. Only read one anyway. It’s that he was fired over OLD tweets intended as (bad) jokes… it’s a crazy concept and I’m just saying: no more R rated jar jar binks movie. Im walking. Peace.
— Justin Roiland (@JustinRoiland) July 20, 2018
This is one of the LESS disgusting tweets from Mike Cernovich, the dude who, after running a Gamergate-style smear campaign, just got James Gunn fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. Okay have a good weekend. https://t.co/7DYlin1zgO
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 20, 2018
https://twitter.com/michaelianblack/status/1020652725158260737
It’s without question that the director’s Tweets are crass and, frankly, unforgivable, and many believe that Disney made the right move. But there are apparently just as many who deem the firing as absurd, considering that James Gunn’s true character, as testified by those supporters, has never been reflective of the statements.
Regardless of where you stand, the situation does call into question the true meaning of “zero-tolerance” and to what extent its law holds precedence.