Whether it’s musical needle-drops, visual homages, or background Easter Eggs, James Gunn is one of just many filmmakers who loves slipping references to their favorites into film and television projects. However, Film Twitter has been left up in arms after a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 tribute was misinterpreted by the youth of today.
The first trailer that set the internet ablaze just a couple of days ago featured the titular team embarking on what looks to be a perilous mission, all decked out in brightly-colored spacesuits. Naturally, the younger demographic instantly conjured up images of smash hit video game Among Us, but Gunn was quick to shut that line of inquiry down in fairly swift fashion.
Pearls ended up being clutched across social media as the elder statesmen of cinematic excellence realized there’s a whole lot of people out there who didn’t have a clue that the filmmaker was instead nodding towards Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the greatest and most influential movies ever made.
There’s a storm in a teacup element to the whole thing, but it is a little funny to see the discourse beginning to spiral out of control. When folks of a certain generation see a bunch of characters in a blockbuster comic book adaptation kitted out in garish spacesuits, they were always going to liken it to a viral sensation that debuted in 2018, and not a thought-provoking existential classic that hit theaters all the way back in 1968.