Despite being a vocal critic of comic book movies over the years, that hasn’t stopped legendary The Godfather filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola from kicking it with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn over the weekend.
“Spent 4 1/2 hours in my kitchen yesterday with Francis Ford Coppola discussing cinema,” Gunn wrote on Twitter, sharing a few photos of himself and Coppola. “An amazingly warm [and] optimistic man who just so happens to have directed some of the most wonderful films ever. A day I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
Gunn concluded his message by saying he can’t wait for Megalopolis, the self-funded sci-fi epic Coppola is currently making.
Though Coppola is admittedly a fan of the Deadpool films, he once called Marvel movies in general “despicable” for what he described as the studio essentially pumping out “the same movie over and over again.”
Coppola’s initial remark back in 2019 was in defense of his pal, fellow ’70s cinema legend and Taxi Driver director, Martin Scorsese. Ironically, Gunn was one of the people who clapped back at Scorsese’s criticisms of Marvel films, which the Goodfellas director has described as being closer to “theme parks” than cinema.
“I was outraged when people picketed [Scorsese’s] The Last Temptation of Christ without having seen the film. I’m saddened that he’s now judging my films in the same way,” Gunn wrote in a tweet back in 2019 while sharing a story about how Scorsese doesn’t watch Marvel movies, yet characterized them as “not cinema.”
Naturally, movie fans were quite curious about what Coppola had to say on the topic in their conversation.
“You guys talk about [comic book movies] at all?” one Twitter user asked Gunn.
To which he replied, “Yes especially Squad,” Gunn said, in reference to his DC effort from last year, The Suicide Squad. Gunn stopped short of divulging any further details about whether Coppola liked the movie, however.
Gunn did say in a reply in the comments that it was “Not true” that Coppola inevitably had nothing good to say at all about Marvel.
When asked whether Coppola had any updates about Megalopolis, Gunn responded, “We talked about it a lot.”
Maybe this newly formed friendship will inspire Coppola to perhaps change his tune about comic book movies and be more receptive to the idea. Some fans were even imagining that The Conversation director might cameo in one of Gunn’s projects as a comic book character himself.
We’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on Megalopolis just as soon as the information becomes available. In the meantime, Gunn’s The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is expected to arrive on Disney Plus later this year. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which could cement the trilogy as Marvel’s greatest trilogy, comes to cinemas May 5, 2023.
