By landing a great and well-received Peacemaker finale, James Gunn has proven yet again that he doesn’t miss when it comes to the superhero game. The acclaimed filmmaker will now focus his directorial chops on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and according to what he recently told Variety, he’s learned a lot from his successful DCEU run, things that’ll inform his work on the Guardians threequel.
Working on several ambitious projects concurrently could botch the work of any artist, even industry veterans, though if anything, Gunn has shown fans that he’ll work better if the creative juice keeps flowing. Almost immediately after The Suicide Squad, the director got down to working on the Peacemaker series while also laying the groundwork for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
And now that the John Cena-led spinoff show has come to a close, Gunn will return to the MCU in full force. Speaking about things that he learned on this detour, here’s what the director said during his chat with Variety:
“I had as much fun as you could have during COVID making Peacemaker, and so I’m trying to apply that more to Vol. 3. In all truth, the first two Guardians, I love the cast and crew, but they were really difficult to make. And a lot of that was self-imposed difficulty by me. I realized after Vol. 2 that I couldn’t continue to live a life if I made everything I did like Vol. 2, which I just killed myself over, unnecessarily. I needed to balance my life a little bit better. And so I’ve been applying that to Vol. 3.”
Gunn further elaborated on this point by saying that he learned to do things in a grounded manner,
“The Suicide Squad also has informed Vol. 3 a lot in terms of how we’re shooting it. There’s a different type of groundedness, I think, in this movie that we had in both Peacemaker and Suicide Squad. I learned so much from everything that I do.”
The Peacemaker showrunner has little more than a year to finish his work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which is set for release on May 23, 2023, so it’s good to hear that his new approach will help him deliver the movie in that squelched time frame.
