Writer/director James Gunn has wound up right in the middle of a media maelstrom over the past several days, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to calm down anytime soon.
To recap: on Friday, Disney stunned the internet with the swift termination of Gunn’s contract, leaving Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 without someone behind the camera and Marvel’s cosmic universe in need of a new shepherd. The reason for the firing was due to a series of distasteful and admittedly, disturbing tweets from a decade ago – tweets that James Gunn has since apologized for.
Which brings us to yesterday, when it was discovered that soon after the Mouse House had cut all ties with Gunn, Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson deleted over 1,000 tweets. At the time, no reason was given for the mass deletion and of course, many suspected he had something to hide. But apparently, that’s just not the case.
Hopping on Twitter, Johnson explained today that he removed those tweets simply so that nothing could be taken out of context, saying:
“No official directive at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted anything that bad. But it’s nine years of stuff written largely off the cuff as ephemera, if trolls scrutinizing it for ammunition is the new normal, this seems like a ‘why not?’ move.”
Whether you believe him or not is up to you, but it wouldn’t shock us if the studio nudged him to do this, perhaps out of fear of someone digging something up that could be misconstrued. Then again, like the Star Wars: The Last Jedi director says, given what’s happening right now (not just with Gunn, but with other celebrities, too), it seems like a no brainer to clean up your Twitter profile.
Regardless, the James Gunn situation is far from over and as more and more fallout emerges, it’ll be fascinating to watch how it continues to unfold and where everyone ends up when all is said and done.
