Marvel Cinematic Universe 9: Returning to the Fold

[RumHam]

Just looking on the bright-side: now he won't have to make a movie without Rooker. 

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, we live in the Matrix and the RAM has gone bad, this is just more proof.

[red snow]

In terms of balance, I guess people I like are bound to get fired due to things they say in social media but I do kind of feel like Disney should have been aware of these tweets prior to hiring him and given some of the other things he said and got away with prior to directing GOTG (eg about comic book characters like nightwing). I suspect they were and it was only because Gunn angered someone with his current outspoken tweets that he's been brought down.

It's a shame this is what took him down but I had a feeling he'd eventually land himself in trouble with his outspoken behaviour and I guess this is the result of something he said recently.

They should scrap guardians 3. It's a shame the cast can't make a stand either. I have no interest in watching a sequel where Gunn had a plan in place and will vote with my wallet. It's a shame Disney has more than one film franchise at risk as they should have allowed people upset by Gunn old tweets and recent ones to vote with their wallets.

But this is the world we live in, for every person I might be glad to see taking a fall, there's going to someone whose work I like get hit too. Both sides know how to play this game.

[polishgenius]

3 minutes ago, red snow said:

 

They should scrap guardians 3. It's a shame the cast can't make a stand either. I have no interest in watching a sequel where Gunn had a plan in place and will vote with my wallet.

What if they get Taika Watiti in to do Asgardians of the Galaxy?

[red snow]

1 minute ago, polishgenius said:

What if they get Taika Watiti in to do Asgardians of the Galaxy?

I'd hope Taika would refuse to use the characters. Plus, he's been fairly outspoken about Trump in the past too so he might not be working for Disney much longer either if they can find anything that people can take out of context. Hopefully it's a little harder than it was with Gunn whose I'll advised "jokes" always made him a sitting duck. Frankie Boyle will never get work with Disney.

I've already seen comments elsewhere thinking Gunn's a paedophile.

It is a great name for a thor guardians crossover. I think there may even be a comic coming out with that name?

[Jeor]

My initial thought is that it was an overreaction by Disney to fire him.

However, thinking about it more carefully, Disney were kind of stuck. Given the swift reaction to Roseanne Barr, they had backed themselves in a corner and had to do the same with Gunn. I know Gunn's tweets were ages ago compared to Barr's, but it would not have held up in the public arena to sack one (a Trump supporter) and keep the other (a Trump critic).

I'm sure they'll be able to find a replacement and they might even need a new script. But as long as Feige hasn't done anything stupid in the past that will get him sacked, I'm pretty sure the MCU will continue humming along.

[Bastard of Boston]

Regardless of whether or not Gunn should've been fired, the outcome is indicative of a pretty haphazard method of accountability. It seems this was only done because someone decided to make his old comments trend. The right is weaponizing the morality of the left. As shitty as Gunn might be, I hate that there are worse people than him behind this movement to get him fired.

[red snow]

6 hours ago, Jeor said:

My initial thought is that it was an overreaction by Disney to fire him.

However, thinking about it more carefully, Disney were kind of stuck. Given the swift reaction to Roseanne Barr, they had backed themselves in a corner and had to do the same with Gunn. I know Gunn's tweets were ages ago compared to Barr's, but it would not have held up in the public arena to sack one (a Trump supporter) and keep the other (a Trump critic).

I'm sure they'll be able to find a replacement and they might even need a new script. But as long as Feige hasn't done anything stupid in the past that will get him sacked, I'm pretty sure the MCU will continue humming along.

I think a key difference was that Barr said something at the time which got her fired while Gunn is fired for things he said 6+ years ago (even though we all know he's really being fired because of his trump comments irrespective of why Disney fire him)

6 hours ago, Bastard of Boston said:

Regardless of whether or not Gunn should've been fired, the outcome is indicative of a pretty haphazard method of accountability. It seems this was only done because someone decided to make his old comments trend. The right is weaponizing the morality of the left. As shitty as Gunn might be, I hate that there are worse people than him behind this movement to get him fired.

It was always going to happen. The sad thing is that the right will use this far more effectively. We should get used to a few celebrities careers going up in smoke over the next few months. Twitter makes it easy, you don't even have to have proof of them having affairs or doing things people will be outraged about. You just need tweets that people can assume you went out and actually did.

[lessthanluke]

Dave Bautista is not a happy bunny in twitter about the firing. 

[Rhom]

Social Media is the devil and as the article points out, sports figures have been dealing with this for a few years now.  Use it to wish happy birthday and share cat memes, but anything else has the potential to come back to bite you.

Twitter is now old enough that it has been around for youthful commentary without the benefit of adult perspective.  Of course Gunn was old enough to know better.

Any agent who doesn’t immediately scrub their client’s social media the moment they are hired should be guilty of malpractice.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

When (as other’s have pointed out) prior social media comments are weaponized for political effect or because of other political commentary by the person targeted, do “the consequences of your speech” become the moral equivalent of government sponsored censorship?

[Relic]

IF we take Twitter as a public forum, which i guess it is, than you can say Gunn made some really really really bad jokes in public and it bit him in the ass with his employer. I'm fine with that. If i were Disney I wouldn't want to be associated with a guy who thinks making pedophilia jokes is amusing. 

What I'm NOT ok with are people like Michael Cernovich (who is behind the Gunn thing and who is a real piece of human garbage masquerading as a right wing activist), getting a free pass for shit they themselves have said about others. If Gunn is shunned over his tasteless statements than Cernovich should be as well. Yet one guy loses his job while the other grows his inline fame (and earning potential). 

[red snow]

2 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

Dave Bautista is not a happy bunny in twitter about the firing. 

It's understandable, Gunn has given him a great role and he's probably concerned how other creators will handle the character. Keep in mind Gunn looked over all the dialogue/story decisions in infinity. I'm thinking we should make the most of infinity 2 as it's our last chance at seeing Gunn versions.

I suspect bautista and co are all locked into the third film at least being involved.

I respect him sticking his neck out for Gunn though. 

[red snow]

55 minutes ago, Relic said:

IF we take Twitter as a public forum, which i guess it is, than you can say Gunn made some really really really bad jokes in public and it bit him in the ass with his employer. I'm fine with that. If i were Disney I wouldn't want to be associated with a guy who thinks making pedophilia jokes is amusing. 

What I'm NOT ok with are people like Michael Cernovich (who is behind the Gunn thing and who is a real piece of human garbage masquerading as a right wing activist), getting a free pass for shit they themselves have said about others. If Gunn is shunned over his tasteless statements than Cernovich should be as well. Yet one guy loses his job while the other grows his inline fame (and earning potential). 

No argument with the second part but regarding the first - if you hire someone and don't check their social media commentary prior to hiring them then it seems tricky to fire them for something you should have been aware of. He didn't make any of these comments as an employee of Disney in which case I'd agree they'd have every right to fire him. They didn't fire him when he made homophobic jokes about superheroes and this was pointed out during after gotg vol 1. Surely they checked his other skeletons then? It's clearly a case of the environment in Hollywood/world in general is now much more cautious about these things in terms of perceived damage control. It just sucks when people accused of genuinely raping people/minors continue to get work while someone making bad jokes about it does.

Credit to Gunn in the sense he accepts responsibility and understands why he's been fired. He doesn't even seem to be challenging it yet. Can't wait to see if Feige makes a statement or was even consulted in this decision. Given Gunn was apparently using vol 3 to set up other cosmic franchiss this will cause a headache. If there's one thing we've learnt about the MCU is that it just keeps in keeping on. No one seems to be irreplaceable yet.

[Ran]

There's no way that people at Disney were unaware of Gunn's tweets in the past. They just believed at the time that he was no longer doing those things, had offered apologies back then, etc., and so it was not a reason to not do business with him.

 

[Darth Richard II]

I can’t imagine he panic going on at Marvel right now.

[Argonath Diver]

With this and the baseball pitcher Hader's much, much worse tweets coming out within a week, I would like to offer my services to any public figure. Give me a thousand bucks and I will exhaustively examine your last ten years of tweets, facebook statuses, instagram follows, World of Warcraft emotes, Pokemon Go creature names, online fantasy forum strawman arguments, google image searches for celebrity nude pics, voting records, pant size changes, and unlistened-to voicemails from your mother. 

Seriously, I feel like every celebrity, politician, or sports figure needs to get some college intern to at least go through every tweet or public facebook post, because antagonists certainly are doing it.

[Darth Richard II]

The problem there is even if you scrub your net history it’s all archived somewhere. The internet is forever,

[Ran]

One of the weirdest things is that people have complained "He didn't even delete the tweets!" Well, jeez, there were almost a decade ago. What does deleting them do? He said them. He's owned up to writing them, and has apologized for it, both back then and now. Erasing evidence of doubleplusungood think doesn't mean it didn't happen, it just means you're trying to hide it. Sure, if you post something that you regret almost immediately, that's one thing. But stuff from 8-10 years ago, there's no point, it's basically part of the historical record (literally, as I think all of Twitter is being archived by various initiatives).

 

 

[Mudguard]

I've seen multiple people claim that Gunn has previously apologized for these tweets, but I haven't seen a single link to an article from that time period with such an apology.  The only apology from Gunn that I've seen is an apology for a blog post about the top 50 superheroes he'd like to have sex with.  That stupid blog post was mild in comparison with all the bizarre "jokes" about raping children he repeatedly tweeted.  Does anyone have a link to Gunn's previous apology of his tweeting?

Also, a lot of people are sure that Disney must have known about these tweets at the time.  Personally, I doubt that's the case.  Gunn is a prolific tweeter.  He currently has over 20,000 tweets, most of which aren't offensive.  I don't think it was standard procedure at the time to comb through thousands and thousands of tweets when making a hiring decision.

I really liked both Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but I don't have any problem with Gunn getting canned for his offensive tweeting.  Gunn has a right to be as offensive as he likes, but at the same time, his employer has the right to can his ass after it discovers it.  I'm not going to put the duty on Disney to comb through thousands and thousands of tweets, facebook posts, instagram posts, etc. for every hiring decision they make.  Twitter and other social media has been around for a while now, so reviewing a person's social media posting history can mean reviewing tens of thousands of posts, which is unreasonable to me.  The only way I would side with Gunn over Disney is if Gunn proactively disclosed these tweets to Disney himself before he was hired.