James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy director fired over old tweets

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/entertainment/james-gunn-exits-guardians-of-the-galaxy-3/index.html

Surprised no one's made a thread on this yet... Anyway, yes, the tweets were sick and offensive (I laughed at them anyway *shrugs*), but they were also incredibly old, some going all the way back to 2008. I get that people can be fired for what they've posted in the past, but supposedly, Disney already knew about these tweets when they hired Gunn to do the first movie and he apologized for them. Just a shame that because it's in the mainstream now, Disney suddenly acts like they care...

I haven’t looked at his old posts but if they’re jokes then he shouldn’t have been fired (in my opinion), considering how old they were. It’s scary how quickly people get the boot over this kind of nonsense. Disney will do whatever it takes to protect their image. Gunn has been getting quite a bit of support from Marvel cast stars, probably won’t do anything, but it’s good to see.

You mean like every other actor/director fired over the last few months.

Gunn might be a left favourite, but that does not mean it should have gone any different with him.

Once we began down the road of firing people because of twitter, there is no turning back and there is also no "fan favourites" not to mention that Gunn´s tweets were disgusting and he deserved what he got.

You mean like Rosanne? and all the others shouldn´t have been fired?

The issue that's the main cause of concern, though, is that Disney addressed those tweets when they vetted him. He apologized for them then and said that he's not about that humor anymore. Clearly, they were ok with them (not to mention they knew his style of humor from his resume) because they let him make two Guardians of the Galaxy films. All of a sudden, they resurface and Disney starts acting like this is brand new. I don't care how disgusting those tweets were. When someone hires you with a tarnished past and recognizes you're not about that past life anymore and then you let them work for you for years enjoying the success they've been bringing you, you don't just suddenly pull a 180 because their past was brought up again. So no, he didn't deserve this. If he did, he wouldn't have been allowed to work with Disney in the first place.

Well I posted about this in the system wars lounge before Gamespot decided to write an article about this.

Welp there goes all my hype for the new Guardians movie.

While I agree that it's sort of a jerk move to fire the guy after they'd already known about the comments for years, he should've anticipated this happening. Regardless of if it's in the past, everything changes if it becomes a big enough problem for the people in charge. Before, it wasn't widely known. Now it is widely known and Disney has to deal with the fallout.

People really need to accept that this is the type of world that we live in, and that comments made on line are no exception. People can pull the "it's in the past" or "it was a silly mistake, he shouldn't keep getting punished for it" lines. But the reality of the world is that a single silly mistake can easily leave people in prison or even dead. And with the internet, people need to really start accepting that their conduct is there FOREVER. It doesn't just go away, and it's going to be a major problem if it ever comes up again.

With James Gunn, apparently it wasn't that big of a problem before. Now it IS a problem, so of course he's getting the boot. That's how it usually works, and people need to start acting accordingly.

Yeah, it really is sad, isn't it? I guess the lesson of the day (well, it's been a lesson of the day for years now) is just don't post anything slightly controversial or offensive on social media if you're serious about having any kind of career.

Yea disagree with him being fired, yes the tweet is disgusting...but it was like 9 years ago...& he hasn't made any same/similar jokes since. Some people do change..or learned not to be a twit. :P

I sure hope the 3rd Guardians movie is a t least on par with the first 2, I enjoyed both of them alot.

Once you go through his tweets in question, you will be very conflicted. They were really offensive and extremely disgusting.

The only mitigating factor is that these are old posts...but because precedence has been made, he has to go.

The real issue I guess is how social media is, i feel, getting a little too powerful when it can ruin lives and careers in an instant and how judgemental the society has become.

What's even more disturbing is that the people who dredged these tweets up were white supremacists. Gunn never tried to run from this issue and faced it head-on, but because a couple of neo-Nazis disliked the things he said about dear leader he gets his career ruined. I'd understand if it was covered up and someone who actually felt impacted by them uncovered them, but he's been completely open and apologetic AND he hasn't relapsed into that sort of behavior, unlike a certain sitcom star who's gone through so many excuses you'd need a story bible to keep track of them all. It's actually kind of funny how when someone who supports Trump gets fired for saying something racist conservatives immediately jump to the conclusion that it's politically motivated even though, as proven here, it isn't. Yet they actively try to stir up controversy around someone not because they actually care about who's impacted but because they dislike their political positions. If you want a window into a conservative's mind just look at what they accuse everyone else of. They think liberals who defend Gunn only do so because they agree with him politically, but that's only because they can't stop seeing the world through the lens of identity politics. To them it's who you are that matters, not what you say and how you handle yourself as a person. Gunn handled himself admirably, Barr did not, simple as that.

"The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James' Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio's values, and we have severed our business relationship with him," Alan Horn, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, said in a statement obtained by CNN.

Perhaps I overlooked it but where does it said that Disney vetted and knew about these comments when they hired him and were ok with them?

I think this is hilarious. They made their bed...

The fact of the matter is: people don't know. People are merely perpetuating the conspiracy that Disney vetted this situation. So far upon asking for sources that prove these claims, no one has been able to do so. I've done some of the searching myself and so far I can't find anything on this.

Where are you guys getting this information? In your heads? I'd still like to see some articles the cite Disney's knowledge and ultimately excusing James Gunn over his posts prior to this incident.

James Gunn's perverse tweets from back then remind me of his video game Lollipop Chainsaw, which he wrote with Suda51, before he hit it big with Guardians of the Galaxy. Gunn's tweets come across as the kinds of perverse jokes you might hear from characters in Lollipop Chainsaw, especially a dirty old man called Sensei Morikawa.

And ABC knew about Rosanne and her views before they hired her. Not to mention that even the medicine´s she took own website states that there are side effects to taking it, like doing crazy thing.

Disney may have vetted him, but that does not make it any less right, And as we have seen in the last 2 years, things have a habit of suddenly coming back to bite you, and that should not just be for people the left disagrees with. It should, of course, go for their own favourites as well.

Oh, also where did you read Disney vetted him and knew about the tweets before they hired him for the first movie?

People need to chill. Most of those were dumb bro jokes. Not a big deal.

This is crap. Even Dave Bautista called bullshit on this as well.

Yeah, it's all been second hand. To be honest, I did try to find a link myself but it's very hard right now because every time you search Disney and Gunn, you get hundreds of articles from yesterday. Considering just how big Disney is and how long of an issue social media has been, not to mention Gunn's resume of shock humor, it only stands to be logical that Disney would have vetted someone like Gunn before they let him touch a multi-million dollar franchise.

EDIT: Well, closest I could find was this. About six years ago, which would be around the time he'd be hired on for the movie, he got in trouble for a blog he wrote where he made sexual jokes about Marvel characters. Since Disney owned those characters, that should have been a very big red flag. It's all assumptions so far at this point, but they're pretty reasonable assumptions if you ask me that if any competent person at Disney got wind of that blog, they'd check all his social media. Hell, even just checking his Wikipedia shows him in a movie playing a role as an "insane masturbator." They knew. They'd just have to know. If Disney didn't know about those tweets... then hats off to them being one of the most oblivious companies in Hollywood.

I was just reading that article too. Looking at that blog, though, doesn't really compare to the Tweets that ultimately got him fired. That blog is very defining of his immaturity, but the Tweets he made directly correlates to him having pedophilia tendencies.

In half of these, he's basically implying himself as a pedophile. What the **** is up with that? Making jokes about pedophilia is one thing, but this is just wrong on so many levels.

Everyone is jumping the gun on Disney but truly, until we see an article or video interview in the archives that clearly show Disney vetting off this kind of behavior, I don't think it's anyone's place to blame Disney without showing the facts.

As far as I can tell you, this is nobody else's fault but James Gunn. He's the one that was irresponsible having these on display all these years. If he truly wanted to take the job at Disney seriously then he should have deleted his social media accounts; but no, he never did, leaving these posts in plain sight just waiting for the moment to be resurfaced.

I find it funny even extreme alt-right people behave like SJWs these days.

Really? But a white person will get ostracized immediately for saying the N word, men may lose careers for making fun of women but its not a big deal to make pedophile jokes and child raping?

I'm not saying I agree with what is happening but the standards and precedence has been set so thats how it goes now. Society made their beds so now they have to lie in it. James Gunn never did come to the defense of those who lost their careers over social media, has he?

I'm a bit conflicted about this, these "jokes" are a decade old and evidently, he stopped making these ever since. Now we all say stupid shit but yet, when he made these ridiculous posts, he was at least 40 years old. FORTY. He should well be past this "Edgy" crap he said he was being, he wasnt some clueless teen rebel, he was way past being an adult grown man.

In the end, obviously Disney is not ok with this so its their call to make. Sure there's public pressure but its still their call.

Unfortunately for me, GOTG 1 and 2 are my fav Marvel movies.

I might not like his political views but he shouldnt have been fired for jokes, offensive or not.

He deserved to be fired. The Guardians movies are 2 of the best superhero movies ever made but if other celebs can get fired over offensive tweets then why should he be any different?

And I think that's really what it comes down to. Even if Disney knew about these tweets way back when Gunn was hired, they certainly know about them NOW. If it wasn't a problem for them back then, they definitely see it as a problem now. But ultimately, it was Gunn who made the comments, and he's gotta deal with the consequences. He's not entitled to a job at Disney when he has this kind of shit out in the open. People really need to start being more careful about this kind of stuff.

There are a lot of "changed" people in prison. The fact of the matter is, "it happened a long time ago" has NEVER meant "it shouldn't follow you around for the rest of your life." Small stupid decisions most certainly CAN have permanent life-altering consequences. It has ALWAYS been that way, and people's online conduct doesn't just suddenly make it different just because the conduct happened on a web page. The internet IS the real world. And in the real world, peoples' past mistakes come back to haunt them all the freaking time.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that being punished for comments that he made way back then is right. But whether or not it's right is sort of irrelevant. Right or not, Disney doesn't owe him a job. Anyone who supports him is free to hire him, but Disney thinks this is a major freaking liability. So he loses his job at Disney. That's how this stuff works, and people really need to start getting it through their heads that that's how this stuff works. Actions have consequences.

Umm...what? Since when has making horrible comments and calling them "jokes" meant that no one should ever fire you for said comments?

@MrGeezer: Did I stutter or something? I don't think he should have been fired, pretty simple. I'm not saying every person in the world shouldnt be fired for what they say, but he was making much different films at that point and was looking to get some shock value out of his tweets for attention. In the end its just words, sticks and stop,rd may break my bones but words will never hurt me, simple and to my point.

No, you said that "he shouldn't have been fired for jokes."

You do realize that that is a very different thing than "this person shouldn't be fired for this particular joke", right?

Saying that someone "shouldn't be fired for jokes" implies that "joking" should be a defense against being fired. And that has NEVER been the case.

@ironbrigador: Calm down. I dont agree with the others and I dont here. I am under no obligation to agree with any standard.

I can understand where Dave Bautista is coming from. His film career took off because James took a chance on a former wrestler with very few movie credits to his name and cast him in his blockbuster Marvel movie. In Daves mind his increasing success as an actor these days is entirely because of James Gunn giving him a shot. I could totally understand why Bautista would defend him. In his mind he wouldn't be where he is today without James and that is probably true too. This whole thing is a complete mess and I hope James Gunn sues Disney for this.

When you make posts on online forums, you put yourself up for the likeliness of engagement and scrutiny. If you can't handle that then you should be the one that calms down and stop posting.

@SOedipus: "Disney will do whatever it takes to protect their image"

Except they won't kick EA to the curb.

Sue them for what? The only thing I could possibly think of is breach of contract, but even then Disney surely has a stipulation that they can let people go at any time if they deem that person's employment to be damaging to their image. Celebrities get in deep water all the time for saying or doing stupid things off the job, but how many of them actually successfully sue the company for it? You don't think that Disney is smart enough to have their asses covered here?

Ya, he not suing them haha

@davillain-: The only way that I can see James Gunn possibly filing a lawsuit against the Walt Disney company is if the company did indeed vet him out. A lawsuit is extremely unlikely as James Gunn already came out and said he took responsibility and that Disney made the right decision.

It is more likely that an investigation and possible prosecution against James Gunn would happen than him suing the Disney company.

But there's no end to this disgusting PC culture?!

Its a scary future when a person gets fired for what he may say... "freedom of speech" is an ilusion of developed countries

LOL check this out, guys. I was just browsing James Gunn's Twitter, he browses Gamespot I see.

It makes me wonder if he posts on this site too.

@jaydan: @MrGeezer: James Gunn was supposed to be working on GotG vol 3. I thought he already sign the contract before he got fired. These Tweets are almost decades old, I find it hard to believe Disney didn't knew about it this long until now. These actors/movie directors just needs to stay away from social media like Twitter, too many bad apples from social media as it is. I'm surprise he never posted those comments on Instagram.

I don't think you, among others, understand the severity of his offenses. James Gunn made a bunch of Tweets calling himself a pedophile and how much he enjoys rape.

Let's just change the terminology up a bit, so maybe it's better understood just how bad this is for him... What if ten years ago James Gunn made a bunch of Tweets calling himself a serial killer. What if he makes just as many descriptive and awful "jokes" over his joys of being a serial killer.

What if it took ten years before these online antics surfaced and now an entire society is outraged and it launches a full investigation on his personal life to determine if he really is a serial killer.

Will you guys all just jump to his defense "c'mon everyone! These were ten years ago! Let him slide!" even though there might just be evidence of him being a serial killer?

You guys need to take your fanboy goggles off. I know most of us are fans of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and the MCU - me too - but we can't let bias over our fandom blind us over something that now needs to be investigated.

One of his friends from that era was already discovered to be a convicted sex offender over child pornography. Things are just not looking well for James Gunn and it's entirely because of his own doings.

A lot of people are calling Disney hypocrites over firing James Gunn, but the 100% truth is people would have called Disney hypocrites no matter what decision they made. That is unavoidable scrutiny for Disney.

If Disney kept James Gunn around, people would be so outraged that they'd keep him but fire Roseanne.

You guys are the real hypocrites if you didn't defend Roseanne over her Tweets but think James Gunn deserves a second chance after calling himself a pedophile.

The only difference between Roseanne and James Gunn is: Roseanne gets to climb back into her hole to never be seen or cared for again whereas James Gunn has something he can be potentially prosecuted for.

Well I don't agree with him being fired, but he does. He agrees with people getting fired over tweets, and until a few more like him are hounded out, it will keep happening. So fair enough. make your bed, and sleep in it.

Can't understand why anyone would think these jokes were funny either. But they were just jokes and its a shame a talented man is being hoisted on his own petard like this but that's the world we live in thanks to people who have encouraged and celebrated the hounding of others over mean tweets, lame comedy or having an unpopular political opinion.

The thing is, Rosanne believes what she says.

Gunn was being immature and edgy, but ultimately just joking around. And, as stated before, Disney was well aware of this (no doubt they do thorough background checks) and it took what essentially amounts to a no-good tattle-tail to ruin this.

With that said, you gotta sleep in the bed you make. I don't entirely disagree with the firing (or other firings), I just think there shouldn't be a zero-tolerance policy or a knee-jerk reaction.

You guys are also fools to believe that this is some new phenomenon to pull up old social media posts to ruin careers. It's not.

People's careers have gotten ruined over social media posts for a long time, even prior to the 2016 elections. The reason why we don't hear about these stories as much is because it happens a lot of the time to people who aren't famous or newsworthy.

I dunno about you guys, but I've heard this advice since the 90's, "be careful with what you post online. You never know when it will come back to haunt you."

This advice has been given since the dawn of public internet. So CLEARLY, this warning has been up all along. I think people are more offended that it had to be someone that they loved.

James Gunn is just going to be your classic example of why you should really be careful with what you post online.

I wish taika takes over the franchise.

Unless you're the NRA and their very close ties with Ted Nugent, a man who thinks liberal Democrats and anyone who doesn't agree with him should be killed. Something Dana Loesch continually ignores and instead targets liberal comedians for their comments (Samantha Bee for example).

I kinda wish people would stop saying "so much for free speech" or some other similar wording. There has NEVER been freedom of speech from private entities. Ever. Freedom of speech protects the government from punishing you for what you say. I wish I got paid for every time someone tried to invoke freedom of speech when I moderated them back when I was a moderator. I would have been retired thrice over.

While I agree that you're probably right, I don't want to argue intent because you can't really prove that. Behavior should stand on its own regardless of what someone says their intent was. If Gunn had made jokes like that today, I would absolutely agree with the firing. Roseanne didn't get fired for her "views" or for past behavior, she got fired because of the crap she was still doing and would likely continue to do. Gunn getting fired over stuff that he said a decade ago, that he apologized for before he got hired, but because a white supremacist who has himself said way worse stuff started a campaign against Gunn I don't necessarily agree with.

-Byshop

Very, very true. My workplace has a zero tolerance policy. It started with work computers, emails, forums.... I'm careful about what I say, even here at GS. I never know if I was tracked to and being monitored here. With modern social media? Forget it.

seems a bit overkill, sad to hear, I didn't know the same director did Super as I liked that film a lot too

hopefully he's able to keep making films and this doesn't escalate to widespread blacklisting

certainly Disney should be compelled to respond to this being brought to light but I think they could have defended such a harsh move by explaining context, seems they were too reactionary to optics of the situation