Should James Gunn be fired over offensive tweets?

Tweets posted by James Gunn several years ago have surfaced and started a debate over whether or the director should remain with Marvel.

In the middle of an already-crazy week in the world of entertainment, more craziness comes to the surface as unearthed tweets from 2007-2012 James Gunn bring about new outrage over the Guardians of the Galaxy director and whether he should be fired or not.

The social media age in 2018 can best be described as a cautionary age for the advancement of technology. As we continue to head into the future, the possibilities for the limits and barriers that advanced technology can break are higher than ever. Not only does technology help with work, going to school, etc, but it can also serve as the world’s deepest diary for the most obscure sayings or actions that any individual has done at just about any point in their lives. Twitter, for example, can save EVERYONE’s dirty secrets, which is now blowing up in director James Gunn’s face.

James Gunn, a filmmaker most known for his directorial work for both Guardians of the Galaxy films, has been the subject of a recent Twitter outrage, as older tweets from Gunn, ranging from 2007-2012, had an edgy nature to them. To be specific, his older tweets seem to be a hotbed for offensive jokes on various sensitive topics, such as rape, pedophilia, violence, and more. It’s not as if the jokes were a one-time thing either, as they spanned multiple years and were there in plain sight.

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Ever since the unearthing of the tweets, some fans have been outraged to the point where they are calling on Disney and Marvel to fire James Gunn immediately, feeling as though his tweets are evidence of Gunn’s disturbed mindset. Which brings us to the obvious question: should James Gunn be fired?

The past lingers

James Gunn trouble began late last night, when filmmaker Mike Cernovich began posting pictures he took of old tweets that Gunn wrote years earlier, many of the tweets being edgy and shocking in their content. Due to Cernovich’s large following on Twitter, his followers began to spread the word to where it is officially mainstream knowledge. The tweets literally number in the thousands, not to mention Gunn himself has since deleted the tweets,  so it is impossible to post them all here, but these are some of the screenshots.

Gunn himself has addressed the issues and has publicly apologized on his Twitter through the form of a tweet thread. In the tweets, he fully admitted to marketing himself as a provocative filmmaker, dedicating himself to “making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo.” His attachment to edgy content has spanned all the way back to his days as a young filmmaker for the notorious film production company, Troma, which specializes in gross-out, shocking and offensive content. It is possible that James Gunn may have still had that mindset while tweeting these jokes out.

Even several moments in his Guardians films, easily his most tame content, point to an edgy mindset that Gunn may never truly shake, no matter how drastically his content has changed since the infamous period. Jokes related to toilet humor, several moments of the female characters being insulted and called whores by some of the male characters and of course, the infamous Jackson Pollock painting joke made by Star-Lord in the first film. Gunn has specialized in crude humor for well over two decades at this point that it’s difficult to see exactly how Disney and company could’ve missed this, knowing full well that they more than likely read his history and have probably looked over his tweets hundreds of times.

While the content is for sure incredibly distasteful and offensive, should it point to an ending where James Gunn should be fired over his tweets? The situation is made even more complex with the recent situation involving the firing of Roseanne Barr from her revived sitcom, Roseanne, after a racist tweet caused an outrage over Twitter. Twitter was quick to call for Roseanne’s firing, but with James Gunn, a significantly more well-liked personality, the fanbase is divided. On one hand, firing James Gunn would be the safest PR move for Disney, yet on the other hand, Gunn is mostly responsible for successfully bringing a previously obscure comic to the big screen, creating one of the most surprisingly successful franchises of the decade. Fans of James Gunn may try to back away from supporting the franchise if he is not involved with it anymore.

As of now, it remains to be seen what will happen with James Gunn, but the situation truly embodies the cold and hard fact that sometimes, the past may come back to blow up in whomever’s face it chooses. Gunn clearly either forgot about his tweets or he didn’t feel they were worth concerning over to delete. That decision is blowing up in his face and whether he will be fired remains to be updated. But it is just the strongest example of the eggshell world that we currently live in today.

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What do you think? Should James Gunn be fired or is the situation not worth firing him over? Sound off in the comments below!