Reaction to the James Gunn/Disney situation has been all over the board. On one hand, you have people who swear that not only do the jokes that Gunn made on Twitter almost a decade ago prove he’s a pedophile, but that he should never work again. Then you have others saying the ousted director paid the price and apologized and shouldn’t be spoken of in the same breath as other controversial figures like Roseanne Barr. Either way, the debate rages on, almost a full month after the initial news.
For those closest to the controversy, namely the cast of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the reaction has also been kind of all over the place. There is Dave Bautista, who probably owes Gunn and the MCU franchise his whole growing acting career, saying that what Disney did was “nauseating” and “not what I signed up for.” Bautista has also been the first ‘Guardians’ actor to threaten to walk if Disney/Marvel Studios didn’t use Gunn’s script.
However, now, you have the star of the franchise, Chris Pratt, providing a more tempered response and statement. As you probably are aware, Pratt, along with all the cast of the cosmic superhero franchise, signed an open letter saying they supported Gunn and would endorse he rehire. That being said, in a new interview with the AP, Pratt doesn’t go as far as Bautista and says that he would most likely return to ‘Guardians’ no matter who’s at the helm.
“It’s not an easy time. We all love James and he’s a good friend of ours, but we also really love playing the Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a complicated situation for everybody. And you know, we just want to move forward and do what’s right and be the best people we can be,” Pratt said.
When pressed for more about the situation, the A-list actor continued to echo the statements of the open letter and discussed how the firing, which happened during San Diego Comic-Con, put a different spin on the annual fan event.
“I love going to Comic-Con but I ended up not doing a lot of interviews around that time just because it was so shocking. All I know is we put a lot of time, thought and effort into the statement that we released about it. And I think we all kind of want that statement to be essentially what we have to say about it. And we were pretty clear and honest about how we feel,” Pratt said.
While we’ve pondered what would happen if the cast of ‘Guardians’ walked away before ‘Vol. 3,’ it appears that Pratt is the first to openly admit that the franchise is bigger than Gunn and will be able to continue without the writer-director. Of course, there’s still a lot to be said on the situation, as we await any sort of word from Disney or Marvel Studios regarding the franchise’s future.