James Gunn is a prolific filmmaker who has risen to superstar status by staying true to himself and his roots, even in the world of big-budget spectacle. Gunn got his first job at Troma Entertainment, where he wrote the script for Tromeo and Juliet. Since then, Gunn has had a fascinating and rich career, having written both live-action Scooby-Doo films and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. He has lent his name to producing smaller projects, such as The Belko Experiment (which he also wrote) and Brightburn.
Of course, the largest change in Gunn’s career came when he was tapped to help lead the DCU into the future, including with the massive task of reinventing Superman for a new era in the cinematic Universe. Throughout Gunn’s career, a recurring theme across much of his work is the idea of broken people making amends. His characters are often deeply flawed and sometimes horrible people who have made mistakes and are struggling to learn to grow as human beings.
Gunn’s approach to storytelling yielded a fascinating early filmography and made him the ideal fit to tackle superheroes, but what is his best work? Here are James Gunn‘s movies and television series ranked.
8
‘Super’ (2010)
Gunn’s second film, Super, follows Frank Darbo (Rainn Wilson), an ordinary man who makes himself into a superhero called the Crimson Bolt without having any superhuman ability to rescue his wife from a drug dealer. The movie is very much a prototype Gunn film, with a surprisingly bittersweet ending where the main character has to let his wife, whom he loves very much, go because he truly wants her to be happy, something that seems to be reflective of Gunn’s own real-life marriage to Jenna Fischer ending.
While still being an enjoyable deconstructive superhero movie, coming out shortly after Watchmen and Kick-Ass, Super is Gunn’s lowest reviewed project, and he was still working out how to balance his sincere emotions with his more Troma Films attitude of making it as edgy as possible.
7
‘Slither’ (2006)
After working for years in Hollywood as a writer and producer, Gunn got to make his directorial debut with Slither. Released in 2006, the film features an alien parasite invading a small town in South Carolina. A throwback to alien-invasion films of earlier days, with a modern flair for gore and gross-out visuals.
The first James Gunn movie clearly establishes his style right off the bat and sets the stage for long-term collaborations with stars like Michael Rooker and Nathan Fillion. Though a box-office bomb at the time of its release, Slither developed a cult following, like any good horror film, and has become increasingly appreciated over time.
6
‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the most important films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it established a new group of heroes and proved that the company’s commitment to story and character could launch even the most obscure character into a massive box office hit. A great deal of the film’s success is because of James Gunn’s vision. When the movie was first announced at Comic-Con in 2012, the Guardians of the Galaxy were a property no one really cared for, and that obscurity and lack of expectations allowed Gunn to craft a unique film unlike anything audiences had seen at the time.
It was a rocking good-time party movie with an irrelevant sense of humor but a sincere heart. Combine that with an instantly iconic soundtrack contrasted with vast alien landscapes, and after 2014, The Guardians of the Galaxy became known the world over. This movie, full of no-name superheroes, outgrossed more established superhero movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and X-Men: Days of Future Past.
5
‘The Suicide Squad’ (2021)
The Suicide Squad is a movie that should not have existed, but by a miracle, it does. Gunn booked the project after an unfair firing by Disney on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Warner Bros. quickly scooped him up and let him have a crack at whatever property he wanted. Gunn chose The Suicide Squad and saved the franchise’s reputation, which had seen a rough go-around after the first film was released in 2016.
The Suicide Squad still acts as a loose sequel to the original film, but creates an entirely new tone and visual palette. Gunn takes what he learned from the Guardians of the Galaxy films and also mixes in some of his more gruesome R-rated tendencies from his earlier films and Troma days.
James Gunn manages to take joke super-villains like Polka-Dot Man and Starro and make them as compelling as anyone in DC’s vast array of major villains. Despite all the violence, dirty jokes, and devil-may-care attitude, the film has a genuine heart to it, beautifully encapsulated in the flashback with Rat-Catcher II’s father: no matter how bad the world perceives a person, everyone has value, and it is never too late to be a slightly better person.
4
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ (2017)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 picks up six months after the events of the first film and features Peter Quill coming into contact with his father Ego, while the family unit that came together in the first film is tested to see if they can stay together. The sequel to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was always going to have a slight uphill battle, as it couldn’t recapture the original film’s sense of newness and novelty.
However, James Gunn uses that to his advantage in order to tell a much more earnest movie, one that really dissects the complex nature of family. Underneath this funny adventure is a character study about people who need to learn to stop self-sabotaging their relationships and open up to accepting love.
The ending scene, a funeral set to Cat Stevens’ Father and Son, where people come to honor a dead friend despite their complicated past, shows that when people love one another, they never truly leave. The result is the most emotional film in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
3
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ (2023)
Thankfully, Disney would come to their senses and bring back Gunn to complete the planned third film. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 would continue to successfully build on the themes of the previous movies, this time taking another dive into the personal lives of the Guardians, including confronting Rocket’s traumatic past and the consequences of their previous adventures. The result was an emotional journey and, ultimately, a farewell for Gunn with the Guardians, which still brought that universe trotting big action.
It is not often that fans get the perfect trilogy of films, but Gunn brought the same irreverent humor and cosmic chaos that made the series a landmark for Marvel in the first place, leaving the franchise on a high note. Being the only long-running franchise Gunn has directed, it also shows how he can evolve his characters across broader stories, making his transition to head of the DCU films an exciting prospect to see how it will unfold under his reign.
2
‘Peacemaker’ (2022–2025)
Peacemaker picks up months after the events of The Suicide Squad, and follows Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, as he is recruited into Project Butterfly by a government black ops agency to take down an alien invasion. Peacemaker is a revelation across superhero series, DCEU projects, and John Cena as an actor. This series has single-handedly made a character like Peacemaker, most famous for inspiring The Comedian in Watchmen, as iconic and fleshed-out as any member of the Justice League.
In many ways, Peacemaker feels like what James Gunn’s entire career has been building to. It is a spin-off film of his film The Suicide Squad, deals with a dysfunctional team becoming a surrogate family unit like Guardians of the Galaxy, has the complicated parental roles between children and parents found in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, features colorful superhero costumes contrasted with everyday life like Super, and has the team fighting a parasitic alien invasion like Slither; even the way the butterflies invade a person’s body is similar to Gunn’s monster in his Scooby-Doo script.
Peacemaker is hilarious but also incredibly moving, as one man questions his very nature and if he can be better than what everyone tells him he is. Plus, its opening theme song Do You Really Wanna Taste It by Wig Wam, has helped cement the series as having one of the greatest TV openings of all time.
1
‘Superman’ (2025)
Easily the most talked-about film of 2025, James Gunn was tasked with bringing the newest flagship movie to the DCU with his adaptation of Superman. Thankfully, he did not disappoint. Reinventing the hero for a modern era, Gunn would task David Corenswet with becoming the man of steel, forgoing the typical origin story and delving into the grander themes of what it means to be a hero in the modern era.
Gunn would definitely make some room for more outrageous moments, and his love of lesser-known DC comic book characters in Superman, but the project also showed him taking a different approach to his exploration of flawed heroes. Notably, Gunn tackles a character who is already virtuous but must navigate a world of moral ambiguity and mistrust.
The movie remains a culmination of Gunn’s works and themes, fine-tuned to epic-scale superhero action and drama at its finest. It is his best work to date, and knowing that Gunn only improves with time spent in a franchise sets a promising tone for the entire DCU cinematic universe.
With all the discourse around the Superman movie, including some in-fighting among certain fandoms, our top choice may not be to everyone’s taste. So, let us know what you think is the best James Gunn movie to date, and whether you are excited about his future work with the DCU.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
