James Gunn’s DC Plans Need to Do for Video Games What Guardians of the Galaxy Achieved

Although it flew under the radar a little bit, 2021’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is a surprisingly well-written, impressively realized title inspired by the likes of Mass Effect. It’s unclear if there will be another Guardians of the Galaxy game like it, but it’s a clear sign of just how much potential there is in superhero games—a welcome realization in the era of flops like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Marvel’s Avengers.

Naturally, a lot of the groundwork for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy‘s success was laid by James Gunn, who injected the MCU with some much-needed flavor with his Guardians of the Galaxy film series. Gunn’s style is on full display in the Guardians films, helping to establish this cast of characters as lovable, interesting, and worth getting invested in, unlike many other ensemble superhero films that struggle to create strong representations of iconic characters. With Gunn jumping ship to DC, his work ought to inspire more great games in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Gunn Spun Gold with Guardians of the Galaxy, and He Could Do It Again

After the Joker sequel, the most highly-anticipated upcoming DC film is no doubt James Gunn’s Superman reboot. This will likely be a wildly different product compared to Gunn’s other superhero projects, targeting earnestness and heroism more than misfit culture and odd-couple pairings, but there’s reason to believe that it will turn out well: Gunn excels at sincere, purposeful character writing, so his approach to Superman could be an appropriately wholesome, memorable on-screen rendition and possibly spark an eventual Superman game.

Looking further down the road, it’s not too hard to imagine how a Gunn-helmed Flash or Green Lantern movie could inspire good video games based around these iconic characters. This isn’t to say that Gunn’s films should necessarily be adapted to the gaming medium one-to-one, only that they could develop a good framework for comic book characters that never got definitive on-screen representation. This is what helped Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy be among the best Marvel games to date, despite not being directly based on Gunn’s work.

James Gunn’s DC Portfolio Might Already Provide a Blueprint for a Good Team-Up Game

Rocksteady’s live-service Suicide Squad game didn’t perform well. It was in development for a long time and, although it’s not without its strengths, but with Gunn softly rebooting Suicide Squad in 2021 to great results, perhaps it could inspire a new game with the ragtag team of villains.

If Suicide Squad history has already repeated itself once, maybe it could do so again with James Gunn’s more creatively successful film serving as the soil from which a better Suicide Squad game can sprout. Leaning into ridiculous characters like Ratcatcher 2 or Polka Dot Man, which provided the zest that the first film lacked, could be a boon for a new Suicide Squad game, taking notes from the world of film in the same way that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy did.