James Gunn is no stranger to the world of superhero movies. In a recent video for GQ, he listed out the best comic book movies in his opinion — with a few surprise entries making the cut.
What are James Gunn’s favorite comic book movies?
In the video, Gunn lists out his list of best comic book movies. These include a handful of unconventional picks. The five films (in order) that Gunn lists are Deadpool, Oldboy (which is based on a manga), A History of Violence, Richard Donner’s 1978 film Superman, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
The list may come as a surprise to some, as not a single Marvel Cinematic Universe film appears on the list. Modern-day DC films are absent, too. When it comes to the more surprising choices — namely Oldboy — Gunn praised the former for being one of the best action movies of all time, and something that “reinvented” the genre.
“It reinvented action and it really ushered in the new era of Korean cinema, which has continued to this day,” said Gunn of Oldboy. “They still probably make the best action movies in the world. But as a movie, it’s just incredibly cinematic, incredibly colorful, really kind of gross but also beautiful, and shocking at the end.”
Gunn also heaped a ton of praise onto Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, calling it the first true multiverse comic book movie. He also noted that it doesn’t suffer from many issues that other films dealing in the multiverse do.
“I think that, you know, Into the Spider-Verse is truly the first, you know, comic book multiverse movie,” Gunn said. “They did it in such a balanced and real way. There weren’t a lot of plot holes like there are in a lot of these multiverse movies. They thought everything through and it was just really tight.”
