‘Brightburn’ offers dark take on superhero origins
James Gunn specializes in underdog jerks who have something heroic underneath a rough surface, as any fan of Rocket Raccoon and pretty much every other misfit in “Guardians of the Galaxy” can readily attest.
The main character of the filmmaker’s newest movie, “Brightburn,” is not that at all. In fact, 12year-old Brandon Breyer is the extreme opposite of Gunn’s normal underdogs. He’s a kid who “seems good, but the more you uncover, he may not be so good,” says Gunn, a producer of the superhero horror movie in theaters Thursday night.
Directed by David Yarovesky and written by Gunn’s younger brother Brian and cousin Mark, “Brightburn” fuses two hot two genres of the moment with a twist on a familiar comic-book origin story. Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) is an alien boy who crash-lands on Earth as a baby and is adopted by Kansas couple Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denman). But after a loving upbringing, he begins to exhibit new abilities – and a super villainous attitude.
If you’re looking for the lightness of Gunn’s “Guardians” movies, it’s not in the grim “Brightburn.”
“I believe that movies are cathartic experiences for us, and there’s a lot of darkness in the world right now,” says Gunn, 52.
“There’s a lot of things that people are afraid of. There’s a lot of heroes that have fallen over the past few years. There’s a lot of people who have a lot of power who are corrupt, and I think all of those things are anxiety-provoking to us.”
Gunn is coming out of a relatively dark period in his own career. Last July, when he was writing the third “Guardians,” Gunn was fired from the Marvel project by Disney when his old and offensive tweets joking about pedophilia and rape were unearthed. He apologized, took responsibility and stayed mostly off social media. In the meantime, he signed on to write and direct DC’s “The Suicide Squad” – he’s in “preproduction hell” in Atlanta to film this fall – and was rehired in March to finish off his “Guardians” trilogy.
In the interim, the filmmaker focused on finishing “Brightburn” and surrounded himself with such close friends as Yarovesky, whose May 2018 wedding Gunn officiated, and Banks.
“No one could ask for a better mentor,” Yarovesky says. “I tried my best to just be like a brain-sucking face hugger the entire time, just trying to eat as much of his knowledge as possible.”
Banks thought Gunn was “the next John Carpenter” when the two filmed 2006’s “Slither.” “He felt visionary from the jump. It’s just been fun to be part of his gang for so long,” she says.
“He has a really interesting perspective on life,” Banks says. “He’s been through a lot as a human, and he tries to learn from everything that happens to him.”
Gunn says he’s “not the same filmmaker I was five years ago.”
“I’m a remarkably stable person who stays the same no matter what my external circumstances are,” he says. “But life changes you.”