With Lanterns doing great numbers for HBO and anticipation for Man of Tomorrow building every day, James Gunn has become one of the most recognizable and bankable figures in media today. Of course, no one starts out as a successful blockbuster filmmaker and studio co-head, but Gunn’s rise to the top of DC Studios is particularly shocking. After all, he started out writing for the notorious B-movie studio Troma Entertainment and penning scripts for two Scooby-Doo movies. His earliest directorial works were edgy cheapies, an attitude that briefly got him fired from Disney, even after making two hit Marvel films.

And yet, it’s abundantly clear that James Gunn is the right person at the right time, joining Peter Safran as the heads of DC Studios right when audiences want more distinctive superhero media. In fact, one can see a pretty clear line of progression across the shorts, shows, and movies that Gunn directed, which all reveal a love of odd and flamboyant characters, a nasty humor streak, and an emotional openness. Even if the works sometimes vary in quality, they show us how Gunn became the world’s premiere superhero auteur.

11. Tromaville Cafe (1997-2000)

While James Gunn didn’t go to a traditional film school, he did get his start working for infamous schlock studio Troma Entertainment, which is absolutely its own type of education. While working under Troma co-founder Lloyd Kauffman, Gunn did a number of projects for the company, including co-writing the 1996 feature Tromeo and Juliet and starring in 2004 satirical mockumentary Lollilove, directed by and co-starring his then-wife Jenna Fischer of The Office. But his only directorial work for Troma came in the form of wrap-around segments filmed for the TV series Tromaville Cafe.

Aired on the BBC between 1997 and 2000, Tromaville Cafe played some of the studio’s most beloved movies, including The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High. Each episode began and ended with a skit featuring Kauffman, standout characters Toxie, the Toxic Avenger, and Sgt. Kabukiman, as well as various news reporters introducing the audience to the set. The segments only last for about five minutes, and the televisual style leaves no room for distinctive imagery, but the Tromaville Cafe skits do have the comedic style that will remain throughout Gunn’s career.

10. James Gunn’s PG Porn (2008)

Everything you need to know about James Gunn’s PG Porn, the web series that Gunn and his brothers Brian and Sean made for the laddie website Spike.com, can be found in the title. Each of the eleven episodes plays like a pornagraphic film, except they’re rated PG, which means that they lack all nudity or sexual content. So while the episodes feature scenarios you’d find in a porn film, they take shocking turns away from the endings you’d expect.

Case in point, the episode “Genital Hospital” begins with Sean Gunn receiving a testicular exam from the seductive Dr. Poonwater (real adult actress Belladonna). As expected, the doctor begins talking about the big thing in his pants. But instead of this observation leading to raunchy fun, the doctor instead explains that the big thing in the man’s pants is a cancerous tumor and he has six months to live. As that example demonstrates, the PG Porn shorts find Gunn still embracing the edgy humor of his Troma days, but he executes the jokes with greater precision—a feat helped by the fact that he’s working with top-level actors, including Nathan Fillion, Craig Robinson, and Alan Tudyk.

9. Super (2010)

Superheroes have always been close to James Gunn’s heart. Even before he stepped behind the director’s chair, Gunn had written The Specials, a (not very good) vérité-style movie about a team of C-listers. So it comes as no surprise that he would make superheroes the subject of his second movie, 2010’s Super. Rainn Wilson plays Frank Darbo, an utter loser who hits rock bottom after his wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for smarmy criminal Jacques (Kevin Bacon). After seeing a vision of the Christian superhero the Holy Avenger (Fillion), Frank decides to become a superhero himself, donning red pajamas and beating people with a wrench as the Crimson Bolt.

As that summary indicates, Super touches on most of Gunn’s favorite themes. We’ve got a loser who finds meaning through his costume and mission, and plenty of wry observations about the genre. However, there’s a meanness to Super that, unlike Gunn’s other projects, doesn’t get balanced out by any softness. Frank is pathetic and cruel when he pummels people with his wrench, and the addition of psychotic teen sidekick Boltie (Elliot Page) only ups the nastiness. Not a terrible movie by any stretch, Super finds Gunn exorcising some of the brattiness he needed to shed before becoming an auteur of superhero movies.

8. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

One of the most impressive things about Gunn’s career is how he went from working on lean indies with tiny budgets to managing huge spectacles, full of big ideas but never losing sight of the characters. In fact, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the only time that one feels Gunn getting overwhelmed by the enormity of the project, resulting in a film that’s excellent in many ways, but still often overstuffed and unwieldy. That may be a result of a production cycle extended by Gunn’s brief firing and the making of The Suicide Squad, but whatever the reason, Guardians 3 lags behind its two predecessors.

And yet, Guardians 3 is still pretty great. Only Gunn has got a genuinely emotional performance out of Chris Pratt, who is never better as a Peter Quill turned self-destructive after losing Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) in Avengers: Infinity War. Even more powerful is Bradley Cooper‘s vocal performance as Rocket Raccoon, who gets tortured alongside his animal friends by the movie’s villain, the High Evolutionary (a delightfully imperious Chukwudi Iwuji). Despite the upsetting animal abuse themes and disparaging states of the characters, Gunn still manages to find notes of humor and grace, including the MCU’s first F-bomb, saving Guardians 3 from getting completely weighed down.

7. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)

The central appeal of the MCU has always been watching a bunch of likable characters hang out together, whether they’re saving the universe or eating schwarma. So it felt like only a matter of time before the MCU produced a Christmas special. In addition, the mixture of endless sniping and emotional proclamations make the Guardians the perfect choice for the season, and Gunn executes the story to perfection.

Even though the The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special‘s positioning right before Guardians 3 does result in some awkward plot mechanics (the Guardians run Knowhere now?), it does allow Quill to stay in the background and send Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Drax (Dave Bautista) to Earth to retrieve Kevin Bacon. The two characters make the most of their extended screen time, giving us a fantastic romp that comes with a playlist of Christmas tunes to revisit every year.

6. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Believe it or not, everyone expected the Guardians of the Galaxy to sink the MCU. Sure, Marvel had managed to turn the unexpected success of Iron Man into a shared universe franchise that every other studio wanted to emulate. But even Iron Man had some name recognition before the 2008 movie. The same could not be said of any of the Guardians, who weren’t even well-known to most comic fans at the time. Who would be interested in a movie about a bunch of losers, who spend so much time arguing with one another that they can barely make time to save the world.

Turns out, James Gunn was interested. The very things that made them seem so risky to the average fan made Guardians the ideal vehicle for Gunn, giving him a chance to show off what he loves about the heroes that others ignore. By the time Peter Quill challenges Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) to a dance off, audiences had fallen in love with deep cuts like Rocket and Groot (Vin Diesel), and Gunn had finally found his true calling, as a director of blockbuster superhero movies.

5. Slither (2006)

Obviously, James Gunn is synonymous with superheroes. But his first directorial feature suggested that Gunn might follow a different trajectory, one toward blood and guts instead of capes and cowls. Slither owes a debt to the gooey horror movies of the 1970s and ’80s, paying direct homage to films such as David Cronenberg‘s Shivers and Wes Craven‘s A Nightmare on Elm Street, complete with stomach-churning body horror effects. However, Gunn adds a level of emotional vulnerability that shocked viewers at the time, but has proven to be one of his signature moves.

Slither stars Nathan Fillion as Chief Bill Pardy, a small-town cop who never got over his crush on schoolteacher Starla (Elizabeth Banks), despite the fact that she’s long-since married the local rich bully, Grant Grant (Michael Rooker). When a meteor filled with alien worms transforms Grant into a flesh-eating mutant, Bill and his friends must fight the invasion and rescue Starla from joining a gloopy horde of bodies, a story that builds to one of the most tender, if slimy, climaxes in Gunn’s filmography.

4. The Suicide Squad (2021)

James Gunn loves his loser superheroes, even if he also loves it when horrible things happen to them. Those two facts make The Suicide Squad the ideal Gunn superhero movie, even if it’s not quite his best superhero movie. Essentially given carte blanche by Warner Bros to make a DC film (still then an extension of Zack Snyder‘s DCEU) after being fired by Disney, Gunn leans into both of his passions for a movie about a government program that forces hapless supervillains to go on deadly black-ops missions.

In the first 10 minutes, Gunn introduces and then gleefully kills a set of Z-list baddies, including deep cuts like Savant (Michael Rooker), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), and Javelin (Flula Borg). But from there, he not only spends time developing the second group of oddities, turning Idris Elba’s Bloodsport and David Dastmalchian’s Polka-Dot Man into three-dimensional characters with genuine depth. Even better, Gunn uses superheroes as a metaphor for weapons of mass destruction in international relations, making The Suicide Squad a surprisingly trenchant critique of American interventions overseas. Throw in a couple of visually stunning sequences with Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and it’s easy to see how The Suicide Squad led to Gunn running the entire DC Universe.

3. Peacemaker (2022, 2025)

Gunn had originally planned for the Peacemaker Chris Smith to die at the end of The Suicide Squad, a decision nobody would have second-guessed. After all, Peacemaker is an ultimate D-lister of DC Comics, more famous for inspiring the Comedian in Watchmen than for anything he did in his handful of comic appearances. If Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Polka-Dot Man can’t make it through the movie, what hope does a nobody like Peacemaker have?

And yet, Gunn found John Cena‘s performance so compelling that he not only changed to ending to keep Chris around, but he gave Peacemaker two seasons of an HBO show. Even better, Peacemaker contained some of Gunn’s best work, turning a one-note meathead bully into a complicated portrait of a man trying to untangle himself from a heritage of racism and toxic masculinity. Anchored by a truly nuanced performance by Cena and adorned with superhero nonsense like alternate realities and evil alien butterflies, Peacemaker finds the real human beings within superhero spectacle.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

By this point, it’s an easy cliché to criticize Kevin Feige and the limitations that the Marvel house style puts on directors. But when you see a movie as vibrant and compelling as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, arguably the best movie in the entire MCU, it’s hard not to wonder what the film could have been if Gunn was given full control over the entire film.

On the surface, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 plays like an obvious Marvel sequel, with the misfits gathered in the first movie finding it harder than they expected to be a real team and facing a new threat in the form of Ego, the Living Planet (Kurt Russell). However, Gunn uses the success of the first Guardians movie to go not just bigger and more colorful, established immediately in the rainbow opening sequence, but to also go deeper. By forcing Peter to face his father, forcing Gamora to deal with her sister Nebula (Karen Gillan), and forcing Rocket to face his own self-destructive tendencies, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 turns the lovable goofballs from the first movie into fully developed people, worthy of attention beyond the action and the quips.

1. Superman (2025)

Nobody would have expected James Gunn to make a good Superman movie, least of all James Gunn. He famously turned down Warner Bros. the first time they asked him to direct, choosing to make The Suicide Squad instead. While he cites a general apprehension about taking on the world’s first superhero, one also assumes that Gunn felt more comfortable with the foul-mouthed failures in the Suicide Squad than he did with the squeaky-clean Man of Steel. How can a guy as cynical as Gunn make a movie about the ultimate optimist?

Turns out, the answer was, “Let Superman be optimistic and make everyone else cynical.” Right from the very beginning, Superman establishes David Corenswet’s character as an unrepentant cornball, someone who truly finds everyone on Earth beautiful and wants nothing more than to save the world. Gunn gives his cynicism to Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), to the Justice Gang, and to Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), and then watches as it melts away in the light of Superman’s pure goodness. The approach gives us a Superman film that’s not only politically resonant and refreshingly romantic, but is also the best and most unlikely entry in Gunn’s filmography.