Forbes Contributor Gives Disney Path of Atonement for Firing James Gunn

Apparently Forbes contributor Scott Mendelson thinks Disney and Marvel must atone for the sin of firing James Gunn from his role as director and script writer for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 3 after a history of pedophilia-related tweets came to light, and he's offered a few opportunities for the corporate HMFICs to "save face" in the way they proceed.

Heaven forfend Disney and Marvel should simply keep their focus on producing great movies. No, they must now be ready to not just hire a new director -- they have to cast one.

Mendelson's spoken regret seems to lie with the fact that Disney acted so quickly in making their decision, based on, per him, "a somewhat manufactured controversy organized by right-wing political operatives as punishment for speaking out against our current administration." That's a pretty eye-roll-inducing supposition, but out of fairness we'll accept that this is what he believes. There are plenty of people who believe Roseanne was fired -- by the same parent company, and with the same expediency -- because of 'left-wing political operatives as punishment for speaking out for our current administration.' So, scales balanced, I suppose. (Mendelson makes no reference to the parallels of the Roseanne incident in his article.)

To be fair, Mendelson has a good idea with his suggestion to replace Gunn with THOR: RAGNAROK director Taika Waititi. Given how THOR: RAGNAROK events melded into AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR by way of the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, this makes a tremendous amount of sense.

I'm also not overtly opposed to his suggestion of hiring the Wachowskis to direct GOTG3 -- although MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS and JUPITER ASCENDING might be arguments against that kind of a decision. However, it's not for their cinematic prowess that Mendelson recommends them, but for their transgender lifestyle, seeing the move as one that would "inflame the 'very fine people' who helped get Gun fired in the first place" -- with 'very fine people' being a jackhammer-subtle way of saying he thinks those who got Gunn fired were Nazis. (Apparently they're time-traveling Nazis to boot, enabling them to the past and force Gunn to tweet pedophilia jokes -- some to his buddy, convicted child porn trafficker Huston Huddleston -- over the course of four years.)

But let's meet on a middle ground. Disney -- and their subsidiaries -- probably should take a little more time to consider such decisions when confronted with the cries of the Social Mafia. Maybe that's the lesson that can be taken away from this. Having that kind of an approach might have resulted in Gunn remaining on GOTG3 --and in Roseanne Barr remaining on ROSEANNE at ABC. Maybe we can all keep this in mind the next time someone's online history pisses off the wrong person.

As for saving face, I recommend Disney focus on one thing in finding a director: one who can tell a good story.