@ccgod: Adding to that, having previously released on video on demand back in July likely means that the few people who wanted to see it already watched it.

@steamaddict: This stuff has been happening ever since the internet was a thing. People getting into trouble for crap that they put online is not in any way new. It's just that most cases of it don't get any kind of media attention because the people involved aren't high profile.

@93ChevyNut: "I still think Disney is laying down some double standards here though. He can't direct the film but they'll gladly use his script??"

Well, to be fair, what are they realistically supposed to do? Never mind throwing out the script, wouldn't they also then have to immediately pull Guardians 1 and 2 from sale and never make another penny off of them?

Heck, even a chef could get fired from a restaurant, but that doesn't mean that the restaurant is immediately going to pull every single thing the chef came up with. They're not going to immediately throw thousands of dollars worth of product in the trash just because he got fired, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't totally justified in firing him.

@hosedandhappy: You can argue that if you'd like, but that's a lot EASIER to argue if a different group throws a bigger fit and then Disney immediately caves.

If Disney's stance right now is that Gunn's firing was because of stuff like company image and core values, then they sort of have to stick by their decision unless any new information has come to light (along the lines of something like the tweets having been fabricated and not actually made by Gunn). Hiring him back (at least this soon, in this capacity for this job) would ABSOLUTELY be seen as caving in to people who were throwing fits. And once that's established, that only further validates that they were caving in to pressure from internet trolls when they fired him in the first place.

"Given the growing political divide in this country, it's safe to say instances like this will continue"

Yep. Which ought to be a lesson to people to start watching their asses when it comes to what they say online. I readily admit that it's easy to make a slip-up (though perhaps not on the level of Gunn's comments), but this is all the more reason to be VERY careful and think about what's being said before saying it. Especially when it comes to anything edgy or controversial. In Gunn's case he was trying to be edgy, it wasn't an accident. Think of this stuff like a tattoo. It's one thing to SAY something to a person's face. But like a tattoo, posting something online is something that you should expect to not be forgeotten or easily erased. If you're not comfortable with the prospect of it being dug up 10 or 20 years in the future, then you probably shouldn't say it.

Anyway, yeah...of course he's not being rehired. That may happen eventually in some capacity. But right now? The decision to fire him came from some of the top dogs. Even if they changed their minds and think that they overreacted or miscalculated the public's response, they can't just immediately backpedal because some people complained and made petitions. Their decision has to come off as THEIR decision, and it has to be made with the look of confidence and authority. They might have been too quick in making the decision. They might have even made the "wrong" decision. But they made the decision and they sort of have to stick by it. That's kind of how this stuff works. When you're in that kind of position with that kind of authority over people, it's DANGEROUS to start giving the impression that you're going to just backpedal on your decisions if enough people complain. Right or wrong, firing Gunn was a definitive decision and Disney sort of has to lie in the bed that they made.

@pootamusmaximus: Which freedom were they assaulting here? Our freedom to be blasted in the face with annoying ads?

If the advertising team behind this movie wants to put their ad on a different website, they can go right ahead and do that and Youtube can't mandate a thing.

""Tolkien's greatest invention was the characters who struggle with the temptation of the Ring and what to do with it," Tolkien said"

Haha, hooray for proofreading.

Anyway, I've got nothing against killing off important characters if it's meaningful or it helps the story. But it sounds like what he's saying is that he say that happened and it shocked him, so now he's just doing it for shock value.

@deviltaz35: What the hell are you talking about? Youtube chose to pull it. Even if you think it was silly to remove the ad, this has nothing to do with "mandatory censorship."

Also, it's not like this was an actual trailer that you have to choose to watch. It wasn't that long ago that people were complaining about those annoying pop-up ads that would appear whenever you'd go on a specific website, and blast you in the ear with full volume. How is this fundamentally any different? Since when did "I want more annoying ads" become a thing?

@tsunami2311: The problem is that the people at Disney apparently DIDN'T dig through his social media posts. It's not Disney who dug up 10 year old posts. It's alt-right trolls who hated James Gunn for political reasons that dug up the posts. Disney's problem is that they didn't properly vet the guy when they hired him. Disney SHOULD have dug through the guy's social media posts before giving him the job. That way they could either avoid hiring him altogether and prevent this entire mess, or prepare a proper response in the event that this S*** ever got brought into the public eye.

Say whatever you want about whether or not it was "fair" to fire Gunn, but regardless, Disney apparently needs to be a bit more strict with their vetting process. This isn't even the worse example I can think of. Remember the Victor Salva thing? Where Disney somehow managed to RELEASE a movie while (allegedly) not having known that the director of the movie was an actual convicted sex offender who had served time in prison for molesting a kid on the set of a different (non-Disney) movie. Yeah, that's an actual thing that happened.

So yeah...regardless of whether or not Disney dropped the ball by firing James Gunn, then I think it's pretty clear that Disney has on more than one occasion dropped the ball with regards to hiring. If anything, they need to be looking through people's posts MORE before hiring them. If Disney had caught this stuff way back when they were first considering hiring him, they could have turned him down way back then and then all this s*** never would have been an issue.

@dragoonmike: Duh. Which, like I said, is precisely why Dave Bautista's crying had f***-all to do with this, and why Disney was highly unlikely to scrap the script regardless of how much people complained. They care about MONEY. Did anyone here REALLY think they were just going to take the completed script and scrap it entirely? They already paid Gunn for the work, it wouldn't be a very smart business decision to throw the work in the trash after paying Gunn to do it, and then start over from scratch.