From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Do you really want to, do you really want to taste it?

It's the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. The last time our guest, James Gunn, was here. It was 2014 when we were talking about loneliness,

and more importantly, envy in Guardians of the Galaxy and his era up-to-date.

It's been playing a really big part in the movie Superman, which you may have heard of,

I'm sure she was still playing it at the theater near you,

but we're more importantly here to talk about a new season of Peacemaker on HBO Max. Russell Russell James. It's a pleasure to have you back. Thanks so much you're doing this again. Oh, that's good to hear from you again, too. We were talking about envy and how it had run through so much of your work up until that point, and that seemed to surprise you. So it shocked me to see how big a part envy played in the Superman movie.

Yeah, I mean, I think it really is, you know, the fact that Lex Luther, who is really my favorite supervillain, when portrayed correctly, what I think of is correctly, is he thinks of his jealousy or his envy almost as a spiritual quest, as a God-given, you know, desire so that he can rid the earth of Superman. And I like that. I don't, I mean, I don't like that part of him as a human being, but I like that part of him as a character. A lot of these things you've been doing that, I think touch on loaningness had really been sort of like post-COVID.

And I'm wondering how much that stuff is kind of affected your own writing and your own thinking about the world.

I think COVID combined with sort of the disintegration of American cohesion over the past 10 years has definitely contributed to

maybe my sense of loneliness, maybe a loss of hope with so many people that I think

it's hard to avoid that those things have an effect on what I

create. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting just because there's so much about these two seasons

of peacemaker that had been almost about kind of a claustrophobic loneliness. And what's

been interesting, too, is watching how much better John Senna has become as an actor since Suicide Squad.

Oh, there's no doubt.

I mean, that was the thing.

When I did Suicide Squad, I really could see the potential in John.

But John is a wonderful actor, a wonderful person to work with because he has no ego. And he knew he was just

starting out as an actor, really, around that time. And since that time, he's just committed

himself to actually becoming an actor. And I think he's just fantastic in this season of Peacemaker.

I think it's interesting.

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