26 Years Later, James Gunn's First Superhero Movie Is Aging Like Fine Wine

Published May 31, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

Together, this group, some of whom fought like cats and dogs during the production, would create a superhero comedy on a budget that topped off at about a million dollars. When the movie was released, it got pretty bad reviews and made just $13,276 at the box office. If not for a lot of talent and little luck, The Specials would almost certainly be forgotten today. Instead, it stands out as a map that lays out the path James Gunn's career has taken.

The Specials Has All The Hallmarks Of A James Gunn Movie

While Craig Mazin, best known today for HBO's Chernobyl and The Last of Us, directed The Specials, it is undoubtedly a James Gunn movie. His love for the genre is evident, even if the movie itself avoids fight scenes (remember, the budget was significantly less than what the highest budgeted movies of all time spent on craft service), and the story feels like it could have been a storyline during the Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis Justice League years.

The focus is on character dynamics, centering on a 24-hour period in the life of the team as they await the reveal of their own line of action figures. In that time, the team faces its greatest threat: their own egos. As The Strobe, the leader of the team, rambles on about how great he is, he doesn't realize that his wife, Ms. Indestructible, is having an affair with his teammate, The Weevil. Meanwhile, Amok, a former villain, is trying to get people to accept that he's become a hero, while Minute Man (who shrinks and is not a soldier in the American Revolution) is hoping to go out with Nightbird, the newest member of the team.

Along for the ride are U.S. Bill, a not very smart guy who won't reveal his identity to his teammates, Mr. Smart, the self-professed smartest man in the world, and Deadly Girl, who cares about her teammates but doesn't want them to know it. The team works out of a suburban house and is, by all accounts, the laughingstock of the superhero world.

Gunn's humor runs through the movie, but so is his ability to slip in truly heartfelt moments that take the audience by surprise. There is a moment between U.S. Bill and his mother that manages to go from heartbreaking to hilarious faster than a speeding bullet, and a moment of Paget Brewster's Ms. Indestructible watching her wedding video is award worthy. And, yes, there is even a moment where members of the team dance to an obscure song that will end up stuck in your head for days. All these years later, The Specials script makes it obvious that Gunn was destined to be one of the best superhero movie directors.

The Specials Gave James Gunn His Career, But Not Because Of The Movie Itself

James Gunn has credited The Specials for kickstarting his Hollywood career. Not the movie, just the script. He's been clear, especially on the 2005 commentary he recorded with Paget Brewster, that before the movie was made, the script got him other jobs in the industry, including a Spy vs. Spy movie that never got made, a TV pilot for Joss Whedon, and, most importantly, Scooby-Doo. As for the movie itself, Gunn clearly has mixed feelings about it.

In the commentary, he is open about the fights he and Craig Mazin had on set (but that is all water under the bridge now). He also discusses a time when Jamie Kennedy threw a chair at him. Brewster also claims that Kennedy and Mazin butted heads a number of times during filming. Mazin has also discussed how making the movie was difficult, saying that the budget and time allotted to film didn't allow him to shoot the movie the way he and Gunn originally imagined it.

But the movie itself, almost three decades later, works pretty well. Some of the jokes fall flat, and others haven't aged well (though there are significantly fewer problematic jokes in The Specials than there is in most early 2000s comedies), but the ones that work — and there are a lot of them — work really well. A lot of that is due to an absolutely amazing cast. There isn't a member of The Specials who doesn't hold their own. The Specials won't be on anyone's top 10 superhero movies, but it is a movie that should not be forgotten when the history of the genre is discussed.