James Gunn calls out online requests to have Chris Pratt replaced as Star-Lord

Chris Pratt, for whatever reason, has seen himself on the wrong side of a social media push to have him removed from the MCU as Star-Lord. One person firmly supporting Pratt is director James Gunn, who has directed the actor across three Guardians of The Galaxy films. He’s also making it clear that if Chris Pratt was ever replaced, The Guardians family would be going with him.

James Gunn took to Twitter and made his feelings abundantly clear that he does not support the series of posts he has seen on the platform that is calling for Pratt to be replaced. There is one post, in particular, that got Gunn’s attention and it suggested that Marvel should replace the actor with Patrick Wilson if Star-Lord has future appearances in the MCU beyond the third Guardians film. Gunn shared the post and wrote a caption that read, “For what? Because of your made-up, utterly-false beliefs about him? For something that someone else told you about him that’s not true? Chris Pratt would never be replaced as Star-Lord but, if he ever was, we would all be going with him.” You can check out the post below!

So where is this coming from? Well, in another post, Gunn was asked if he was “cool” with Chris Pratt being a part of a homophobic church. Pratt has received a lot of flack in the past for his religious beliefs but Gunn once again wasn’t going to let this statement be accepted as fact. He defended Pratt once again and made it clear that it’s not true that he belongs to a homophobic church. Gunn said, “He isn’t. I know the church he currently goes to. Do you? (The answer is you don’t, but you heard from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone where he goes to church, so decided, “yeah, okay, I’ll believe this terrible thing I heard online about this celebrity!”)” You can check out that post below as well!

James Gunn is no stranger to being on the negative end of cancel culture. Following old tweets being unearthed that were very questionable, Disney fired the director from helming the third Guardians of The Galaxy. Gunn ended up getting a lot of support from fans and the entire cast of the film who believed that it was a mistake, he atoned for it, and that he didn’t deserve to lose his job. Gunn was eventually hired back after scoring The Suicide Squad from Warner Bros. and he came out ahead of the scandal. Other than being friends with Chris Pratt, I’m sure he wants to defend him because he knows how toxic cancel culture can be.

The release of the Thor: Love and Thunder trailer, which features Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, seemed to reignite some of these calls on social media to have him replaced. I highly doubt Chris Pratt will be going anywhere but he does have a very busy summer ahead where he will be heavily in the media. He has Jurassic World: Dominion opening in June and Thor: Love and Thunder follows just a month later. Will this chatter die down? Only time will tell.

What are YOUR thoughts on James Gunn defending Chris Pratt?