If you wanted a glimpse into 2025 pop culture circa. 2000, you needn't have tuned into an episode of ER nor watched that summer's biggest box office champions like Gladiator or The Perfect Storm. Instead, all you had to do was wander into one of the two North American theaters showing The Specials in its theatrical run. A superhero comedy filmed before the original X-Men movie or The Incredibles, The Special was directed by future The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin. Writing and co-starring in the movie, meanwhile, was James Gunn.
To make matters even more insane, this ramshackle yukfest was also how Gunn met producer and agent Peter Safran, who would later run DC Studios with the future Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker. The groundwork for major 2025 pop culture properties like The Last of Us and Superman was paved in The Specials. However, that doesn’t mean this 2000 motion picture instantly evokes the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 or Chernobyl.
In Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, writer/director Chip Kidd remarks that the artwork of the earliest Peanuts comics “…is fascinating in light of what it would become. The roots of the iconic characters are there, but they have a long way to go. Knowing how they will evolve makes their debuts all the more intriguing, like seeing baby pictures of celebrities.”
That same principle applies here in Gunn’s writing. One can see this man’s fascinations with juxtaposing superheroes with down-to-Earth problems right away. However, he hasn’t quite got the technique down just right yet. These are Gunn’s equivalent to the earliest Peanuts comics.
The titular group in The Specials is a superhero team that opening on-screen text declares is “the sixth or seventh best in the world.” Led by uptight egomaniac The Strobe (Thomas Haden Church), the group, which also includes The Weevil (Rob Lowe) and Power Chick (Kelly Coffield), welcomes new member Nightbird (Jordan Ladd) as Gunn's script begins. There's constant friction within this group and they've rarely had a chance to live up to their full superhero potential. However, the opportunity to get realized as action figures figures inspires hope that crime-fighters like the blue-skinned Amok (Jamie Kennedy) can finally get respect.
So begins a story intentionally centered on the ordinary events of these super-powered oddballs. There are no supervillains to fight in The Specials, but there is martial strife between Strobe and his partner Ms. Indestructible (Paget Brewster) or shrinking superhero Minute Man (Gunn) getting frustrated that nobody knows how to pronounce his name. Emphasizing the vulnerabilities and foibles of these ragtag characters produces some solid laughs, particularly whenever the camera focuses on Deadly Girl (Judy Greer).
A superhero with the ability to conjure up demons, Greer plays this character with such hysterical aloof jadedness. The way she delivers line like "I summoned four demons at a bar mitzvah and they ate a kid" had me so in stitches that I wonder why she wasn’t the lead character. The Specials’ superhero satire isn’t necessarily bad, but it doesn’t produce much belly laughs beyond Deadly Girl. The 90s were crammed with properties skewering superheroes, including manic cartoons like Freakazoid! and The Tick. The Specials struggles creating specific or unique gags that can separate it from this crowded pack.
Gunn’s script also could’ve used more sequences involving The Specials navigating ordinary reality. Too much screentime (particularly in the first 20 minutes) is spent on exposition regarding the heightened origins of these characters, meetings between outlandishly costumed superheroes, or meetings with toy company executives. The potential in contrasting grandiose crime-fighters and ordinary reality rarely appears, save for fleeting moments like Minute Men ranting at random women in a nearby car or The Weevil getting chased by paparazzi.
In his later scripts, Gunn wrung dynamite entertainment out of darker superheroes with The Suicide Squad or crowdpleaser thrills centered on outcast crime-fighters in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. Even 2011’s mega-flawed but still interesting Super showed more conviction in its extreme depiction of grimy psychological torment and superhero tropes colliding. The Specials is more of a creative flatline, especially since “transgressive” jokes about “a holocaust of stretchy people” or Amok announcing he’s going to commit evil acts on dogs epitomizes Gunn’s earlier, tiresome edgelord comedy schtick. Once he learned to balance sincerity with elements like sharks bloodily ripping people apart in The Suicide Squad, his writing drastically improved.
Because both the comedy and commentary on superheroes aren’t especially noteworthy, The Specials is mostly an in one ear, out the other kind of cinematic experience. Standout elements, though include a lengthy skewering of 90s toy standards and some of the commendable performances. An extended commercial where various members of The Specials “hype” up the team while cardboard cutouts of their companions loom in the background is also amusing. Mazin and cinematographer Eliot Rockett clearly knew their stuff in how these sorts of instructional/promotional videos operated visually.
Speaking of the director, flickers of Mazin’s deft balancing of a large ensemble cast in 2019’s masterpiece Chernobyl materialize in how each Specials cast member gets a moment to shine. Greer’s the movie’s MVP, but even briefly seen actors like Melissa Joan Hart or the eight performers portraying superhero Eight (a single person split across eight bodies) leave an impression.
Easily the standout moment of The Specials, though, comes towards the end. As Amok, Power Chick, and Alien Orphan (Sean Gunn) gloomily hang out in a bar, Alien Orphan is drawn to the stage as Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” starts blaring. Moments later, he's up on the stage dancing alone. Gradually, three other members of The Specials join him, much to the delight of the other bar patrons. The sequence then turns into a dance number as these ragtag superheroes find joy in music and dancing together.
This segment is such a vibrant precursor to later Gunn set pieces like Guardians of the Galaxy’s “Come and Get Your Love” opening or the Peacemaker theme song. No wonder it’s the most fun portion of The Specials, it’s the one infused with the most discernible Gunn energy. Right from the start, Gunn loved showing that even stylized superheroes could boogie while also smartly utilizing vintage needle drops you don’t often hear in movies. The rest of The Specials isn’t anywhere near as good as either Mazin or Gunn’s later best works. But that Alien Orphan dance sequence really is striking for how vividly consistent it is with the bigger-budgeted, more high-profile superhero films Gunn would become famous for. Who knew, in 2000, that this number was a glimpse into so many future artistic endeavors?