General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Specials (2000 film)

The Specials is a 2000 American comedy film about a second-tier superhero team, directed by Craig Mazin and written by James Gunn, who also co-stars. The film follows the sixth or seventh best superhero team in the world, whose members spend more energy on petty infighting than on heroics, and it was released in a limited theatrical run in September 2000.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Craig Mazin (directorial debut); James Gunn (screenplay)¹^•³
Principal cast	Rob Lowe (The Weevil), Thomas Haden Church (The Strobe), Jamie Kennedy (Amok), Paget Brewster (Ms. Indestructible), Kelly Coffield (Power Chick)¹
Release	Los Angeles and New York openings 22 September 2000, limited release¹^•²
Runtime / rating	82 minutes; MPAA rating R (for strong language)¹^•²
Production / distribution	Brillstein-Grey Entertainment and Mindfire Entertainment; distributed by Regent Entertainment¹^•⁴
Box office	$13.0K gross in the United States⁴
Reception	47% Tomatometer (15 reviews) and 54% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes⁴

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The film is set in a world like our own except that superheroes exist. The Specials are the sixth or seventh best superhero team, the also-rans who take whatever missions the better groups are too busy to handle. With too much time on their hands, the members turn their energies inward, into petty fights, intragroup love affairs, financial squabbles, and misguided attempts to raise their public profile.²

The team's fortunes appear to change when they sign a deal with the toy conglomerate Kosgro Toys to produce a line of action figures, which the synopsis calls the superhero equivalent of winning an Oscar. As the team prepares for the banquet Kosgro holds in their honor, long-held tensions surface: The Weevil is being courted to join a better group, the newest member Nightbird (Jordan Ladd) doubts her choice to join, and The Strobe's marriage to Ms. Indestructible is crumbling. The disastrous unveiling of the action figures, which mock the team more than honor them, brings matters to a head; The Strobe then learns his wife is harboring a secret and disbands the team.²

The A.V. Club described the result as a superhero movie nearly devoid of superheroics and special effects, an "inaction movie" in which the misfit team members talk, brood, and navigate personal and professional crises; one member's superpower is the lamentable ability to lay eggs.⁵

Production and people

James Gunn wrote the screenplay, executive produced, and co-starred as Minute Man, the shrinking superhero. At a 2000 San Diego Comic-Con panel he explained the premise's origin: he had always been more interested in the private lives of superheroes than in their battles, and in the way any job, from rock star to film director, ends up being a job like working at a furniture store. In the film, the superheroes have gotten used to their work; it is the same as working at The Gap, he said. Gunn had previously spent two years at Troma Studios, where he wrote Tromeo and Juliet, and he credited this script with launching all his later work.⁶

For Mazin, The Specials was a directing debut after scripting Rocket Man and Senseless.³ The Los Angeles Times reviewer Kevin Thomas noted that Mazin and Gunn seemed to be in an anti-special-effects mode, or possibly constrained by an obviously low budget.³ The supporting cast also includes Melissa Joan Hart, Judy Greer, Sean Gunn, Chase Masterson, and John Doe.² The crew included cinematographer Eliot Rockett, editor Stephen Garrett, production designer Dorian Vernacchio, and composer Brian Langsbard.¹

A later account records that the production was also how Gunn met producer and agent Peter Safran, who decades later ran DC Studios alongside him.⁷

Release and reception

The film opened in Los Angeles and New York on 22 September 2000, in a limited release; Rotten Tomatoes lists an original theatrical date of 18 September 2000.¹^•⁴ It played in only a handful of North American theaters during its run.⁷ The theatrical release grossed $13.0K in the United States, and the film reached DVD on 22 February 2005.⁴

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 47% Tomatometer from 15 reviews and a 54% audience score.⁴ Reviewers quoted there called it a surprisingly amusing superhero satire and a low-key parody whose deadpan nuttiness sneaks up on the viewer.⁴ The A.V. Club's DVD review observed that the film arrived when the superhero genre was at low ebb, with the Superman and Batman series dormant and Mystery Men recently unsuccessful, and that by 2005 the genre's comeback made the film's juxtaposition of the superhuman and the mundane timely again.⁵ The same review noted that on the DVD commentary Gunn criticized Mazin, his first-time director, for pitching the comedy too broad, while judging the finished film more deadpan than Gunn's account suggested.⁵

Place in James Gunn's career

The Specials was the first superhero film Gunn wrote, predating his directorial work in the genre by a decade.⁴ It stands at the start of a line of subversive superhero projects that includes Super (2010), which Gunn wrote and directed, and Brightburn (2019), which he produced, before his mainstream work on the Guardians of the Galaxy films and his later role at DC Studios.⁸ A scholarly study of transmedia superhero franchises notes that Marvel drew on Gunn's indie credibility as the writer of satirical superhero ventures including The Specials when assigning him the considerably more costly Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).⁹ Commentators have also identified the film's dance sequence, in which the team finds joy in music together, as a precursor to Gunn's later music-driven set pieces in Guardians of the Galaxy and Peacemaker.⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026