Peacemaker: Review of First Three Episodes

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***

James Gunn’s HBO superhero series ‘Peacemaker’ isn’t great, but it’s good enough.

DC Comic’s show is a mixed bag, but it’s elevated by the relentless effort of star John Cena.

Peacemaker is the new DC Comics superhero series for HBO Max which premiered its first three episodes on January 13, with new episodes being released every Thursday until February 17.  

The show, which stars John Cena and is written and directed by the controversial James Gunn, is a spin-off from Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie from last summer.  

Peacemaker is DC’s first foray into prestige tv, and it’s in direct contrast to Marvel’s bevy of family-friendly Disney Plus tv shows in that it is decidedly raunchy, racy, irreverent and R-rated.

You see, Peacemaker the superhero isn’t the pretty poster boy for perfect patriotism like Marvel’s Captain America, no, he’s more like Captain America’s unbridled shadow. At best, Peacemaker is a morally ambiguous, sociopathic, white trash, trailer park superhero who demands the Dove of Peace be branded on all his weapons and who “loves peace so much he doesn’t care how many men, women, and children he has to kill to get it”…which sounds like something that should be chiseled in stone above the entrance to the Pentagon.

Of course, that’s what makes Peacemaker an interesting character is that while he is a lovable lunkhead, he’s also a walking, talking monument to America’s unadulterated adolescence and unabashed addiction to militarism, colonialism and fascism.

When the series opens, Peacemaker is given a clean bill of health after recovering from the grievous wounds that he received in The Suicide Squad. Upon his release from the hospital, he’s supposed to go back to prison to serve his life sentence, but instead gets co-opted by a “black ops” squad to assassinate some bad people under the moniker of “Project Butterfly”.

The very best thing about Peacemaker is unquestionably John Cena. I remember the first time I saw John Cena act it was in the 2015 Amy Schumer comedy Trainwreck. Cena had a small role in the film but stole every scene in which he appeared. The movie was awful but he was the best thing in it. He did the same thing in last summer’s The Suicide Squad, nearly stealing the whole movie.

What makes Cena so compelling is that he obviously isn’t a natural comedian, but he is absolutely fearless if not shameless, and works relentlessly hard to get a laugh, which is why he wins over audiences.

Admittedly, at times Cena’s act can wear a bit thin, but overall, it does work well on Peacemaker. Cena, with his cartoonish, comic book, pro wrestler’s body, comes across as a charismatic, magnetic and endearingly goofy on-screen presence.

The other driving force on Peacemaker is writer/director James Gunn. Gunn has grown a cult following for his work on the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and the signature bawdy banter he writes for his projects.

A few years ago, Gunn got into hot water when old tweets surfaced where he made some offensive rape and pedophilia jokes on Twitter. Not surprisingly considering our hyper-sensitive era which only grows more sensitive with every passing day, Disney fired him from future Guardians of the Galaxy movies because of his bad jokes. Incredibly, after actors and media outlets pushed back against Disney’s Gunn cancellation, the studio relented and brought him back into the Guardians of the Galaxy fold.

But while he was in Disney/Marvel purgatory he signed on with DC and Warner Bros. to make The Suicide Squad and now the spin-off Peacemaker.

Gunn’s work is an acquired taste and to be frank, I’m not exactly sure I’ve acquired it just yet. I liked his The Suicide Squad (2021) considerably more than the dreadful original Suicide Squad (2016), but that isn’t saying much.

I think what sort of grates me in regard to Gunn is that while he may pose as a rebellious edge lord, at his core he’s a kiss-ass sycophant who lacks the testicular fortitude to speak truth in the House of the Woke.

For instance, in typical flaccid fashion, on Peacemaker every white, male character is either an imbecile, a cuckold or an outright Nazi. How original.

According to Gunn, the second lead on the show is the character Leota (a poorly cast Danielle Brooks), who is, of course, a black lesbian, for no apparent reason other than blatant woke tokenism. How edgy.

To be fair, Gunn does at least occasionally get a bit clever with the woke stuff, like when he has hard-nosed beauty Emilia Harcourt (an excellent Jennifer Holland) give a passionate monologue to Peacemaker about how sick and tired she is of the oppressive and aggressive sexism of men in the world, and then cuts to a naked woman as Peacemaker has aggressive sex with her. But even that bit of self-awareness only results in highlighting Gunn’s overall weak-kneed woke acquiescence on the show.

Other issues are much more obvious, such as the action sequences being less than stellar and the production value being painfully thin.

But with that said, and even though the show is more amusing than laugh out loud funny, thanks to John Cena I still found Peacemaker compelling and entertaining enough that I will watch the rest of the series over the next month as the final five episodes become available.

Thus far the show isn’t anywhere near as good as say, The Boys, the more profound and less pubescently profane, brilliant superhero series on Amazon, but it is good enough.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking for some rather mindless, mildly amusing, bawdy and base, family unfriendly superhero fun featuring John Cena, then Peacemaker is definitely for you.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Suicide Squad : A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating : 0.75 STARS OUT OF 5

My Recommendation : Skip it.

Suicide Squad, written and directed by David Ayer, is the third film in the recent DC comics cinematic universe (Man of Steel 2013, Batman v. Superman : Dawn of Justice 2016) which tells the story of a ragtag group of super-villains and anti-heroes who are thrown together to use their evil talents for good. The film stars Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Jared Leto and Viola Davis to name just a few.

Suicide Squad was released last week on the heels of last March's much maligned Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I was one of those rare breed of people who, thanks to very low expectations, actually liked Batman v. Superman. Granted, I didn't think it was Citizen Kane, but I did think it was better than the horrible press it had received. Within that context, I was tentatively excited to see Suicide Squad when it came out. After having seen the film, I must report that my excitement was terribly, terribly misguided.

To put it as succinctly as possible, Suicide Squad made me want to kill myself…or someone else, namely the people who made it. If writer/director David Ayer or any studio executives from Warner Brothers are found in a shallow grave out in the desert, or wash ashore on Venice beach, or are discovered crucified to a Suicide Squad billboard, you'll know who's behind it. I am not worried about openly admitting my future crime as I am sure I can O.J. my way out of a conviction simply by showing Suicide Squad to the jury. No doubt a "justifiable homicide" determination would quickly follow.

From its marketing and trailers, Suicide Squad appears to be an anarchy and mayhem fueled, wild-ride rebellion of a film, which is right up my twisted alley. Sadly, in reality it is a relentlessly conventional, dull and formulaic film. Watching Suicide Squad is like watching someone else play a video game for two hours. The film is so vacuous it is little more than a commercial for itself and the films that will no doubt follow it. It is so sluggish as to be suffocating and is totally devoid of any intrigue, originality or life. 

Even though the stars of this film are villains (Harley Quin, Joker, Deadshot et al), the film suffers from the lack of a credible and interesting foil to oppose these superstar anti-heroes. The enemy that the Suicide Squad faces is the "Enchantress", who is an ancient mystical being from deep in South America who has possessed the soul of a young archeologist named June Moon, remarkably poorly played by the wooden Cara Delevingne. The Enchantress' minions are the people she has taken control over and turned into what look like faceless asphalt people who have zero self preservation instincts. Doing battle with endless tidal waves of amorphous asphalt people is a good way to make a film feel like a video game, of which I am sure there will be one on the market in no time. In keeping with the rest of the film, the fight scenes are terribly monotonous, predictable and asinine. 

The film is so shallow and thoughtless that it repeats itself numerous times over with recurring shots, lines and sequences. If I had to see the asphalt people attack Special Forces soldier Rick Flag one more time, and the Suicide Squad want to let him die and then decide to save him with the line, "if he dies, WE die!" I was going to die…and take every poor bastard in the theatre with me. 

The script and story are absolutely incoherent and absurd. There are character changes of heart that come out of nowhere, such as the whole El Diablo character arc, and illogical and repetitive narrative choices that drive the story from one ditch to another. The feeling I get is that the original script was awful, then they brought in other writers to punch it up who made it even more awful, and then the studio heads put their two cents in and completed the mountain of poop for which they had just paid hundreds of millions of dollars. In the end it is just a giant stew of human, horse and dog shit haphazardly slapped together.

Were there any bright spots? Well…you have to look very very hard, but the unconscionably beautiful Margot Robbie does a great, if flawed job as Harley Quinn. Her accent comes and goes a bit, but she does develop an actual and intriguingly genuine character of depth. Jared Leto does an admirable job as the Joker even though he is terribly underused. Leto is following in the footsteps of the late Heath ledger's iconic performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, so he has big, crazy shoes to fill. Leto's Joker is not a continuation of Ledger's (which is a mistake by the studio, but that is a story for another day), they are two totally separate entities from different DC universes, but Leto does the best he can with the very little what he's given. Leto's Joker is more ghetto gangster than Ledger's genius anarchist sociopath, but it works well enough. Truth is I think The Joker and Harley Quinn's story should have been it's own film. It is a pretty fascinating tale and both Robbie and Leto have the skill, talent and charisma to carry a film like that…especially if it is just a B story in a Batman v. Joker film, but obviously I am not as brilliant as the numb nuts running Warner Brothers so feel free to ignore my suggestions.

Another "good" part of Suicide Squad is actually very telling as to why the movie is so appalling, namely that Will Smith is one of the best things in it. I loathe Will Smith as an actor ( or 'rapper" for that matter). He is as contrived and manufactured as it gets. There is not a genuine bone or performance lurking anywhere in Will Smith's body. He does well in Suicide Squad though because he can pose and preen with just enough star power to make him seem at home on the big screen, which isn't always the case with all of the other actors, Robbie and Leto being the notable exceptions. Smith being a bright spot is a black spot for the film as it highlights the film's stultifying conventionalism. 

As for bad performances, there are many. Rick Flag is played by Joel Kinnaman and he is just atrociously dreadful. The only other thing I have seen him in is last seasons House of Cards, where he is equally dreadful, which makes me think Mr. Kinnaman is just a plain dreadful actor who has been the recipient of a charisma bypass. Did I mention how dreadfully dreadful his dreadful performance was? Speaking of dreadful, Viola Davis is unquestionably a great actress, she has been nominated for an Oscar and won an Emmy, this lady can act. But in Suicide Squad she is absolutely ghastly, just abominable. She is so wooden and lifeless I was worried she had suffered a major stroke during filming and was just being propped up in front of the camera and had special effects puppetry people moving her mouth for her. It was inconceivable to me prior to Suicide Squad that Viola Davis would be capable of being so appallingly bad in a role and so uncomfortable on screen, but sadly, Suicide Squad and director David Ayer brought Viola Davis to new lows.

The thing that I find so frustrating about Suicide Squad in particular, and the recent Warner Brothers - DC comics films in general, are that they really have the potential to be truly great. The source material is stellar, with the DC mythology being as psychologically rich and complex as any in modern storytelling. Yet Warner Brothers has stumbled all over itself on this recent spate of DC films. Why is that?

The biggest problem with the current crop of WB/DC films is that the studio has placed its trust in deeply flawed writers and directors like Zack Snyder and David Ayer. The earlier Dark Knight trilogy, which was so financially and critically successful, was directed by Christopher Nolan, an innovative and creative master. Snyder and Ayer are nowhere near the talent of a visionary like Christopher Nolan. In addition, the studio itself has meddled far too much with the films during every stage of production, creating a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' scenario. As limited as Snyder and Ayer are as filmmakers, and boy are they limited, it hamstrings them even more to have studio clowns sticking their fingers in every pie and adding salt to every soup. Nolan's films succeeded because they set out to tell a great story and make quality cinema. The recent DC films have failed because the studio has set out to make gobs of money while ignoring story, character and cinematic integrity.

What Suicide Squad and all the rest of the DC films need is a strong, ambitious and creative leader with a distinct visual and storytelling style at the helm to steer the ship. Watching Suicide Squad I couldn't help but think of David Fincher's iconic Fight Club, which is what Suicide Squad should have stylistically tried to emulate. Wrangling a top director like Fincher to sign on to direct or produce DC films would no doubt be a tough get, but something dramatic along those lines needs to be done in order to save this run of films, which is scheduled to go well into the next decade, from being a studio destroying debacle. Whoever the studio gets to try and right the ship, it is clear that Zack Snyder must go…and he needs to take David Ayer with him, but sadly, all signs point to Warner Brothers holding steady with Snyder and company running the show for the foreseeable future. 

The one positive that may come from this disastrous run of WB/DC films is that they may get so bad that a re-boot will be in order in our near future. Frankly, a re-boot is what they need. Get a top notch visionary to direct and/or produce the films and start over. Not all the errors of this Zack Snyder run can be corrected, such as the decision to not continue the story lines and universe of Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and expanding from there, but many of them can be corrected. For instance, Suicide Squad should have been made much further down the road in the series of DC films Warner Brothers is making. You need to establish the characters who star in Suicide Squad as villains in other films before you lump them all together in a big group film. WB, not surprisingly, got all of that backwards, while the folks over at Disney/Marvel have done it perfectly. 

In the end, Suicide Squad is making a ton of money, but it is fools gold. The studio may think they have a golden goose in their DC properties, but audiences will only tolerate so much garbage before the whole house of cards collapses. Warner Brothers is headed for a harsh reckoning in regards to their DC films, and the corporate bloodbath that will unfold will be eminently more entertaining than the slop they are putting on screen to sell to the public now.

In conclusion, Suicide Squad is a terrible waste of a film. It is an incoherent, tedious and annoying mess of a movie. Don't waste your money by seeing it in the theaters, and don't waste your time seeing it anywhere else for free. You'd be better served, and more entertained sticking your head in an oven for two hours than sitting in front of this dog of a movie for single second. 

©2016