I Watch TV: Peacemaker

Peacemaker

John Cena’s character Peacemaker returns from The Suicide Squad, possibly looking for redemption, not sure exactly. James Gunn, writer and director, does know exactly what he wants here – an emphasis on gore and horror-comic violence, fast-talking off-centre digressions. Horrible and beautiful enemies. Cool fights and stunts. Flawed characters, horribly flawed, horrible characters, who are charismatic and fascinating.

Peacemaker’s deep commitment to America and the cause of peace, ridiculous to the point of villainy in Suicide Squad is continually challenged. And then undercut. This is put directly in the text when Peacemaker, upset at being betrayed by one of the team, childishly insults and makes farting noises at them. When it comes time to actually have the conversation Vigilante, his psychopathic crime-fighting partner, complains that they were having a good fart-and-joke run and it’s now spoiled by these actual feelings and issues.

This though is not how the show finally comes down to a point. The characters and their relationships are important, the bloody, stupid and weird stuff that drives them together and onwards and continually interrupts them when they’re having a run on music, or movies, or sex, or costumes, that’s the distraction. Without it we wouldn’t have a team or a show. Yet it’s the means not the end.

As I said, this is clearly the vision of James Gunn, and good for him to bring his idiosyncratic turns to the superhero TV show, making something unusual. Or is it? Is gross violence, jokes whose maturity is in the language and topic rather than the sophistication, and a surface-level opposition to racism really that ground-breaking? Is setting up villains as grotesque and horrible and also as possible saviours, characters being played by different actors (and actors playing different characters) with multiple levels of coercion and betrayal by the heroes own team, only for it all to be wiped away with punches, gunshots and explosions, is that a bold step forward?

The show has a tremendous amount of talent, skill and money on display. Yet it’s set in a slightly grimy, gritty bit of the Pacific North West, in trailers and an abandoned video store, in a old-fashioned mediocre restaurant and a clean but rough bar, in barns and warehouses and single lane roads in the woods. It is a very deliberate and well put-together piece that wants us to think it’s been knocked together quickly by a gang of rough-and-ready weirdos. And, like the rest of it, that’s fine, but… well it’s fine.

Watch This: Cool, violent, fast-talking superhero action
Don’t Watch This: It’s gory and dumb
Also: The opening titles are unrelated to the show, but also sum it up? I guess?