Do you really wanna taste it?

A review of James Gunn's "Peacemaker"

Can people change for the better?

That’s the question writer and director James Gunn poses throughout the recently concluded HBO Max series Peacemaker, his deliriously irreverent take on the self-serious movies and television shows of the DC Extended Universe. But as genuinely funny and gleefully outrageous as Peacemaker can get – and it gets very funny and extraordinarily outrageous at times – Gunn never forgets to keep his characters as well as their myriad faults and foibles front and center. As he’s done so well before, Gunn expertly balances the absurd and fantastical with the sincere and heartfelt – all while skewering an excessively po-faced DC comics mythos.

Gunn sets Peacemaker’s tone from the get-go, where the title character (a.k.a. Christopher Smith, played by former professional wrestler John Cena) encounters a hospital janitor when he wakes after the events of Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. The MIT-educated janitor (yes, you read that right) laughs off Peacemaker’s claim to be a superhero, asserting that Aquaman’s a real superhero. “Fuck Aquaman!” a hospital gown-clad Peacemaker retorts indignantly. He goes on to relate that a random Twitter user who supposedly works for an aquarium says Aquaman pays him $50 so the maritime superhero can “have his way with a sturgeon”– and why, Peacemaker asks, would @PepeTheFrog89 lie to him for no reason?

Right away, Gunn establishes Peacemaker as a well-intentioned but horribly misinformed and misguided soul. That’s due in part to Peacemaker’s credulous acceptance of whatever he reads on the internet, from tall tales about the “deep state” to absurd urban legends about the unusual sexual practices of other DC superheroes like Superman and Green Arrow (though as one of Peacemaker’s comrades-in-arms notes, the rumors about Green Arrow happen to be true). It’s a stinging satire of our own preoccupations with social media and our attendant vulnerability to misinformation, but one that doesn’t pass judgment on Peacemaker himself beyond calling attention to his naivete and immaturity.

But Peacemaker’s character has also been warped by the malign childhood influence of his vicious and sadistic white supremacist father. For all his faults, it’s clear that Peacemaker isn’t his father’s son – but being raised with such cruelty left its mark. All in all, though, it’s a testament to Gunn’s writing and Cena’s surprisingly emotional performance that they manage to make a sympathetic and vulnerable human being out of a character who we first encounter as something of a crypto-fascist.

Much the same could be said of Vigilante, a well-meaning sociopath possessed by a certain child-like innocence. Where Peacemaker starts to question his lifelong vow to have peace no matter how many men, women, and children he has to kill along the way, Vigilante happily murders anyone who he’s been told has broken the law or threatens the world. But he also expresses tender concern about bigotry, discrimination, and even potential skin irritations from duct tape. As Peacemaker himself notes at one point, there’s clearly something not right with Vigilante – but it’s hard dislike the character thanks to Freddie Stroma’s delightfully psychotic and guileless performance.

As Peacemaker progresses, though, Gunn brings the show’s central thematic concern into increasingly sharp focus. It’s articulated most clearly when it’s revealed that the head of Peacemaker’s special ops squad, Murn (portrayed with superb intensity by Chukwudi Iwuji), is in fact a “butterfly” – an alien race that takes over human bodies and represents the main antagonist of the series. To help protect humanity against the depredations of his own kind, one dissenting butterfly took over the worst person he could find – a mercenary with a reputation for extreme violence – but came to understand that even a cold-blooded murderer had the potential to change for the better.

It’s a notion that runs directly counter to the prevailing views of the other butterflies, who, as it’s revealed in the finale, mounted their infiltration campaign to prevent humanity from wrecking our own planet in the same way they destroyed their world. The butterflies took a vow to save humanity from itself “no matter how many lives it cost us” – a vow their leader claims parallels Peacemaker’s own childhood vow to have peace at any cost. (It’s also an interesting though almost certainly unintentional echo of arguments made by some writers and academics that only dictatorships can effectively fight climate change.) Humanity can’t change for the better, so the butterflies have to take matters into their own hands for our own good.

In the end, though, it’s clear what side Gunn and Peacemaker come down on: people can in fact change for the better. Peacemaker steps back from his lifelong pledge to murder his way to peace and finds himself at peace – though still something of a man-child with a rather juvenile sense of humor. And if Peacemaker can change, so can the rest of us. It’s a deeply humanistic point for the series to make, one that reveals a genuine and profound faith in humanity on Gunn’s part.

Still, Gunn isn’t naïve; some people are simply too far gone. Not everyone can change for the better, as evidenced Peacemaker’s irredeemable father – who Peacemaker himself has to kill before the series is out. However, this exception doesn’t undermine the point so much as qualify and prove it.

It’s a point made all the more compelling by Gunn’s subversive and subtle comparison between Peacemaker and Batman, that exalted “dark creature of the night,” over the course of the series.  Indeed, the Caped Crusader remains a hallowed figure among a coterie of fans infatuated with the grim, moody aura that’s overwhelmed depictions of the character in recent decades. Gunn sets up a devastating implicit contrast between the Dark Knight mythos and his own protagonist, one that’s embedded in the fundamental similarities between the two characters and their origin stories.

Both Peacemaker and Batman suffer childhood traumas that lead them to take vows that serve as their guiding ethos. Bruce Wayne swears to avenge his murdered parents by fighting crime as Batman, Peacemaker promises to pursue peace at any cost to atone for accidentally killing his brother in a crude pit fight. But where Batman remains frozen in time, by the end of the series Peacemaker has let go of his own history and moved on with life.

We’re left with the strong implication that categorical vows (especially those made at an extremely young age) trap us in the past, preventing us from growing and changing – and often leading us to hurt others in the process. It’s a contrast that’s all the more compelling because Peacemaker remains such an aggressively idiotic and immature character throughout the series. He’s still fond of blowing things up with Vigilante, and it’s hard to say that he’s found any real redemption – he sees hallucinations of his deceased father throughout the final episode, for instance, and remains haunted by his past. But he’s clearly changed for the better by the end of the series, in marked distinction to the gloomy interpretations of Batman so prevalent and popular today.

Indeed, Peacemaker closes with a rather melancholy scene of its protagonist and his pet bald eagle Eagly (yes, you also read that right) gazing past the camera as a forlorn power ballad comes to an end. It’s not exactly a triumphant or happy ending, but it’s one that fits the series and its themes perfectly.

I’m not a DC aficionado by any means, and my feelings toward The Suicide Squad were decidedly lukewarm. But Gunn fires on all cylinders with Peacemaker, delivering a series that’s at once gloriously demented and deeply emotional. It’s a thematic and tonal balancing act that Gunn manages to pull off with considerable finesse (and the help of a glam metal playlist), one that leaves me eager to see the further adventures of Peacemaker and his wonderfully deranged crew of misfits.