It’s hard not to trust the American James Gunn. Not because he was an infallible filmmaker. Not at all, in fact. in sight are Slither: The Plague (2006) and Super (2010), his first two feature films, of which the only thing that can be said is that they are sadly unsuccessful and somewhat crappy. But then he has managed to redeem himself after sticking his head into the two largest superhero franchises: the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe. And the last example of this can be found in The Pacidifier (since 2022).
After the two volumes of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014, 2017), which are among the funniest and most colorful of his successful film saga, gave us the suicide squad (2021), an almost homonymous sequel to the underrated film directed by David Ayer in 2016. And from this comes, as spinoff, the HBO Max series starring Christopher Smith, the antihero who embodies John Cena, an actor we have seen before as agent Jack Burns from Bumblebee (Travis Knight, 2018) or Jakob Toretto in Fast and furious 9 (Justin Lin, 2021).
James Gunn’s shameless humor in ‘The Peacemaker’
The post-credits scene of the DC movie anticipated this series. What’s more, what we are reminded of before the opening scene of the episode “A Whole New Whirled” (1×01) are the events of the previous adventure related to the Peacemaker. And his new serial adventure settles cheeky tone of humor so characteristic of screenwriter James Gunn. This is not only a treat for viewers who enjoy his well-known shamelessness and rub their hands in anticipation, but also a narrative coherence that is impossible to argue with.
Here it is, fortunately that delirious verbiage that provokes so much hilarity in us and about which we know, as is logical, from the dialogues of Guardians of the Galaxy and of the suicide squad. Without skimping on ridicule against the politically correct that reigns in this world of globalized networks and which could survive, eye, when it almost stays out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which one cannot help but confess that it perceives as pleasantly refreshing. Although he does not endanger himself with it in the scripts of The peacemaker. Foolish is not.
Here we have come to have a great time with John Cena’s antihero
On the other hand, the selection of songs with more or less counterpoint effect that James Gunn usually does is not lacking in this television fiction, for now, neither during “A Whole New Whirled” nor in “Best Friends For Never” (1×02) and “Better Goff Dead” (1×03). But nevertheless, the spectacular action scenes, with hand-to-hand combat, which are essential in these audiovisual products, take a while to appear, but they do not deprive us of them nor, oh, do they disappoint us in the least. For the same reasons of authorship in the sense of humor.
The strange, uncomfortable or unexpected situations in which they can occur and their brutal development, with those comically unpleasant elements from the suicide squad, we find them infected with that incorrigible personality that the American director usually wears. And the titles themselves The peacemaker and its ridiculous dance of the cast constitute a declaration of intentions: we are here to have a blast with John Cena’s anti-hero and, in truth, we should not take it seriously. In this adventure, the epic solemnity is left over.
Its main actor, on the other hand, has not come out of any interpretive school with the Stanislavski method but, like other ex-wrestlers of a certain entity who have jumped to the seventh art, he benefits from his lack of pretensions and his familiarity to win over the public. . By Robert Patrick (The X-Files) as Auggie Smith we can’t say anything bad at this point, and Jennifer Holland (American Horror Story) and Freddie Storma (Harry Potter) give a lot of play like Emilia Harcourt. With this cast, the revelry and the enigmas, we will continue to see The peacemaker.