Wrong about the thing

Fine! Fine! You got me! Peacemaker is good!

Yes, I immediately rolled my eyes upon hearing that John Cena’s Peacemaker from The Suicide Squad would be getting a spinoff show. I fully expected another perfunctory, franchise-maintaining slog like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the WandaVision finale. I’m sure that WarnerMedia isn’t mad about keeping a franchise going, and I’m also sure that if it wasn’t an established franchise then there’s no way in hell this would get made. But I was expecting its raison d’être to be brand first and quality second.

I was wrong. Peacemaker is funny, gross, extremely juvenile, and surprisingly mature. There is a pet eagle named Eagly that gives hugs. I laughed, I got emo, I laughed again, and I got emo while laughing. The opening credits are the least skippable opening credits I have ever seen. James Gunn is a modern master of the needle drop. Suffice it to say, Peacemaker rules.

And we here at No Brainer industries live by a code: when you’re wrong, you own up to it. So, in no particular order, here are the reasons I initially wrote Peacemaker off—and why my admittedly low expectations were exceeded.

Superhero fatigue

There are three truths that must be addressed.

One: Superhero media is going to be the future as long as it’s profitable, and if a certain film about spider people proves, it will be profitable for a long time. There’s a lot of TV out there that’s not guys in costumes, thankfully, but it is a big piece of ~the culture~ and what gets greenlit these days.

Two: No superhero anything can cure superhero fatigue. It’s like trying to fix your sleep deprivation with an all-nighter.

Three: Because of truth one, people will continue to talk about superhero media, and my sheeple brain loves being part of the conversation. And, despite truth two, sometimes superhero media can still be fun to watch. So, while my consumption of superhero media will decrease as a function of time, realistically, I won’t stay away entirely.

Given these three truths, it really helps that Peacemaker is the most James Gunn thing to ever James Gunn. His whole deal doesn’t always work for me, and I find the humor to be pretty crass at times, but I’m even grateful for that. Because—thank god—this does not feel like it was written by a focus group.

I don’t really believe in a pro-Gunn or anti-Gunn binary, but I'll say that for the most part, his work really hits for me. I love the high-wire audacity, even if it doesn’t always land. I love how it looks like he’s just blowing shit up with gleeful abandon when really he’s getting ready to wallop you with an emotional beat that leaves you reeling. Stakes feel real in Peacemaker—death is just around the corner, or if they don’t bite the dust, the injuries and hits they take still feel real.

And while there are many, many essays to be written about if enjoying the over-the-top violence makes me a bad person, I’ll say it: I love the gore. The little contrarian gremlin in me loves seeing what looks like realistic consequences of living in a world plagued by violence when so much superhero media is terrified of showing the real impact of a gunshot or even a superpowered punch. In a world with this much violence, people die horribly.

I have zero problem with treating superhero media like it was originally intended: for children to enjoy. And that means bloodless punches and arrow strikes. That’s fine! My favorite superhero movie is The Lego Batman Movie, where showing blood is literally impossible. I think I agree with the crux of Patrick H. Willems’ video on the obsession with R-rated superheroes—it’s a little weird to want your childhood idols to brutally kill people.

All of that said, the current trend is “Superheroes For Adults… but we can’t lose the kids either.” So the glut of superhero media is violence that should have more of an impact, but doesn’t, and that results in lower stakes and tension because we know that there’s a whole realm of consequences that have been ruled out from the jump. Peacemaker has the guts to pick a side and be fine with completely alienating a whole audience. And by picking a “hero” to carry out that violence who’s not usually mass-marketed to children like Batman, it avoids the weird edgelordiness (hi, Zack) of “hey, my role model just decapitated that guy.”

Peacemaker’s willingness (in fact, more-than-willingness) to show violence also lets it explore the cost of that violence far more effectively. Like any action franchise, there is some base expectation that you will find fight scenes thrilling. But there’s also a melancholy to it too. It’s like you’re watching automatons carry out their intended task—it looks great and they do it well, but you don’t forget that this is a broken world where violence feels necessary while only making everything worse, and these automatons know that. This balancing act only really works if you show what’s eating these people up. Violence can look cool and appease my inner gremlin, but Gunn doesn’t let you forget that it’s not just for kicks. The gore serves a purpose.

In essence, Peacemaker isn’t afraid to be what it is: yes, a superhero TV show, but one that’s trying to push the boundaries of what its genre entails. It’s going to be somewhat bound by said genre no matter what, but Gunn finds ways to take risks and have them pay off.

John Cena

I actually feel kind of bad for being wrong about this one, because I really thought of Cena as more of a meme than a legit actor. That’s kind of on me for my anti-wrestler (I guess?) bias, but most of my cultural exposure to Cena’s oeuvre was the John CenAAAAAAAAA soundbite that, let’s all agree, was pretty funny and should make a comeback.

Playing Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad wasn’t that tall of an order: be the asshole that no one likes, deliver the jokes, be beefy, and then the guise comes off at the end and things get real when his back is against the wall. And Cena was perfect casting. He completely understood the blowhard that was Peacemaker, and the line “I cherish peace with all my heart. I don’t care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it” was tailor-made for him.

So I wasn’t surprised to see that he did very well in The Suicide Squad, though the menace near the end when he was going to town on Rick Flag and holding a gun to a tearful, terrified Ratcatcher 2 did hit harder than I expected. And, at least at the very outset, I think don’t think Gunn was really expecting it either:

That interview came out after the season finale, so up until I started Peacemaker, my thought was something like “okay he was very funny before—and maybe a little scary—but people are telling me this is sad and… John Cena? Emotional? Good acting? Pffft.”

And this was the thing I was truly the wrongest about. First of all, I should know by now that comic acting is extremely fucking hard. Deadpanning about killing women and children convincingly takes skill! I know I’d break so many times. Cena is hilarious in Peacemaker—I’d say more so than in The Suicide Squad. On top of some glorious line deliveries, he’s got a bit of a Jim Carrey rubber face that sends a joke flying.

But I never expected that I would be rapturously watching him play the piano and feeling things, that I would feel genuine anguish watching him depression-dance around his sadsack trailer remembering how he killed his brother, and that I, somehow, might not completely hate Peacemaker for all the shitty, chauvinistic comments and asides he makes. Gunn’s writing does a huge amount of heavy lifting, but I do not think this series would have worked without Cena, who has proven himself more than capable of handling darker, somber material.

My favorite acting bit of his in the series isn’t even the piano though. It’s in the first episode: he’s visiting his father, Auggie Smith, and recounting the events of the climax of The Suicide Squad, including Bloodsport’s serious phobia of rats, when he spits out “screamin’ like a little girl.” He’s got the smuggest, most punchable smile on his face—and you can completely, 100% tell that it’s an act. And when Auggie eventually starts laughing at rat-based torture, you can see Cena quickly light up like he’s gotten a reward for being a good boy. Maybe that’s not the hardest thing to do in the world, but I still loved it, and that’s when I started to realize that I had seriously underestimated this guy.

Daddy issues

There are few tropes more tired than “asshole [usually male] character has a mean father whose abuse explains everything about said character.” They demean women because their dad was a chauvinist, they kill indiscriminately because their dad was a murderer, they push people away because their dad told them not to care about anyone, the list goes on. And their big moment of redemption always comes from either killing their dad or rejecting him.

I kind of hate the trope at this point. I do think it can be done well—Succession and, weirdly enough, Agents of SHIELD come to mind (neither of them really offer redemption). But more often than not, it feels a hacky backstory contrivance. “Why are they a piece of shit? Bad dad.”

Peacemaker follows this trope to a T. Auggie is a Nazi/white supremacist/supervillain (?) who encouraged his sons to fight each other in a ditch while his buddies looked on. He constantly belittles and demeans his son, he’s every kind of bigot imaginable… it’s a lot. And yes, the climactic moment of the penultimate episode is Peacemaker blowing Auggie’s brains out. Instead of subverting the trope, everything about the trope is dialed up to 12.

So I don’t really know why I didn’t actively hate it here. I can take a few guesses— Peacemaker isn’t fully redeemed, it’s a metaphor for rejecting pretty much everything shitty about American masculinity, you really hate Auggie and want him dead. But I think the real reason is probably because of the last shot of the season, after Peacemaker has killed Auggie and fired a blow-dart through his ghost.

There are no insults hurled, no punches thrown. They’re probably useless. Auggie’s always going to be there. I wouldn’t say it feels new, but it does feel honest, and honesty goes a long way.