‘Creature Commandos’: The Wild Show Kicked Off DC’s Reboot
Last night, the new era of DC Studios kicked off with the premiere of the animated show Creature Commandos on Max (formerly known as HBO Max). If you’re not a die-hard fan of the DC films and TV shows, or you don’t follow the trade publications that follow Hollywood’s movie and tv studios, here’s an explanation about why this is important to DC. Or, scroll down to “The Creature Commandos” where we talk about the first two episodes of the series.
DC: Their Movie History
DC Comics, like Marvel Comics, is a company that has a number of iconic characters who have their own adventures but frequently team up. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Flash are all DC characters with their own comic books and mythologies but work together as members of the Justice League. Over the decades, these characters have had their own TV shows, and occasionally movies, but the stories were totally separate; there was no sense that they existed in the same universe.
Marvel Raised The Stakes with Iron Man
Marvel — the home of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America and Iron Man — changed the game in the 2000s when they introduced the idea of a “connected universe.” 2008’s Iron Man kicked off the megafranchise, which is still massive today. Iron Man was released in May of that year; in June, Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark (from Iron Man) made a surprise cameo in the after-credits scene in The Incredible Hulk. Clark Gregg’s Agent Phil Coulson, who debuted in Iron Man later appeared in 2011’s Thor. Thor saw the debuts of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton, who would go on to star in subsequent Marvel films and TV series. 2012’s The Avengers saw all of those characters, along with Captain America and Black Widow teaming up. And so on: you know the deal: Marvel franchises intersect so often. we expect to see team ups.
DC: Their Attempt to Catch Up To Marvel
A connected universe was something that DC was clearly interested in. 2013’s Superman film, Man Of Steel, starring Henry Cavill, kicked off the DC Universe. The film was directed by Zack Snyder (most well-known for 2006’s 300 and 2009’s Watchmen, both adaptations of comic books). Snyder then directed the sequel, 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which introduced Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. From there, it gets complicated: there was 2016’s Suicide Squad, 2017’s Wonder Woman and 2017’s Justice League. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn debuted in the flop Suicide Squad, but got her own spinoff, Birds of Prey. Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and Ezra Miller’s Flash debuted in Justice League and got their own franchises. Then there was Shazam!, the sort-off spinoff Black Adam and also Blue Beetle.
Meanwhile, On The CW
In the meantime, the CW Network had a series of TV shows that were connected to each other but not the films. These were referred to as “The Arrowverse,” which kicked off in 2013 with Arrow, featuring Stephen Arnell as Green Arrow. The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning and Batwoman followed. Superman & Lois, which started as a spinoff of Supergirl, was the last DC show on the CW, and the final episode aired this week.
Enter: James Gunn
In 2018, James Gunn, who had directed two massively successful Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel, got fired over what can be referred to as an extreme case of “cancel culture.” DC hired him to resuscitate the Suicide Squad franchise, which he did with 2021’s The Suicide Squad; that led to him doing a rather bonkers TV series on Max around one of the main characters, John Cena’s Peacemaker. And that led to Gunn and producer Peter Safran being named co-CEOs of DC Studios in October of 2022. The last film of the pre-Gunn era was 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
The Creature Commandos
Which leads us to Creature Commandos! As James Gunn told The Hollywood Reporter, “HBO Max asked me to do another show after the success of Peacemaker, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. I just started playing with different ideas, and then I started writing Creature Commandos on spec. I wrote all seven episodes in a few weeks, and then right around the time that I was finishing those scripts, I got hired as the co-head of DC Studios.”
While Superman: Legacy, due out July 25, 2025, will be the first film of the James Gunn era, Creature Commandos is the first new content that we’re seeing with Gunn at the helm of DC. The showrunner, Dean Lorey, is also showrunner for another DC animated show on Max, the very R-rated Harley Quinn. (A supervillain, Dr. Psycho, calls Wonder Woman the c-word in one of the earliest episodes. It’s practically NC-17.) The series, which does not connect to the other DC shows and movies, has featured an animated James Gunn playing himself. It’s a lot of fun.
So, Creature Commandos is a raunchy, but somewhat soft, launch for DC’s Gunn era. None of the characters on the show are very iconic. So, we’re seeing what Gunn can do as a DC storyteller without the use of the big guns, so to speak.
Not A Complete Break From Snyder’s DC Era
As has been widely reported, most of the actors who played DC characters during Zack Snyder’s reign are not returning. Henry Cavill, for instance, will no longer play Superman; David Corenswet was announced as the new Clark Kent/Superman in June of 2023. Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa are not expected to return as Wonder Woman or Aquaman.
But Viola Davis returns as Amanda Waller, the government official who oversaw the Suicide Squad in the 2016 and 2021 films and in Peacemaker. She will also star in a live-action Waller series on Max. James Gunn’s brother, Sean, voices Weasel, a creepy character who he portrayed in 2021’s The Suicide Squad. Frank Grillo (who played Brock Rumlow/Crossbones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) is the voice of Rick Flag, Sr.; his son, Rick Flag, was killed in The Suicide Squad, and that was mentioned in the first episode. Grillo will play that character in upcoming live-action films. So, we know that at least some of what we’ve seen in previous DC films and shows “counts”; in the parlance of comic fans, some of what has already occurred is considered “canon.”
Who Else Is In The Creature Commandos?
What’s the show’s premise? Well, due to events from Peacemaker, Waller can no longer put human lives in jeopardy for her missions. So now, she uses non-humans instead. Flag runs the team, known as “Task Force M” (“m” stands for “monsters”). The team includes the Bride (she’s essentially the Bride of Frankenstein). Played by Indira Varma (Ellaria Sand from Game Of Thrones), she’s haunted by her past and her origin story… and mostly by her ex-, who is known as Edward (he’s Frankenstein), and who is voiced by David Harbour of Stranger Things. G.I. Robot (also voiced by Sean Gunn) is a World War II era robot who seems lost if he doesn’t have Nazis to kill. Doctor Phosphorus (voiced by Alan Tudyk, known for his role in Dodgeball, and also in the SyFy series Resident Alien, among many other shows and movies) is like a walking nuclear reactor with a grudge. Nina Mazursky (voiced by Zoe Chao) is a scientist who is an amphibian.
So, Is The Show Good?
It’s hilarious and fun so far (Max dropped the first two episodes of the seven-episode series last night). It doesn’t feel like an epic relaunch, and that’s probably because, as mentioned, Gunn wrote it before he was made co-CEO of DC. It was just a fun experiment, and the show benefits from that. The plot sees Flag bring the team to the fictional European nation Pokolistan to defend them from the sorceress Circe and her cult of bro-warriors, “the Sons of Themyscira.” Themyscira, you’ll recall, is where Wonder Woman is from: only women live there. The “Sons” appear to be incels who are upset about the existence of a space where they’re not welcome. One of them is interviewed on the news, saying, “You’re telling me, ‘Oh, dude: only women can live there?’ That is so sexist, bro!”
While the sons seem like dudes who are frustrated that they aren’t getting any, that’s not true of everyone in the show. Pololistanian Princess Ilana Rostovic (voiced by Maria Bakalova, who voiced Cosmo The Spacedog in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and who famously ended up in a super cringely scene with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2020’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) has her sights on Flag. Overall, the show is pretty horny. And violent. And it’s filled with lots of DC deep references. But as Gunn showed us in The Suicide Squad, and especially in the Guardians of the Galaxy films (and even in Peacemaker), he’s great at combining raunchy humor with a big heart and getting us to love groups of misfits in spite of –and sometimes because of–their flaws. Each episode is less than a half hour, so it’s an easy binge and it’s definitely a fun ride. New episodes drop on Thursdays. Watch the NSFW trailer below.
