Josh Reviews Creature Commandos

Creature Commandos is a seven-episode animated series for MAX, based on the (somewhat obscure) characters and concepts from DC comics.  James Gunn (who wrote and directed all three Guardians of the Galaxy films, and who is now the mastermind behind the revamped DC universe of movies and TV shows) wrote all seven episodes.  Taking place after the events of The Suicide Squad movie (the second one, the one written & directed by James Gunn) as well as the Peacemaker show (which was also written & directed by Mr. Gunn), we see that Amanda Waller — the secret spymaster of the DCU with a strong mistrust of superheroes — is no longer able to force imprisoned meta-human villains to work for her.  So now she’s turned to non-humans — imprisoned monsters and other creatures.  Under the command of Rick Flag Senior (the father of the Rick Flag character who appeared in the two Suicide Squad films), Task Force M — otherwise known as the “Creature Commandos” — are sent to the (made up) European nation of Pokolistan, on a mission to protect the princess (an important U.S. ally) from an attack by the super-villain Circe.

Creature Commandos is the first installment in the newly rebooted continuity of DC animated movies and TV shows, being overseen by James Gunn and Peter Safran.  The next major installment is this year’s Superman movie, written & directed by Mr. Gunn, that’s coming out this summer.  (Click here to watch the excellent trailer.)

It’s very strange to me to launch the new DCU with this show, which is a direct sequel to two projects from the old DCEU continuity (The Suicide Squad movie and Peacemaker season one).  (Mr. Gunn has said that those projects are basically still in continuity for the new DCU, except for the appearance of the Justice League at the end of Peacemaker season one.)  Creature Commandos does stand on its own, though I think it’ll have more impact if you’ve seen those two previous projects (and recognize characters like Amanda Waller, John Economos, etc.).

It’s also strange to launch the new DCU with this show because — and it pains me greatly to say this — it’s something of a mixed bag.  I love James Gunn, and I think it’s awesome that he’s taken over the DCU, and I am beyond excited for his Superman movie and the many other DCU projects for film and TV that have been announced.  I’ve loved pretty much every superhero project Mr. Gunn has had a hand in.  And yet, I was underwhelmed by this show.

I want to be clear: I had fun watching this show, and I enjoyed every episode.  That’s good!!  But as I was watching, I kept thinking that it didn’t feel to me like the show was “clicking” in the way I’d wanted it to, and looking back on it now, it feels to me like the whole was somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

The main problem is that it’s way too short.  At only seven episodes, each with a run-time of only around twenty-ish minutes, there’s just not a lot of room to work with here.  I also think the structure Mr. Gunn chose to utilize undermines the storytelling.  I’d expected each half-hour episode to be its own adventure.  But instead, the season tells one long story of the Creature Commandos’ mission to Pokolistan.  At the same time, every episode devotes a good chunk of its run-time to a flashback, giving us the backstory of each of the main Creature Commandos characters.  I think this Lost-style structure has been done to death, and I think the show’s short run-time means both halves of the storyline wind up getting short shrift.  The flashbacks are too short to feel more than superficial; the tragedies depicted in each flashback don’t land with as much emotional power as I’m sure Mr. Gunn & co. had hoped for, because we don’t have enough time to get deeply into the story.  It’s like getting the Cliff’s Notes version of each character’s background.

Meanwhile, I didn’t find the Pokolistan mission interesting enough to sustain across the whole season.  Because half-ish of every episode was devoted to the flashbacks, it felt like the story crawled along at a slow pace.  More importantly, we didn’t have enough time with the present-day characters to really get to know and love them.  Mr. Gunn’s secret weapon has always been his characterizations; how he’s been able to take these weird, oddball characters and make them lovable so the audience invests in them and roots for them.  I didn’t feel that happened here.  I like all the characters fine, but I don’t love them.  I just didn’t get enough time to get to know them.

(In contrast, look at this year’s Batman: Caped Crusader show, which I think was far more successful in its storytelling approach.  Each episode felt like a complete and satisfying story, and at the same time many character threads continued from episode to episode, building to an exciting conclusion by the end of the season.)

The animation was fine; good but not great.  I don’t love the look of this particular style of animation.  The characters all felt a little stiff to me.  There wasn’t much beauty to be found in this animation.  It wasn’t bad; it wasn’t distracting.  But it didn’t elevate the storytelling, in my opinion.

I did like the choice of characters, and the voice cast Mr. Gunn and his team assembled was terrific!  With more time, I could see myself growing to love these characters; the show just didn’t get me there yet.

Shall we dig in deeper?  Beware some SPOILERS ahead!

OK, let’s start with the characters and voice cast.  This is a fantastic voice cast, and they all do great work.

The two stand-out characters for me were Frankenstein and The Bride.  Frankenstein is voiced by David Harbour (Stranger Things, Black Widow).  This is Frankenstein’s monster from Mary Shelly’s novel, who here is depicted as an incel, hopelessly in love with The Bride and unable to understand why she doesn’t love him back.  As such, he’s been stalking her for decades, always arriving to destroy her life.  This is an interesting spin on the Frankenstein character, and Mr. Harbour understands the assignment perfectly.  He’s so serious and impassioned as Frankenstein that he makes the character very, very funny, in a very dark way.  (Mr. Gunn makes a surprising choice in that he doesn’t seem too interested in crafting Frankenstein as a character who could be redeemed; Frankenstein murders a LOT of people over the course of this show.)  Also terrific was Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, Luther) as The Bride.  I really liked this take on this “Bride of Frankenstein” character; someone who has rejected the role that name gives her, and who has been searching for a way to find herself and her place.  Ms. Varma’s deadpan line delivery was very funny and also emotional at times.  I really enjoyed these two characters.

Frank Grillo plays Rick Flag Senior, and Mr. Grillo will apparently be appearing as this character in live-action in both the upcoming Superman movie as well as Peacemaker season two.  Mr. Grillo previously played Brock Rumlow/Crossbones in the MCU (in Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and it’s fun to see him now enter the DCU.  I like his performance here as Flag, though it’s weird to me that the character doesn’t feel nearly old enough to be Rick Flag Jr.’s father.  He has white hair, but otherwise he’s depicted as an active soldier and also a love-interest for the Princess.  It feels to me a little like Mr. Gunn regrets killing off Flag Jr. in The Suicide Squad, because he’s written a very, very similar type of character here — a good guy military dud trying to wrangle all their weirdos.  Is this how Flag is going to be depicted in Superman?  Based on the casting of Frank Grillo, I’d imagined that we’d see a Rick Flag Sr. who is angry and hates superheroes; someone with an axe to grind against heroes like Superman.  Maybe he blames them for the death of his boy, which would be understandable.  Weirdly, we don’t see much if any of that here.  This Flag Sr. seems like a pretty jovial guy!  I wonder if that will still be the case when we see him in live-action?  (I was also very surprised that the show ends with Flag crippled and near-death!  Is he gonna be in some kind of exo-skeleton super-suit when we see him in Superman?  Is that going to be why he’s angry?  I’m really curious; this seemed like a very strange place to leave this character at the end of this season.)

The great Alan Tudyk (beloved to me as Wash in Firefly) is fun as Dr. Phosphorous, a Batman villain who’s a radioactive skeleton.  Mr. Tudyk made Phosphorous the funniest character on the show; pleasantly nonchalant about all the murdering he does.  Sean Gunn (who performed Rocket for the Guardians of the Galaxy films, in addition to playing the Ravager Kraglin) plays both G.I. Robot and Weasel (who returns from The Suicide Squad movie).  I always love seeing Sean Gunn; he’s great at bringing strange characters and creatures to life.  And yet unfortunately I didn’t think he had too much room to work here.  Both G.I. Robot and Weasel are characters I liked, but they’re also both strangely flat.  Neither appears to have much sentience or awareness of what’s happening around them.  Neither seems to grow nor change as the story progresses.  Zoë Chao (The Afterparty, Party Down season 3) is strong as the fish-creature Nina Mazursky.  I liked Nina, and Ms. Chao does a nice job bringing humanity and innocence to her performance.  But the show doesn’t have the time to develop Nina’s friendship with G.I. Robot, or then with the Bride, sufficiently to the degree that I really invested in either relationship.  (Also, why doesn’t Nina have a super-hero name like all the other characters?)

Mr. Gunn has assembled a fine array of actors to flesh out the rest of this show’s cast.  There’s no shortage of talent here!  Viola Davis reprises the role she originated in the first (bad) Suicide Squad movie as Amanda Waller.  I was happy to see that Ms. Davis is continuing to play Waller in the rebooted DCU.  (She’s like Judi Dench, who managed to continue to play M through the James Bond series reboot when Daniel Craig replaced Pierce Brosnan!)  It’s fun to hear Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) as Princess Ilana Rostovic.  Ms. Bakalova gives a spirited performance, though the show never allows us to really get to know the Princess in any way.  I was happy to have Steve Agee back (returning from The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker) as John Economos; Mr. Agee’s voice and comedic spin on line readings is always a pleasure.  (Though I was a little surprised that Economos is right back where he started, once again working with Waller.)  It made me happy to see James Gunn’s frequent collaborator Michael Rooker (he played Yondu in the Guardians of the Galaxy films) pop up in the G.I. Robot flashback as Sam, a military antique collector and member of a neo-Nazi group.  I was also happy to hear Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks, Avengers: Age of Ultron) as Elizabeth Bates, Weasel’s lawyer.  Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse, Star Trek: Beyond, The Penguin) brings her wonderfully distinct voice to the role of Madam Gyurov, the madam of a brothel in Pokolistan where Nina and the Bride take shelter in one episode.  Stephanie Beatriz (Rosa Diaz on Brooklyn Nine-Nine) is funny as Aisla MacPherson, a professor who studies Themyscira.  Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy, Spy, The Tick) is solid as Victor Frankenstein, the scientist “father” of both Frankenstein and the Bride.  Gregg Henry (Jason Quill in the Guardians of the Galaxy films) pops up as Nina’s father Edward Mazursky.  Diedrich Bader (Office Space, Better Things, Batman: Caped Crusader) subs in for Sylvester Stallone for one line in the finale as Nanaue/King Shark.  Julian Kostov is wonderfully jovial as Alexi, the soldier who serves the Princess until Doctor Phosphorous kills him.  Anya Chalotra does a nice job as Circe.  This is a great cast!

I really, really think this show needed an eighth episode.  After episode seven gave us the final main character’s flashback with Nina’s story, and then revealed that the Princess really WAS the villain after all, I thought for sure we’d get a final flashback-free episode to focus on the reunited team’s battle against the Princess and her armored soldiers and perhaps her other super-villain allies.  But, nope!  The Bride shoots the Princess in the head, the Creature Commandos walk out of the castle, show over.  Whaaat?  That was way, way too fast, and left so many unanswered questions.  WHY was the Princess a villain?  What did she want?  Why didn’t the show allow us to understand her motivations?  What exactly was her plan?  How could this dinky nation, with her easily-defeated armored guards, somehow take over the world and kill all the super-heroes, as Circe saw in her vision?  Why did the Princess ally herself with Clayface, a random Batman villain?  How did they get connected?  What was the plan there?  Clayface was just hanging out on the off chance someone came to question the professor?  But the professor had already told Waller that Circe was telling the truth, so what was the point of any of that?  Speaking of which, why and how did Circe get involved?  If she really was trying to save the world by killing the Princess, why not just tell someone that?  What happened to Circe in the end?  None of that makes any sense to me.  And while the Bride’s shooting the Princess was a fun surprise in the moment, it left me completely unsatisfied.  If we’re supposed to believe in the end that the Princess was a big bad villain, then it totally undermines her as a villain to have her taken out so easily.  The whole story seemed to build to a big fat nothing, which makes me wonder why this story was being told in the first place.

(It doesn’t help that the final episode’s Nina-focused flashback is one of the worst of the series.  There were so many things in that thinly-sketched backstory that made no sense at all.  When Nina decides to flee the human world and start to live in the wild as a fish-creature, why does she strip nude and jump into the feces-filled sewer???  Why not a lake or ocean or something???  We then see on the news reports of a mysterious fish creature that people aren’t sure really exists.  But we’ve seen that Nina — a teenaged fish-girl — spent years in public, going to school and playing on a sports team!  Surely there are LOTS of photos of her and LOTS of people know her!  So it’s crazy that, after she disappears, no one seems to connect the dots that the newly-appeared fish girl in the local sewers and swamps is obviously Nina.  Sigh!!)

So, yeah, this show didn’t quite do it for me.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anywhere near the level of quality that I’ve come to expect from James Gunn.  It’s a strange, sort of half-hearted launch for the new DCU.  Nevertheless, I still have high hopes that this summer’s Superman movie will be great, and will give this new DCU a proper launch.  Here’s hoping!