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If rumours are to be believed, James Gunn may be on his way out of DC once Skydance Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros goes through. Gunn, who has helmed films like The Suicide Squad and Superman, and a show like Peacemaker, has infused his trademark zeal into the DC Extended Universe, diluting the darkness once injected by his predecessors like Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder. As he builds a new DCEU with Peter Safran, he’s brought in the reckless oddball energy that he once made famous with the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.
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A report by Cosmic Book News claims that Gunn already knows his stint in DCEU is short-lived. That explains his prompt announcement of the sequel Man of Tomorrow days after the release of Superman. That also explains, many on the internet speculate, how he’s rewriting the rules sans any vision or coherence of the DCEU. To him, the interconnectivity between shows and movies, that Marvel has championed over the years, is just a marketing bait: so that more buffs come in and watch his projects. For instance, he teased that Peacemaker season 2 will have major connections to Superman and Man of Tomorrow, but much to the DC nerds’ disappointment, the developments are only cursory instead of remotely monumental.
But if Peacemaker season 2 is anything to go by, I really don’t mind it not being consequential to the larger universe building. In this era of Reddit-thread fandoms and conspiracy theories, what tentpole Hollywood has lost sight of is that it also needs to focus on world-building, and not just universe-building. That even if it’s a factory, all its goods aren’t standardized and each need a distinct unique tone. Gunn is the expert of that as he managed the uphill task of putting his own spin on even Superman after Snyder’s recent, memorable depiction. It may not have yielded the same results commercially, but it’s surely managed to present the old flavours in a new mix, laced with the socio-political zeitgeist of the times.
James Gunn’s Superman was a stark departure from Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.
Gunn plucked the dark horse of The Suicide Squad — Peacemaker (John Cena) — and explored his origin story. Sure, he sounds like US President Donald Trump who’s hell-bent on achieving peace (even when it comes after relentless violence). But with the first season, Gunn probes what makes such a man into a delusional monster — a father who equates making America great again with forced ouster of immigrants. Yet what makes his humane self bounce back persistently is the realization of that cost of violence — he killed his younger brother in the childhood after a brawl organized by their father. His father conveniently blames the death of his younger son on Peacemaker, not realizing how it’ll mess up with his impressionable mind and eventually, his perennially flawed moral compass.
Of course, season 1 could only end with the death of Peacemaker aka Chris Smith’s father. That was the only way he could escape his ghosts of the past. Or could he? Because his dad does pop up from beyond the grave in his visions days after he’s gone. Season 2 gives him a golden, magical chance at redemption. Smith ends transporting to another dimension where both his father and brother are not only alive, but also less toxic and even doting over him. It’s like a dream in flesh and blood, too good to be true yet staring at him right in the eye. Even his love life is sorted. Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), the tough-as-nails, self-sabotaging femme fatale in his life is a skirt-wearing (!), dove-eyed lady romantically inclined towards him.
Jennifer Holland and John Cena as Emilia Harcourt and Chris Smith in Peacemaker season 2.
Everything is perfect. So, he doesn’t mind when the Peacemaker of that dimension dies while battling him. He can stealthily sneak in and live the life he always dreamt of without anyone finding out he’s some other Chris. Till they do. After Chris decides to permanently relocate to the dream dimension, his gang from his turf — the 11th Street Kids — chase him down, trying to pursue him to return to his reality. Why would he? Friends are a small price to pay when the happy, ideal American family is what he’s always wanted. At the end of episode 6, as his Black friend Adebayo walks the streets, the people around look at her with suspicion. His own brother Henry calls the alarm as everyone on the streets chase Adebayo, shouting that “one of them got out.”
Around the same time, the Harcourt of his reality asks Smith if that’s the dimension he really wants to inhabit, while pointing at the Nazi Swastik sign. It’s only then that Smith, blinded by the love for his white family, realizes that this is a far better, more peaceful world only because all the minorities have been long wiped out. Those who survived are probably confined in a bunker, leading to whitewashing of the American streets. It’s an ideal world only because entire races have been eliminated or brushed under the carpet. That explains why his family of white supremacists are so tolerant with him — they don’t have any community to hate on. There’s a reason why his father hasn’t lambasted him for his taste in hip-hop — because there have been no Blacks, and hence no revolution in that genre of music.
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Gunn uses the increasingly cash-grabbing tool of inter-dimensional storytelling not to further build a universe, but to build an alternate world and pose a pertinent question to his protagonist — would you choose a happier family in a homogeneous world built on hatred or a world with familiar tensions built on coexistence? Would you pick privilege at the cost of harmony? Or would you give diversity a chance at the price of some friction? With this conflict, Peacemaker season 2 takes us back to one of the first superhero shows of the streaming era — Marvel’s WandaVision (2021), which revolved around Wanda using her superpower of Chaos Magic to build an alternate world of the ideal American family from the ’80s sitcom era. But as we learn later, it’s a façade put up by her to grieve the loss of her husband Vision in Avengers: Infinity War.
Also Read: With Superman, James Gunn projects America’s favourite superhero as an outcast, but that’s not his sharpest comment on the country’s politics
Like WandaVision, James Gunn also tells a deeply personal story, while also commenting on the problematic politics of today. It’s a reminder to the Marvels and DCs of the world to not lose sight of the purpose streaming can serve to their endless, interconnected storytelling — humanizing its superheroes instead of putting them on the pedestal of saving the world. Even if his time is short-lived at DC, Gunn has chosen to not play by the book and fall prey to the contemporary superhero storytelling trap. Just like war is no means to peace, the purpose of an eight-episode show can’t just be a placeholder. It needs to have a beating heart of its own. It should say something larger not in the context of a fictional universe, but in view of the world we all live in. Must the Nobel Peace Prize go to an American, my vote is for Mr. Gunn.
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