Creature Commandos review: an encouraging start for the DCU

Creature Commandos fits nicely within creator James Gunn‘s growing superhero oeuvre. Not only is it a follow-up to Gunn’s The Suicide Squad that explicitly references both that film and the writer-director’s Peacemaker TV series, but it also centers around the kind of ragtag, misunderstood misfits that Gunn has been telling stories about since at least 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, if not his whole career. This makes it seem, on paper, like a bit of a “safe choice” for Gunn’s first official entry in his and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe. It’s within minutes of Creature Commandos‘ premiere that one gets the sense that Gunn is operating from a very comfortable place, too.

When Creature Commandos was first announced nearly two years ago, though, it seemed like a strange starting point for a franchise that promises to be as all-encompassing and ambitious as the DCU. Surely, Gunn’s Superman would be the more fitting first chapter? Creature Commandos certainly doesn’t do nearly as much worldbuilding or franchise heavy lifting as that film likely will. It does, however, establish the DCU as a franchise where Gunn, at least, can still be himself and tell stories that actually interest him. Whether or not those allowances will be extended to artists who aren’t a DC Studios co-CEO remains to be seen, but they’ve nonetheless given Gunn the chance to create one of his best comic book-inspired misfit adventures to date.

Picking up sometime after the events of The Suicide Squad, Creature Commandos finds A.R.G.U.S. leader Amanda Waller (a returning Viola Davis) forbidden from forcing any more incarcerated humans to join another one of her cannon-fodder task forces. Rather than letting this development stop her, though, Amanda responds by taking advantage of an inconceivable loophole. She assembles a new team made up entirely of nonhuman prisoners. These include The Bride (Indira Varma), an immortal, super-strong comic book riff on the Bride of Frankenstein; Nina Mazursky (Zoë Chao), a brilliant human-fish mutant scientist; G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), a WWII-era robot obsessed with killing Nazis; Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), a permanently radioactive scientist; and Weasel (also Sean Gunn), a seemingly unkillable, humanoid creature of unknown origin.

Waller assigns Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), the hardened father of Joel Kinnaman’s deceased Rick Flag, to lead the team on a mission to protect Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova), the royal head of a Baltic-like foreign country, from Circe (Anya Chalotra), a dangerous sorceress who is hell-bent on killing Ilana. Along the way, other recognizable comic book characters appear, including Creature Commandos‘ resident scene-stealer, Eric Frankenstein (David Harbour), a lonely monster whose undying obsession with marrying the Bride manifests in ways both horrifying and hilarious. Eric isn’t a primary character in Creature Commandos, but he makes one of the biggest impressions of the lot, partly because of how perfectly Harbour plays him. He is monotonal and yet whiny, and his romantic desperation helps him stand apart from Drax, Peacemaker, and the other clueless brutes Gunn has brought to life over the years.

Eric is, like all of Creature Commandos‘ characters, painted with broad strokes by Gunn, but his story is also dutifully filled in. Each of Creature Commandos‘ seven episodes, in fact, function as both present-day continuations of its ongoing plot and flashback-heavy origin stories that explore the characters’ pasts. This structure is established early on in Creature Commandos, and Gunn, who wrote all seven of its episodes, sticks unerringly to it. At points, this makes the series feel a bit repetitive, especially when its final installments repeatedly interrupt the present-tense action in order to cut away again. For the most part, though, this twin-timeline format works well for Creature Commandos, and certain episodes — such as those focused on The Bride and G.I. Robot — find ways to thematically link the action of the past and present that are simultaneously thrilling and surprisingly moving.

While Gunn commendably fills in the outsized outlines of his characters with enough tragedy and pathos to make them fit right in alongside his past outcasts, he does a more uneven job of justifying everyone’s inclusion in Creature Commandos. Nina Mazursky’s place in the series, in particular, is never fully clear, and even Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. feels superfluous, not to mention comparatively less interesting than his more colorful counterparts. The series’ overarching plot isn’t anything especially memorable, either, and its climactic twists are obvious from the get-go. The former issue leaves Bakalova’s Ilana feeling flatter and less defined than Creature Commandos‘ other characters, and that problem becomes harder to ignore the more that the series’ central conflicts revolves around her.

Creature Commandos occasionally suffers as well from some of the same moments of tonal whiplash that have dragged down Gunn’s projects ever since 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The show’s Weasel-centric episode, for instance, attempts to bounce from scenes of startling darkness to lighter comedic gags, but it doesn’t pull off those transitions as seamlessly as it intends. Altogether, these unrefined aspects of Creature Commandos prevent it from being the home run that some fans may go into it expecting. But it also doesn’t seem like “perfect” is what Creature Commandos wants to be, and there are multiple stretches throughout its early and midseason episodes where it feels as imaginative, playful, and loose as any superhero adventure that Gunn has so far had a hand in telling. It also, for the most part, lacks the ham-fisted sentimentality that has sometimes left his previous projects feeling clunky and cynically calculated.

Even more importantly, Creature Commandos has ample amounts of the same heart that has always elevated Gunn’s best films and TV shows. Here is a filmmaker who, for as wry and acidic as he can be, harbors an unabashed, earnest love for comic books and superheroes. None of Gunn’s past Marvel and DC projects have felt like paycheck gigs, and the same is true for Creature Commandos. It’s a series that is ultimately propelled along by a real, infectious love for its characters. It’s hard to imagine anyone reaching the series’ conclusion and not wanting to spend more time with, say, The Bride or Doctor Phosphorus.

That’s an achievement in and of itself, but what’s even more encouraging than Creature Commandos‘ quality is what its arrival suggests. If the series really is meant to be taken like the mission statement that it almost definitely will be interpreted as, then the message Creature Commandos sends is that the DCU will be a franchise governed by its characters and its filmmakers’ own, personal artistic interests rather than matters of brand synergy or schedule-dictated “phases.” Only time will tell whether the franchise lives up to that promise, but it’s an encouraging message for Gunn and company to send, and it makes one understand why Creature Commandos may have been the best choice to launch the DCU after all.

The first two episodes of Creature Commandos are streaming now on Max. New episodes premiere weekly on Thursdays. Digital Trends was given early access to all of the series’ seven chapters.