Peacemaker - The Final Season Review

 

Hey guys, so want to give you some info before getting into the review. So yes, I'm fully aware this show ended last month, Oct 9th to be precise. But I was busy focusing on horror movie reviews and reviews for recently released movies, so when James Gunn confirmed there were no plans for a third season at the final episode, I didn't have enough time to get a quick review set up because again, I was busy with other stuff. So I decided to review for the month of November. So enough of the explanation, let's get into the review and hopefully you like it.

Peacemaker is a comic book series and loosely based on the DC Comics' character of the same name. The show was produced by DC Studios, Warner Bros. Television, Troll Court Entertainment, and The Safran Company and distributed on HBO Max. This final season consist of eight episodes, thus the show's total episodes are sixteen. The show as created by and all episodes were written by James Gunn.

The story is, Chris Smith aka Peacemaker is trying to become the hero he was meant to be and even tries to join the Justice Gang. However, nobody is taking him seriously as a superhero and his personal life isn't going so well either. Then one day, Peacemaker travels to another universe and sees his life in this world is great. So he decides to live there, but he'll soon learn things aren't what they seem.

• Negatives

It's the story. Oh boy, out of all of the things James Gunn has written this was easily he's worse. Let's start off with the problems but before I do, WARNING!: I'm gonna be diving into spoiler territory here. Because no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't write anything without getting into spoilers in one way or another. So if you don't want spoilers. Just skip this section right now! Let's start off with the writing for the characters. Harcourt is the only character who gets any strong writing. She's got a motivation, her actions have consequences and she has to deal with said actions. It got to the point where she might as well have been the main character. Which is really sad considering she's not suppose to be anything like that, she's suppose to be a supporting character. Then there's Peacemaker himself. What is with James Gunn when writing this character? He wants to shove him in everything he's writing, but for every good moment he writes for Peacemaker, he almost follows it by making him an idiot! Like Peacemaker didn't learn he was on an Earth where the Nazis won (and I'll get into that problem later) until it was pointing out to him. Seriously, James. If you ever write this character again (where he more than likely will for HIS DC cinematic universe), make some sort of character bible for him, so you'll stop flip flopping him from being somewhat competent one minute then an idiot the next. As for the rest of the characters...no, just no. Maybe it's just my memory but I can hardly remember anything interesting these characters did. Like other than Adebayo's really stupid quote (which I'll also get into later), I can't recall anything she did. Then we have Vigilante/Adrian Chase. I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate this guy! Not the actor, but the character. It's clear James Gunn really wants him to be the Deadpool of this show, but even Deadpool has he's serious moments which makes us actually care for him despite having a very OP healing factor. But with Vigilante all I wanted him to do was shut up! When The CW's Arrowverse made a better version of Adrian Chase then Gunn, then you know James Gunn f*cked up. Okay, now let's get into the writing for the story. It's really sad because there is a good story somewhere here. I know I said that in season one, but at least season one seemed to have somewhat of an idea of what it was going for, season two on the other hand, it's all over the place. Firstly, we have something go with Peacemaker wanting to escape his grief and feelings of failure by going to another universe, and the theme of found family vs. blood family. But sadly the bad overshadows the good. First instance, remember that whole Nazis won thing? Well this could've been a great time to see just how bad Earth X (the name DC Comics gave that universe) is, but we get nothing but the bare bones minimum. The best James Gunn could do is the racist want to kill Adebayo because she's black. And other than the American flag's stars being the shop of the Nazi cross and a painting a Hitler, we get nothing. We don't know how this world operates, we don't see if maybe there's a rebellion trying to fight against this regime, we get nothing. All of the stuff I listed is something even a child could've wrote. Then you get lines of dialogue like this from Adebayo, and yes, this is real. I in no way edited it.

First let me just say that yes, America isn't perfect. We've got our own problems that need fixing. But what Adebayo said makes no sense. If our world was as bad as the Nazi universe she visited, not only would her and her mother [Amanda Waller] not be able to be big super secret spies or in Amanda Waller's case running the secret agency, but Adebayo would've been either dead or be in a camp where she would've gotten very familiar with the guards' anatomy. Sorry for getting a little dark there but this is what infuriates me about James Gunn's writing for this show specifically. He wants to so badly be the edgy guy, but at the same time wants to show politically correct types just how woke he is. But here's the thing, mixing edgy and woke together is like mixing water and oil. They're just not meant to be together. And don't get me started on how the freakin' eagle has a story. Yes, Peacemaker's pet eagle Eagly gets a story arc. Let me repeat myself. Eagly, the stupid bird, gets a storyline. Need I say more?

• Mix

Oh boy, where do I even begin? Let's start with the humor. Once again I find myself in the middle when it comes to the humor. Where season one just pissed me off with how hard James Gunn was trying, season two is a slight improvement. Not much, but slight. I did laugh a couple of times, but most the time not so much. I can't tell you how much I cringed when Vigilante meant an alternate version of himself and points out how they did the Spider-Man pointing meme. Is that meme even still popular? I felt like once Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland finally did that was the moment I stopped seeing it. Or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. Either way the point I'm getting at is while some jokes work, there are others that don't.

• Positives

The only real praise I can give this show, is despite the horrible material, is the cast. Even though the have to play characters that are either loud, obnoxious, unfunny, etc. They still managed to give some good performances.

Wow, I feel like I wasted my time with this season. Oh well, thankfully it's the last one because if there was gonna be season three and it had this level of quality to it, I would've skipped it and never turn back.

My final rating is, Bad.

So that's all for now. Come back on Thursday, Nov 6th, where I'll see which RoboCop film is better. The original 1987 film or the 2014 remake. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.