The slow drip of Peacemaker content is turning into a steadier stream as the Suicide Squad spinoff’s January premiere date approaches, and DC’s latest offering is a full-length trailer that makes it clear this isn’t a story about your average heroic dude. “That guy is a clown” Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) says of John Cena’s Peacemaker. And she’s not wrong. But as her colleague Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) replies, “There’s something about him that’s… sad.”
The trailer shows a Peacemaker/Christopher Smith who is struggling with his central trait: He loves peace so much, he’s willing to murder just about anyone to get it. But when his government handlers send him to do a murder that includes children, he balks, because maybe he’s not really such a bad guy. He’s a guy “having feelings about things.”
Or, as he tells his dad (Robert Patrick), “Maybe I’m a grower, not a shower,” which in Peacemaker’s mind means “an individual you don’t like, and then you learn to like.”
Will we learn to like Peacemaker over the course of writer-director James Gunn’s eight-episode series about “two jerks in costumes and a couple of rejects”? That remains to be seen, though am I liking this version of Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), an absolute dork who advises Peacemaker against all that introspection stuff. “The mind is a den of scorpions better left running from, not towards.”
Peacemaker premieres Thursday, January 13th on HBO Max.
Buy the Book
Battle of the Linguist Mages
