This episode of Creature Commandos is the best out of the three available by far. In my previous review of the two episode premier, I said, “Gunn’s signature weird wackiness, which I’m usually not a fan of, actually works a lot better in an animated format. However, there’s still some aspects of it that are just a bit too zany and merge into annoying territory.” I gave the two episode premier a 7/10.
SPOILERS for Creature Commandos Ep. 3 below.
The opening scene for this episode, and most of the rest of it, follows the pattern of giving one of the Creature Commandos an origin, and this go around, it’s GI Robot. The scene is excellent and showcases the abilities of the robotic Nazi killing machine. It also features the debut of Sergeant Rock, a character who may be getting their own show or movie. When the World War II team waltzes into a trap, GI Robot shows he has a wonderful little Nazi counter at the bottom right of his vision, counts up a bunch of Nazis, and obliterates them with his arm guns. It’s simple and grotesque, exactly what it needs to be.
When we see more of GI Robot’s story, it’s about what you’d expect: He was experimented on, passed around, then forgotten, and eventually remembered but not by who he wants to remember him. When it was purchased by a new person in the modern day, it was pretty clear where it was going within seconds. Oh no! It turns out, GI Robot has been purchased by a present day Nazi! I guess he has to kill them all.
GI Robot’s story hints at a pattern for the rest of the Creature Commandos: they were created, given a purpose, abused, and misunderstood with violence sprinkled in between some or all of those steps. It seems like this is going to be the case for all of the Creature Commandos. They just want to feel like they belong. Good thing they found a brand new family in their group of ragtag, rejected “monsters”. I’ve never seen this one before.
The overall theme of the show is overdone but Creature Commandos seems like it will execute the theme well by not focusing on it too much. It’s more implied than explicitly stated, which is nice. I like that Gunn is allowing the audience to use their brains a bit and ascertain the theme without it being shoved in our faces. It’s a pretty good example of show-not-tell.
I will say, I love GI Robot. His focus on killing Nazis is just hilarious. I don’t know why the particular zaniness of GI Robot works better for me than everything else in the show. It just does. When he’s asked what he would like to do if he had no directive at all, he says he would like to meet back up with his boys from WWII, see how they’re doing, then go kill Nazis with them. It’s just hilarious.
With this episode, it is very clear that the main plot of the show will progress pretty slowly and won’t be particularly complex. I believe it’s only been three days at most from the beginning of the show and the main storyline, excluding backstories can be summed up as this: the team assembles, they start their mission, the mission is horny for Rick Flag Sr., the bad guys attack. That’s not the worst thing ever, but I definitely don’t mind some complexity of storytelling and character development. I get that a show like Creature Commandos isn’t exactly the place to go looking for all that, but it still could be there a bit more. Just like what held back the first two episodes to some degree is the runtime. They’re just very short. A show with episodes of this length, I think, would work better if all the episodes were released at once.
All things considered, I liked this episode much more than the first two. GI Robot’s backstory is predictable, but I love his character, the backstories for the rest of the Creature Commandos seems like they’ll be reskins of the same story, the action at every step of the way is awesome and brutal, and the main story is stunted by the length of the episodes. Oh, and I can’t forget the silly, but on theme songs no one could find but Gunn. There’s lots of ups and downs to this episode, so I give it a good 7.5/10.