After ten long years of excruciating suffering and pain at the hands of incompetent Warner Bros executives and Zack Snyder and David Ayer and a laundry list of other monumental screw ups, Detective Comics might finally have a film franchise that’s actually good for a change that’s deserving of the DC title. As plenty and many have already said and covered before, the DCEU was essentially doomed from the start as its sole existence was to capitalize on not only Marvel’s success but to replicate the success of the dark knight while having no understanding as to what made the two so successful to begin with. The few movies that were actually good at the time, such as Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, and Joker showed what it could be like if they didn’t have their heads up their rear ends, only for the subsequent sequels of these movies to be complete dumpster fires. And the two potential movies that could have salvaged the franchise with Black Adam and The Flash were complete disasters, far worse than stuff like The Multiverse saga could ever hope to be. So finally, during the Warner Bros merger with Discovery entertainment in 2022, Warner Bros decided to stop trying to be something they aren't and make a good franchise that stands on its own, by establishing DC Studios with James Gunn and Peter Safran running the damn thing, you might know James Gunn as the guy who delivered the best few bits of quality the DCEU has spawned, The Suicide Squad and the first season of Peacemaker. Though you might also know him from his most iconic piece of work, the live action Scooby Doo movie... wait that can't be right...
Anyway, in January of 2023, James Gunn announced the new line up for the DCU, with stuff like Superman, Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow, The Brave and the Bold, Swamp Thing, and most interestingly Creature Commandos. I was genuinely surprised that Creature Commandos was gonna be the launching pad for the new canon and didn't really know what to expect from it and the fact that it was animated intrigued me further. When the trailers first unleashed, I had the impression that James Gunn knew what he was doing and wasn't going to be a pile of horse manure for once... so how exactly does it fare so far? Well if you already read the title then you know where this is going. Creature Commandos is a show that succeeds where stuff like Invincible and it's crap animation and The Boys failed, and by that I mean having the mature rating actually mean something and not be a bunch of violence and sex and gore and swearing for no goddamn reason and have the characters have understandable and character driven motivations and personality in which they aren't the same arc type each time like The Boys. So far, it's basically monsters who are not natural to this world and have difficulty trying to maintain any sort of humanity, and that is made no clear with the Frankenstein characters Eric and The Bride so far, and I have a feeling we are going to get more with these characters as the show goes along. It isn't just this character has a traumatic backstory and that's all you need like the DCEU did, we actually get to see what makes them so traumatic and how the characters grow and evolve and how it's intergrated to the overall arc.
So far, people have been making unfair comparisons to The Suicide Squad, but I don't think the people who think that have ever actually watched that movie. The Suicide Squad was about Task Force X trying to cover up the United States' involvement with Project Starfish after the fall of the Cortol Maltese government and to make sure it never got out to the public, whereas Creature Commandos is about Task Force M protecting Princess Llana from Circe from killing her and killing all the already established DCU superheroes. So no, the two are nothing alike and the characters are completely different. And the animation and voice acting is excellent as well.
Although it's just getting started, the DCU is starting off on the right track and avoiding the mistakes Zack Snyder and Warner Bros have made. The question is, will Superman 2025 be the first good movie in the DCU? Only time will tell. But I'm really loving this show and cannot wait for more. I really am loving what James Gunnhas to offer since he is one of my favorite filmmakers and am graciously looking forward to seeing what he has in store for us with Superman 2025 and Peacemaker season 2 and whatever else he has planned for the new canon. The show gets a:
10/10