By 
This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.
It takes two full episodes of setup, but Creature Commandos delivers a humdinger of a supervillains vs. superheroes battle in its third installment. Unlike the standard superhero fare, in which Superman or Spider-Man detains the baddie and leaves them for the authorities, Creature Commandos roars past good taste for a brutal execution of an evildoer.
So horrific is the attack that team leader Rick Flag Sr. (voiced by Frank Grillo) cannot find the words to make them stop.
“You wanted monsters,” sneers the Bride (Indira Varma) as she takes her place next to Flag. “You’ve got monsters.”
Flag’s shocked look may capture the audience’s feeling of disgust at the attack, but the Bride’s rejoinder raises a question. Did we want monsters? After all, the first major project of the new DC Universe that James Gunn and Peter Safran have created is 2025’s Superman, a film that promises all the awe and wholesome wonder of a bygone era.
Why is Gunn starting Gods and Monsters, the first chapter of his and Safran’s tenure as the co-heads of DC Studios, with a bloody adult animation series about monsters working for the U.S. government?
For Gunn, the reason is simple: “It was written,” he tells Den of Geek with a self-deprecating laugh.
But there’s more to the placement of Creature Commandos, as Gunn’s group of misunderstood monsters points the way for a hopeful DC Universe, even for the strange and outcast.
Making Complex Monsters
Anyone familiar with Gunn’s previous work in the DC Universe will find Creature Commandos familiar, and not just because it picks up on the events of The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. Congress’ ban on the use of metahumans has put an end to Task Force X, so Amanda Waller (voiced by a returning Viola Davis) constructs Task Force M, a team of monsters she can use for black ops missions.
Alongside The Suicide Squad survivor Weasel (Sean Gunn), Task Force M features the Bride, acidic mad scientist Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), kind-hearted sea creature Nina Mazursky (Zoë Chao), and G.I. Robot, a decommissioned Nazi-killing android from World War II (also Sean Gunn).
The team’s first mission sends them to the fictional European nation of Pokolistan, where the witch Circe (Anya Chalotra) has sent an army of men’s rights activists called the Sons of Themyscira to attack ruler Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova).
To fight a witch, Waller sends monsters, and Gunn’s cast relished the chance to play the villains.
“I like being straight-up evil,” quips Tudyk, whose Doctor Phosphorus gleefully delivers Mortal Kombat-style kills. “In animation, murdering people is pretty fun. It isn’t a long day and you’re not covered in blood. I can burn so many faces and then go have lunch.”
“I love to play like a supervillain,” agrees Sean Gunn, but he has a very different take on both of his Creature Commandos characters. “I don’t think either G.I. Robot or Weasel has an ounce of evil in them.” That last one is a bit of a shock, given that Waller described the man-sized rodent as a child killer in The Suicide Squad. Gunn doesn’t agree. “Weasel’s just big and lovable…” he begins to say but cuts himself off. “Well, we’ll learn more about Weasel.”
In fact, we learn more about all the members of Task Force M. Creature Commandos’ A-plot focuses on the team’s mission in Pokolistan, but each episode’s B-plot reveals a character’s brutal backstory. For example, the Bride’s dripping sarcasm stems from a tragic event involving the man for whom she was created, Eric Frankenstein (David Harbour). G.I. Robot is “literally a robot, so he’s been programmed to just kill Nazis, which he loves doing,” explains Sean Gunn, who somehow plays the pathos in a machine who no longer gets to kill Nazis with his pal Sgt. Rock.
Each of these backstories adds depth to the show’s characters, making them more than the bloody monsters they initially seem to be. Even Tudyk teases that “the origin story for my character is heartbreaking.”
The one exception here is merwoman Nina Mazursky, the sweetheart of the show. “Her origin story also has a lot of adversity, but she remains this open, caring being,” enthuses Chao. “I think that’s her real superpower.” That ability to care in the face of adversity also makes Nina a key member of the Creature Commandos, even if her teammates don’t quite see it.
“So many of these underdogs and outcasts are just lonely, and Nina’s life has been marked by loneliness,” she explains. “She’s finally found her tribe in this motley crew of monsters.”
Beyond Boring Stereotypes
Monsters might get the headlines, but they’re not the only surprising figures in Creature Commandos. Humans such as Flag and Princess Ilana could also fall into the flat stereotypes of a grizzled trooper or a damsel in distress. But Frank Grillo and Maria Bakalova follow their co-stars’ lead by finding human notes in the characters.
Grillo approaches the challenge with a soldier’s sobriety. “You just absorb the circumstance and you go with it. If you put anything on it—if you try to be funny, if you try to be sad, if you try to imagine that this animated character isn’t you—it’ll be a problem,” he says. “But if you approach an animated character the same way you approach every other character, it comes out as authentic.”
The same is true of Bakalova’s Ilana, who is “the hardest character to play in the show,” claims Gunn. “We’re never telegraphing what to think about that character. We don’t explain her intentions, whether they’re good or bad. Maria had to bring to life someone totally different from herself with no clear motivations, and she really hit it home.”
Bakalova takes the compliment but turns it right back around on Gunn, saying, “I had a great person to guide me, so it’s not that challenging.” However, Bakalova is playing the one primary character who has no comic-book forerunner, someone created for the series. “Ilana doesn’t exist before we see her on screen,” Bakalova says with a smile. “So you have no way of knowing if she’s telling the truth or lying or manipulating.”
That unknown nature really challenges Flag, who still mourns the death of his son Rick Flag Jr. (played by Joel Kinnaman in Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad). “Maybe she just needs Rick’s help, and yet she’s like, ‘I’m bold and I’m feminine and blah, blah, blah,’” jokes Bakalova, undercutting her character’s apparent bravery. “What is it actually?” Bakalova has the freedom to create her character—a privilege that her castmates do not share.
That’s fine for Grillo, who has already portrayed a beloved comic-book character with Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “I know that no matter what you do, there’s going to be a group of people that disagree with it. My job is to make what’s on the page great and make this guy here [gestures at James Gunn] happy.”
“The scripts were just so good, with so much texture and world-building in them,” agrees Chao, whose character, Nina Mazursky, has appeared in just a handful of comics. “It’s also a relief that I didn’t have to go outside the script to piece together Nina.”
“And if anyone has a problem with it, they can tap me on the shoulder,” offers the muscular Grillo, perhaps unhelpfully. “We’ll have a conversation.”
The DC Weirdo Explosion
The DC Universe certainly hasn’t lacked for conversation ever since Gunn and Safran took over with a pseudo-relaunch. The duo has announced an ambitious slate of projects over the next few years, which run the gamut from the expected big names such as Superman and Batman: The Brave and the Bold to deeper pulls, including a Booster Gold film.
As the man who turned characters like Groot and Rocket Raccoon into household names, James Gunn has already proven his love for crazy comic-book lore. “James always found it hilarious that there was this comic-book character called the Weasel who just looks like a big weasel and doesn’t have any powers,” recalls his brother Sean Gunn. That love shows in Creature Commandos, which features odd, comics-inspired touches such as the Question’s home base, Hub City, the Atomic Knights, and Dr. Will Magnus of the Metal Men.
To fill out his new weird, wonderful world, James Gunn chose Dean Lorey to be Creature Commandos’ showrunner. A veteran of shows such as Harley Quinn and Kite-Man: Hell Yeah!, Lorey knows how to work an obscure oddity into a big-budget series. However, while Creature Commandos certainly has humor, it’s far less goofy than Lorey’s previous projects. “This show has a great deal more gravity to it. It’s at heart a drama and it’s really the first taste of James’ vision of the DCU,” he says.
For his part, Gunn doesn’t see the show as anything so grand. “Every project from DC Studios is going to have its own feeling and tone. Creature Commandos is completely different from Superman,” he tells us, relieving those worried about Clark Kent eviscerating his enemies.
“And those are just the things I’m working on. When you get to Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow or Lanterns, those are completely other things. Every story in the DCU is completely different.”
From that perspective, Creature Commandos may be the perfect series to begin the new DC Universe. Because the monsters of Task Force M are nothing if not different, and that difference allows them to be heroes—just, sometimes, very nasty-looking heroes.
Creature Commandos premieres on Max on Dec. 5.
The post James Gunn Reveals Why Creature Commandos Is Launching The New DC Universe appeared first on Den of Geek.
