A raunchy, visceral, uncompromising statement of intention
The new iteration of DC-derived stories has a curious choice of opening chapter. With narrative threads vaguely connecting to The Suicide Squad (the good one) and its spinoff series Peacemaker, the HBO Max series Creature Commandos reanimates a discussion that should have been declared resolved decades ago, but that the current era of superheroes seems to have forgotten: What if you could fix the world with just one little murder? Never mind that the first half of the series is about trying to prevent that murder; if you've met self-appointed protector of humankind Amanda Waller, you know that her extensive skill set doesn't include moral consistency. So throwing away money and lives to defend the princess-heiress of Pokolistan from sorceress Circe and her army of easily duped incels, only to change her mind and throw away more money and lives to have said princess-heiress murdered anyway, is exactly on brand for her.
Writer/producer/director James Gunn surely knew that starting this new DC saga with a team story would prompt parallels with the Justice League. Namely, how is this team different from its more heroic counterpart? What is it that makes the Commandos a dark mirror of the League? That kind of comparison isn't new. If you want answers about why Superman doesn't kill (and, therefore, why Zack Snyder doesn't have the faintest idea how to handle the Justice League), all you need to read is the 2001 story What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? by Joe Kelly. Much like the Snyderverse drew from the gray worldview of The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman, it seems the... Gunnverse? is drawing from the genre's own reaction to that excess of cynicism.
So let's return to our initial question, which can be rephrased like this: Can the value of one life be purely instrumental? In such Kantian terms, the question touches the core of why Amanda Waller operates the way she does. Her extreme brand of pragmatism bypasses any consideration of principle, and the same logic that makes her stage a clandestine operation to protect a foreign head of state can as easily move her to favor the opposite strategic objective. How does this make sense to her? Easy: a high-profile political assassination with unknown cascading repercussions isn't any more problematic to her than forcing inmates to risk ther necks for uncertain gain. The life of a princess-heiress or the life of an unjustly incarcerated metahuman are just assets to her, usable or disposable according to whatever arcane moral calculation is going on in her head.
And this is why Gunn chose Creature Commandos as the first entry in the new DC-verse: to establish a clear demarcation over against the messy position the Snyderverse started with. The version of Superman that Snyder presented in his 2013 film Man of Steel is a semidivine figure whom puny mortals should look at in awe, but not look up to; one with no ties of loyalty to humankind beyond his personal attachments: he fights to defend his adoptive mother, but he couldn't care less about innocent bystanders. That's how he was raised: Jonathan Kent taught him that he should let people die if helping them would expose his secret. Martha Kent taught him that his immeasurable power came with no responsibility. With the worst role models in the history of the character, the result couldn't be other than what we got: a Superman who is no hero. The absurdly contrived scene where we're expected to agree he had no other choice available but to kill General Zod set a dour tone that persisted for the rest of the Snyderverse. A Superman who kills was joined by a Batman who tortures and brands people and a Wonder Woman who has lost her faith in humans. That is not how you build a team of heroes.
Creature Commandos exposes what happens when your idea of saving the world doesn't contain an iron clause on the absolute value of every life: you lose sight of what you were trying to fight for. Waller's ill-fated adventure in Pokolistan ends with the death of the victim she was supposed to protect, as well as the deaths of members of her own team who shouldn't even have been in prison. The reason why they were available for her to exploit in the first place is the same broken logic that ranks lives in order of importance. You can't call yourself a defender of the world if you don't equally care for every single life in it. The numerous flashbacks that reveal the origin of each member of the Commandos go back to the same theme of according life an instrumental as opposed to absolute value. Waller believes she's using a team of monsters, creatures whose past misdeeds render them only worthy of being used, but the truth is they're all innocent. She's the real monster, and the unstated implication of the show's message is that Snyder's Superman is a monster on the same scale as Waller. Gunn needed to make that clear before introducing his own take on Superman.
There's nothing naïve about a Superman who doesn't kill. Via reductio ab absurdum, Creature Commandos shows the natural result of abandoning that basic principle, and helps set the tone for a renewed view of superheroism that doesn't fetishize power for its own sake or treat conflict as a utilitarian calculation. The superhero genre is in crisis because it's embarrassed of itself, averse to sincerity, willingly corrupted by cynicism. However tonally voluble and structurally disjointed, Creature Commandos was a necessary laxative for all the rotten beliefs that have clogged up the genre. With the slate clear, it's time for Superman to once again show the way.
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
