Peacemaker

The Sad Clown in the Silver Helmet

In the modern cinematic landscape, the superhero genre often feels like a sprawling industrial complex, churning out gods and monsters who are noble by default and burdened only by the weight of their own virtue. It is a rare and startling thing, then, to encounter a work like *Peacemaker* (2022), which dares to center its narrative on a character who is not only unlikable but actively repulsive. Created by James Gunn as a spin-off to *The Suicide Squad*, the series does not ask us to forgive Christopher Smith—a chauvinistic, jingoistic killer who claims to love peace so much he’ll murder women and children to get it. Instead, it asks us to do something far more difficult: to witness the profound loneliness of the man inside the helmet.

Gunn’s directorial lens has always been fascinated by the discarded toys of pop culture, but here he sharpens that focus into a weapon of surprising emotional lethality. The show’s aesthetic is a deliberate clash of tones, mirroring the fractured psyche of its protagonist. We are presented with a visual language that is equal parts Saturday morning cartoon and gritty, rural noir. The now-iconic opening title sequence—a robotic, deadpan dance number set to Wig Wam’s "Do Ya Wanna Taste It"—is not merely a viral moment; it is a manifesto. It presents the cast as marionettes trapped in a glam-metal loop, stripping away the dignity of the superhero mythos before the episode even begins. The bright red of Peacemaker’s costume does not signify valor; in the drab, gray interiors of his trailer park life, it looks like a desperate cry for attention.

At the center of this tragicomedy is John Cena, who delivers a performance of startling vulnerability. It would have been easy to play Smith as a two-dimensional buffoon, a parody of American excess. Yet, Cena finds the terrified child hiding within the muscle-bound frame. The physical comedy is there—Gunn utilizes Cena’s mass like a slapstick prop—but the true power lies in the quiet moments. There is a scene in the sixth episode where Smith, alone and drunk, sits at a piano and plays a mournful, slowed-down rendition of Mötley Crüe’s "Home Sweet Home." In that silence, the braggadocio dissolves. We see a man who clings to 1980s hair metal not just for the noise, but because it represents a time before his innocence was fully corrupted by his father.

The "villain" of the piece is ostensibly an alien invasion, but the true antagonist is the specter of toxic paternity. Robert Patrick’s "White Dragon"—Peacemaker’s vehement, racist father—serves as the grim origin point of Smith’s pathology. The series posits that Smith’s jingoism is a trauma response, a desperate attempt to seek the approval of a monster who is incapable of love. The violence Smith inflicts on the world is merely the externalization of the abuse he absorbed as a boy.

Ultimately, *Peacemaker* is a subversive triumph because it rejects the binary of hero and villain in favor of the messy, uncomfortable gray of being human. It suggests that redemption is not a single act of heroism, but a slow, painful process of untangling oneself from the narratives imposed by others. It is a show that laughs at the absurdity of the costume while weeping for the person wearing it, cementing its place as one of the most humanist entries in the superhero canon.