When it comes to stories about ragtag groups of heroes, without a doubt, James Gunn is your man. He’s written and directed four Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel, along with Peacemaker (2022) and The Suicide Squad (2021) for DC, he’s written and directed his own parody film of the genre with Super (2010), he’s written a parody film that was directed by Craig Mazin, and he’s even written the live action adaptation of the classic ragtag gang in Scooby-Doo (2002).
Creature Commandos doesn’t break new ground for him, except this time around the characters are a little angrier, a little more depressed, and everything’s animated.
Like most modern comic book adaptations this show is a sequel to a TV show that was a spin-off of a movie that itself was a spin-off of a franchise. For the most part you don’t have to worry too much about whether you have to watch five different movies and a TV show to get into this, because a lot of that is rushed through in the introduction.
Viola Davis is back, this time as the voice of Amanda Waller (see Suicide Squad (2016)). Last we saw of her, in Peacemaker, her work-for-time program that turned prisoners into expendable assets was revealed to the world and got shut down. Her plan of using bad people to save the world (and cover up US government involvements in questionable space projects) would have to come to an end, but that doesn’t mean her playbook has to change much. She just can’t use people.
Turns out she has a separate prison just for monsters, and the court of legal and the court of public opinion aren’t around to defend their livelihood. Where The Suicide Squad felt like a team assembled of random villains with sometimes questionably useful powers, Creature Commandos is doubly so. What makes Creature Commandos stand out, even against James Gunn’s own library, is its character driven structure.
Every episode is like the musical Cats (1981), in a sense. In Cats there’s a regular plot, thin but there, its characters hanging onto it by a thread. A new cat is introduced in song, as was the style of the time. There’s a slight amount of plot, and then another cat, and it carries on like this until all of the cats have been introduced.
In Creature Commandos every episode focuses on one character of the squad, with the exception of the first episode that’s spent setting up the plot, and another episode dedicated to a non-Commando. The plot of the show is relatively thin. Not Cats thin, but it’s not the focus. There’s a Princess in a fictional foreign country under threat by a rogue Amazonian [see Wonder Woman (2017)], and it’s up to Rick Flagg Sr. to lead the team, despite the recent death of his son (see The Suicide Squad).
As the story progresses there’s a little bit of a mystery that goes on in regard to why the Amazonian has targeted the Princess, along with multiple double and triple crosses along the way, but it all ends in a manner that feels like more of a whimper than a bang. Everything de-escalates far too rapidly after the death of the show’s possibly most hopeful character.
That’s what really holds the show together: it’s approach to character development. After the first episode sets up the plot, the rest of the show is there to introduce the cats, delve into their backstory and really explore the emotional core of who they are. It’s a thing that’s very consistent for James Gunn, especially coming off of Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 (2023), and it’s the idea that just because they’re monsters doesn’t mean they’re not human.
Every character’s backstory is excellent. “Cheers to the Tin Man” might be the best of the bunch with its exploration of a robot built for a war long past, “Pryatel Skelet” is the best evidence that what modern Batman movies really need are themed gangs for him to fight, and somehow “Chasing Squirrels” made me care about Weasel (see The Suicide Squad), a character who by all accounts could have easily just been comic relief.
It’s an entertaining show, slick and polished, held together by terrific character stories and an upbeat punk soundtrack. It’s violent and it’s raunchy on the surface, but in the end cares a lot about its outcast monsters.