SLIGHT SPOILERS for Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad follow. Very slight.
If you want the full context of what I’m trying express, here’s some required reading, and some required watching.
You can read this without investing time in those, but you might come away either confused or furious. Fair warning.
Iron Man Sucks
I’ve been trying to do this for weeks.
I wanted to write about Peacemaker in terms of structure, character, arcs… but man, this well has been thoroughly poisoned, and eventually I just spew vitriol until I deflate.
Let’s give it a shot anyway.
Peacemaker is an HBO Max series from 2022 focused on Peacemaker, a member of the titular squad in The Suicide Squad, as played by John Cena. Both this and The Suicide Squad are written and directed by James Gunn (of Guardians of the Galaxy fame).
Okay. That wasn’t so bad. See? I can do this.
Peacemaker is the story of Christopher Smith, AKA ‘The Peacemaker’, and his way back to life after being shot in the head during the events of The Suicide Squad. The show focuses on Peacemaker becoming part of a new squad meant to take care of another, less immediate threat than the giant starfish from the film, and on Peacemaker growing from a racist, misogynist man-child into a slightly more sympathetic sort of person.
It is, in other words, a James Gunn production. Same as Guardians of the Galaxy, same as The Suicide Squad, except with a slightly harder R-rating (Peacemaker has boobs in it! That means it’s for grown-ups!)
Arc-wise, it’s also much the same as most Marvel-fare, to be honest, or at least early Marvel; Ant-Man and Iron Man and Thor, too, are about men with failings that learn to have less failings because they meet women and have story arcs that change their thinking. Often through some kind of war that needs to be fought, against aliens or megalomaniacal businessmen or Nordic gods or Jeff Bridges.
Thor is a dickhead who fucks up, gets banished to Earth, and has to re-earn the right to wield his hammer by, like, kicking his little brother around and gettin’ some sweet Earth tail, I guess. Sure, Jane has a character, but it’s just a typical ‘smart person’ dressed up to react to a huge slab of man-beef throwing cups on the floor. She’s very much the straight man to this mad new reality that has gods and magic and Chris Hemsworth shirtless in it. In other words, she’s pretty dull, and I barely remember what her character was like other than ‘pretty and smart’.
Then there’s Ant-Man, which sees the thieving Paul Rudd go from lowlife unreliable thief to a superhero who, like, shrinks and grows and stuff. It’s kinda funny. Also, Evangeline Lilly is in it mainly to set up a future film where she, too, is a superhero, because women can’t just be heroes in a film, you gotta set that shit up.
Everyone knows ovaries are antithetical to superpowers. Come the fuck on.
And Iron Man, of course. Tony Stark is a huge asshole until his heart gets exploded or something by his own weapons, at which point he decides to not make weapons anymore. Well, he decides his company shouldn’t make weapons anymore. He still makes weapons for himself, of course. Because it’s good that there’s less weapons in the world, but he’ll be damned if he’s giving his own weapons up, right? Is there a more American superhero than Iron Man? I think not.
Look, I really loathe the first Iron Man-movie. I think Tony Stark is a vile fucking protagonist, performed brilliantly and with immense charm by Robert Downey Jr, who carries the whole garbage fire on his shoulders. The story has to bend over backwards to find a way to make Tony remotely sympathetic, literally trapping him in a cave with a ticking time bomb in his chest, surrounded by super bad guy terrorists (and they’re brown, too, which makes them extra super evil) to justify him making the first Iron Man suit. The justification for further Iron Man suits is less clear, apart from ‘Hey, Tony is the good guy! We promise! We said he was! Look at the script we wrote where other people are worse!’, but you gotta have a movie somehow.
God damn it. Already, I’m off-topic.
See, this is why I can’t write about Peacemaker.
Peacemaker is an extremely well-made show; it’s funny, often clever, with real heart. It’s surprisingly sad and painful as much as it is funny, and John Cena is proving to be a really solid actor, especially in scenes where he gets to flip the feelings-switch. More than Robert Downey Jr. did for Tony Stark, Cena brings real vulnerability and pain to Peacemaker in a way that makes him feel infinitely more human, even as he spouts racist and sexist gibberish.
The problem is that the Peacemaker is the latest in a long line of womanizing, messed up man-children who has to learn the most basic human decency of treating people like actual people. And then due to that extremely kindergarten-level lesson. they earn the right to bear weapons of mass destruction and be the arbiter of right and wrong across all known worlds.
Like… that’s fucked up, right? Shouldn’t there be, like, a lesson 2 somewhere? I understand that these are movies for children, but… well, I’m gonna get controversial for a second here, hold onto your hats - I think we should impart better lessons to the most impressionable minds on the planet.
At some point, we have to realize that if we keep telling the story of the arrogant, dominant womanizer with the tragic backstory, who learns to be better and then gets everything he wants, then all we’re doing is making advertisements for being terrible people.
Tony Stark is an absolute fucking monster of a person, and he’s the most popular, most important character in the biggest film franchise that ever existed on the planet. The fact that every movie he’s in sees him learning another extremely basic lesson in humanity and humility should be a huge red flag, right?
And Tony never seems to change his behaviour either - not fundamentally. He changes what he does but not how he acts. He’s a smarmy, arrogant, dominating shithead before he gets his heart blown out - and after, he’s… a smarmy, arrogant, dominating shithead. He’s just… only making weapons for himself now.
What’s worse, or at least equally bad is that Tony Stark’s life before the heart-exploding incident is… pretty great. From a male perspective: he can get laid whenever he wants, he doesn’t need to care about the woman’s feelings, or anyone else’s feelings, Pepper Potts is still part of his life, emotionally and otherwise, and as a ruthless businessman, he’s also able to make money hand over fist. He lives a lavish lifestyle of endless riches, parties and sex, with lots of free time to indulge in whatever mad hobbies he can think of - and none of that changes with his change of heart about weapons.
Tony Stark doesn’t have to give up anything material in order to change into a hero. All he does is say, ‘no more weapons’, and he pisses off his shareholders. But because the film also frames him as a man of essentially infinite riches, as well a someone with exceptional intelligence - there’s just no sacrifice to becoming a better person. Tony Stark doesn’t choose to blow his heart up in order to change a fundamental truth about himself. Everything that happens to him is the product of external forces, and those forces make him change.
It changes what he is. Not who he is or why he does it.
But it’s such a comforting fantasy, isn’t it? Not only the idea that you don’t have to fundamentally change yourself in order to be a better person, but that acting like a shithead is still going to get you money and women. Being an asshole doesn’t prevent Tony Stark from attracting women and money - it’s a moral judgment on the part of the film, and thus the filmmakers, that how he attracts those things is immoral, and not what he does or why he does it.
I’m hearing you, I really am - I’m lost somewhere else again, when I’m supposed to be talking about Peacemaker. Instead, here you are, reading my take on a film that’s nearly fifteen years old - a take that’s so cold, it could survive in outer space.
But see, Peacemaker is another Tony Stark.
Peacemaker’s life is kind of shit; he lives in a trailer, he’s been in jail, he’s kind of an idiot, his dad is an enormously abusive dirtbag, and nobody likes him. Over the course of Peacemaker, Peacemaker himself grows from an unlikeable shit who’s still stuck under his father’s thumb into a person much more worthy of love - and someone who loves himself a whole lot more.
But.
But.
The Peacemaker we meet before he changes for the better… is still an idealized power fantasy.
For one, he looks like John Cena.
He can also pay his bills. He can afford things, like cool guns and a home. A shitty home - a literal trailer - but a home that he owns. He can get laid without effort. He has a job; an exciting, world-altering, cool job. He’s skilled, and was important enough to be put on the Suicide Squad in the first place. The show is all about how those skills ultimately ends up saving the world - skills that he was given by his awful father.
Peacemaker, however, does fundamentally change his behaviour when he changes his heart. This is a good step in the right direction - but it isn’t enough, because his life before that change of heart was still a hell of a lot better than a lot of people’s lives. If you were to ask me at age sixteen whether I’d like to keep my life as it was, in relatively middle-class luxury - or be a huge asshole, friendless and alone, but also look like John Cena and be able to have sex whenever I wanted, and also have a cool job that involved saving humanity from threats none other can save them from… I mean, guess what I’d pick.
All this talk about Iron Men and Peacemakers, just to get at the reason that I can’t write about Peacemaker without pulling my (purely theoretical) hair out.
God damn it, this is a bad idea.
But we have to talk about men.
If you want to hear me whine about gender some more, here’s a book I wrote about the damage done to men who get put in boxes - and the damage they do to everyone else in turn.
If you want to hear me whine about other, somewhat unrelated things, there’s always my other books.