Background

In October 2018, James Gunn was hired by Warner Bros. to write and direct a planned sequel to the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film Suicide Squad (2016), after he had just been fired from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures as writer/director of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), in light of a series of controversial tweets he had made many years prior that he would later apologize for.^[1][2] While he would be almost immediately reinstated by Disney and Marvel Studios following his hiring by Warner Bros. & DC Films, his commitment to his engagement with the latter studios meant that production on Vol. 3 would have to be pushed back significantly to accommodate for his projects with DC, with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige encouraging Gunn to make "a great movie" during a discussion regarding his prioritization of the latter project, and pushing the production start date for the former film into 2021.^[3]

James Gunn, writer/director of The Suicide Squad (2021) and creator of the HBO Max series Peacemaker (2022-present).

Gunn's Suicide Squad film, eventually titled The Suicide Squad,^[4] was intended to act as a relaunch of the IP and characters as opposed to a direct sequel to the previous film directed by David Ayer, that would take the franchise in a new direction and feature a largely new cast. Roven and Peter Safran were set as producers, with Zack Snyder and Deborah Snyder as executive producers. Safran had pushed for Gunn to take on the project, feeling that there was no better director than him to "bring together a disparate group of outsiders on a mission".^[5]

Adapting Peacemaker to film and television

Professional wrestler and actor John Cena portrays Peacemaker in the DCEU as a "douchey, bro-y Captain America"

Among the new characters that would be part of the film's revised team lineup, James Gunn selected the character Peacemaker, originally created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette for appearances in Charlton Comics publications prior to the character's absorption into DC Comics alongside other Charlton properties in the 1985 crossover event storyline "Crisis on Infinite Earths", which would integrate Peacemaker into the main DC Universe. Gunn was initially looking to cast Dave Bautista in the role, as the two had previously collaborated on the Guardians of the Galaxy films in the MCU franchise with Bautista's portrayal of Drax the Destroyer.^[6] However, Bautista was unavailable for the role due to taking the lead role of Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead (2021).^[7]

Fellow WWE alumni John Cena entered talks to portray the character in April 2019,^[8][9] as Gunn had wanted to work with Cena upon seeing his performance in the romantic comedy Trainwreck (2015), and had been looking for an appropriate role for him for a while.^[10] Cena had previously auditioned unsuccessfully for roles in both Marvel and DC Comics-based films, notably being rejected for both Cable in Deadpool 2 (2018) and the titular character in Shazam! (2019), in addition to various MCU roles.^[11] He would however, be openly passionate about working on a project with James Gunn, reflecting in January 2022 that,

The only reason he gets a free pass is his reputation as a storyteller. He just does not let up, he claws at every piece, and I know it's gonna be good, because he starts from a blank page and that's it. But I always read it, I always read the story to make sure one, I like it, and two, it falls within my skillset. I do want to challenge myself, but I don't want the first time I do something to be on screen for a paying customer. I want to get practice and perform at a level that's consumer quality.^[12]

— John Cena

During the promotion of The Suicide Squad, Cena decided to wear the Peacemaker costume for interviews and other promotional events as a way to familiarize the audience with the lesser-known character, which was a tactic that he had previously used when he was a professional wrestler.^[13]

After finishing work on The Suicide Squad, Gunn began working on a spinoff series about the origins of Peacemaker "just for fun" during his COVID-19 lockdown isolation. He brought the idea to producer Peter Safran, who was later approached by DC Films to create a Suicide Squad spinoff series.^[14] The Peacemaker series was eventually picked up by HBO Max in September 2020, with Gunn writing all eight episodes of the first season and directing five of them. Cena agreed to reprise the role for the series in 2020, becoming an executive producer with Gunn and Safran.^[15] As a result, Peacemaker, who was originally intended to die in The Suicide Squad, was kept alive for the series, and a post-credits scene was filmed in January 2021 for the film in order to set up Peacemaker, which also began filming around that time.^[16][14] Following the first season's success, a second season of Peacemaker was ordered in 2022.^[17]

Characterization

Cena would describe his character as "a douchey Captain America", with Gunn adding that the character would go to as many lengths as possible to achieve peace.^[18] Upon being cast, Gunn would also tell Cena not to read any comics featuring Peacemaker to develop background knowledge with the character, as having a preconceived notion of what the character could be would distract from the story Gunn wanted to tell. Cena would paraphrase Gunn in an interview as saying, "you have what I’m looking for. Just be yourself, and if you’re willing to take direction, I think we can do something special." Cena originally envisioned the character as "a drill sergeant, Full Metal Jacket-esque personality", with the actor being told to change direction and emphasize his "do-gooder side" about 20 minutes into filming his first scene in-costume. Cena during the same interview, would contrast his acting career in regards to this role, to his career as a professional wrestler, stating that "Whenever I play a role in a movie, it really is never myself. Whereas WWE is the odd thing that a lot of times you have to create an extension of yourself because the narrative is just so damn long".^[11]

Despite being portrayed as self-righteous, duty-driven, and egotistical in The Suicide Squad and continuing to flaunt that facade in Peacemaker, Smith is in actuality a broken, self-loathing man trying to find a purpose in the world, but is too haunted by the horrible actions he committed to adjust in a normal environment. Smith's time with the 11th Street Kids, as portrayed in the series, allows him to slowly come to terms with his past demons and reconsider his world views, showing his vulnerable side more often to others and learning to process his repressed emotions, but also becoming more emotionally unstable and prone to bursts of anger. Viewers noted that Peacemaker received less character development in The Suicide Squad compared to other characters such as Robert DuBois / Bloodsport, Cleo Cazo / Ratcatcher 2, and King Shark, and that the Peacemaker was considered "irredeemable" in the film, but this was intended by Gunn to set the character's development in his eponymous series.^[19] Gunn used the series as an opportunity to explore current world issues through the title character,^[15] in addition to expanding on his relationship with his father, which was alluded to in the film.^[19]

The decision to make Smith bisexual, confirmed by the penultimate episode of the first season of Peacemaker, was floated by Cena, according to Gunn. He states that "Peacemaker is an interesting character because he's so fucked-up in so many ways, and then in other ways, he is kind of weirdly forward-thinking. John does improv all the time, and he just turned Christopher Smith into this hyper-sexualized dude that is open to anything sexually. I was surprised by that. But I thought, 'I guess it makes sense that this guy isn't one-dimensional.'" Cena examined the history of the character in the comics and determined that with Christopher Smith's childhood struggles and hardships, he would be "willing to do anything to a certain extent."^[20]

Early life

Christopher "Chris" Smith was born in 1981 in Evergreen, Charlton County in Washington state to August "Auggie" Smith, a former soldier turned former vigilante operating under the alias of White Dragon who was infamous for his nature as a white supremacist and his neo-Nazi beliefs. Auggie trained Chris to kill at a young age against his will, permanently warping his sense of morality. During this time, Chris accidentally cause the death of his brother Keith, whom Auggie favored greatly over Chris, deeply angering the former and traumatizing the latter.

As he grew up, Chris became mentally unstable, swearing an oath to keep the peace at any cost, regardless of the means he would use to achieve it and how many people he would have to kill. In pursuit of this, he created his own uniform and adopted the alias "Peacemaker" as he began his pursuit for justice by any means necessary. Along the way, Chris befriended local crimefighter Adrian Chase / "Vigilante", encountered future Justice League members the Flash and Wonder Woman, and apprehended a criminal called "Kite Man"^[21] until Chris is eventually arrested and sentenced to 30 years at Belle Reve Penitentiary.

Task Force X and Project Starfish

In 2020, an imprisoned Chris is recruited by A.R.G.U.S. director Amanda Waller into a privately sanctioned strike team of imprisoned metahumans and criminals codenamed "Task Force X". The squad is tasked with infiltrating Corto Maltese to eliminate an anti-American regime that has overthrown the island's government and destroy a Nazi-era laboratory called Jötunheim before the regime can weaponize a secret experiment called "Project Starfish". Additionally, Waller secretly orders Chris to scrub the U.S.'s involvement in the project. While a separate squad distract Corto Maltese's military, Chris accompanies the primary squad alongside Robert DuBois / Bloodsport, Cleo Cazo / Ratcatcher 2 and her pet rat Sebastian, Nanaue / King Shark, and Abner Krill / Polka-Dot Man in making landfall and making their approach to Jotunheim.

After joining up with survivors from the first squad, Col. Rick Flag and Harley Quinn as well as receiving assistance from a Corto Maltese resistance group called the Freedom Fighters, the squad capture Project Starfish's lead scientist, Gaius Grieves / The Thinker, and force him to help them break into Jotunheim, allowing Chris, Harley, DuBois, Krill, and Nanaue to rig the facility with explosives while Flag, Cleo and Sebastian accompany Thinker to the laboratory. Upon learning the truth behind Project Starfish, Flag retrieves a hard drive containing information on it, intending to publicly leak it, but a remorseful Chris reluctantly kills him. After Cazo steals the drive, Chris nearly kills her, but DuBois incapacitates Chris before leading the remaining squad members in destroying Project Starfish. Concurrently. A.R.G.U.S. medevac Chris and bring him back to Charlton County to recuperate at Evergreen Hospital. A.R.G.U.S. agents John Economos and Emilia Harcourt later check on him as they need him "to save the world" again.

Project Butterfly

Reviews

Cena's portrayal of Christopher Smith / Peacemaker across his appearances in the DCEU has received positive reactions. Speaking on his performance in The Suicide Squad, Katie Rife, writing for The A.V. Club, stated that "Cena once again proves himself to be a talented comedic actor" in the role, describing the character as a "living action figure".^[22] Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times would further add that Cena's performance as his "ironically named" character wound up adding "to a terrific ensemble and a deft balance of brains, heart and other viscera".^[23] Commenting on the chemistry between Cena's Peacemaker and Idris Elba's character Robert DuBois / Bloodsport, CNET's Richard Trenholm observed that a constant positive throughout the film was "The pair clashing hilariously as they try to one-up each other in homicidal creativity", further complimenting Cena as being "so good and so funny as the uptight Peacemaker, he seems like an entirely different actor from the block of wood who fell off the screen with a dull thunk in this year's Fast and Furious 9".^[24]

Critics similarly welcomed Cena's performance in Peacemaker the following year. IGN writer Samantha Nelson observed the progression in characterization in the series, contemplating that "Peacemaker quickly becomes a significantly more sympathetic character than he was in Gunn’s film, even if he is exasperating to his teammates such as Belle Reve warden John Economos (Steve Agee), who Peacemaker constantly accuses of dying his beard." She further comments that "Cena has a great sense of humor and seemingly no shame as he plays a sad-sack heel whose best friend is his bald eagle sidekick, Eagly".^[25] Charles Bramesco of The Guardian highlighted Cena as "the show’s strongest attribute", attributing it to "his veiny musculature lending a much-needed weight to face-offs that falter when ramping up the plastic-looking CGI". He likens Cena's presence and prowess in the series to physical comedy, iterating that "the bass has been cranked into the red every time he hits a wall or floor, letting us feel the heaviness of his elephantine body. He’s well-suited to the role as a budding comic performer too, his alpha-man-boy bluster the ideal fit for Gunn’s sophomoric hijinks".^[26]

Audience viewership

According to Samba TV, 638,000 US households watched the premiere episode of Peacemaker in its first 4 days of streaming on HBO Max.^[27]