Creature Commandos: The Collywobbles
December 5, 2024 6:41 AM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe
Amanda Waller tasks General Rick Flag Sr. with leading a team of non-human combatants, codenamed “Task Force M”, to enter Pokolistan and help their heiress, Princess Ilana Rostovic, and stop the Amazonian supervillain Circe.
So, recently, writer/director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran pitched a novel idea to the executives at Warner. It turns out that Warner owns the rights to dozens and dozens of superhero characters from their comic book subsidiary, DC. Why not make movies about them? And not just one-off stories about individual characters, what if all these characters lived together in a “shared universe”, where characters from one movie could turn up in a different movie? Clever! And not just in movies, but also TV shows, and even cartoons!
And remarkably enough, the higher-ups at Warner agreed to this crazy idea. And here’s the very first entry in this so-called “DC Universe”, called Creature Commandos.
I have the feeling that this project could go sideways if studio interference and people’s egos go unchecked. I hope it goes well for Mr. Gunn. Maybe the studio could even make a little money on the side selling toys and other merchandise.
And it turns out, the next entry in this series is a movie about Superman. In live action! Can you believe that we get to see a man fly on the screen?
So, recently, writer/director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran pitched a novel idea to the executives at Warner. It turns out that Warner owns the rights to dozens and dozens of superhero characters from their comic book subsidiary, DC. Why not make movies about them? And not just one-off stories about individual characters, what if all these characters lived together in a “shared universe”, where characters from one movie could turn up in a different movie? Clever! And not just in movies, but also TV shows, and even cartoons!
And remarkably enough, the higher-ups at Warner agreed to this crazy idea. And here’s the very first entry in this so-called “DC Universe”, called Creature Commandos.
I have the feeling that this project could go sideways if studio interference and people’s egos go unchecked. I hope it goes well for Mr. Gunn. Maybe the studio could even make a little money on the side selling toys and other merchandise.
And it turns out, the next entry in this series is a movie about Superman. In live action! Can you believe that we get to see a man fly on the screen?
I mean, yeah, there's nothing that an interfering suite of suits can't find a way to fuck up, and Zaslav inspires negative confidence, but even if Gunn's plans don't succeed, they should be very interesting failures. This looks to be at least mostly entertaining--certainly more so than Universal's attempt at a "Dark Universe" was shaping up to be--even if it's yet another Gunn-run collection of motley misfits being thrown together to do dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Weasel seems even more scrofulous than he was in The Suicide Squad, and G.I. Robot's monomania regarding killing Nazis is both depressingly timely and kind of funny. And the "Sons of Themyscira" is ripped straight from social media.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:21 PM on December 5
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:21 PM on December 5
I love this from top to bottom, but there's a part of me that wonders -- is that bad? I think I'm about the same age as James Gunn, and let me tell you, just seeing the DC bullet makes me think, "Oh, shit, they get it!!" But then I'm like...do they really get it? I'd like to think I'm a pretty cool guy, right, but I don't know if a man in his early fifties is who you should be aiming your suite of children's IP at, y'know? I know I would have loved this when I was seventeen, but (a) I am not seventeen, who the hell knows what a 17-year-old likes now? and (b) shouldn't this be for, like, sixth graders? But whatever: maybe this is ill-advised on WB's part, making a show just for me, but fuck it: It's a show just for me!!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:10 PM on December 6 [2 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:10 PM on December 6 [2 favorites]
shouldn't this be for, like, sixth graders?
Per what you said above, I have no idea what the average sixth-grader is like now or what they're into. I was in sixth grade in the mid-seventies, which was a weird time culturally; there was a lot more information and culture dealing with sexuality available to my age cohort, and I was able to read and look at stuff that kids ten years prior to that could only dream of, and yet kids today have access to stuff that I couldn't have imagined at their age, thanks to the internet. There's a bit more adult content in the next episode, but nothing that I couldn't have seen in a single Playboy cartoon in 1974. (Probably in the Halloween issue.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:46 PM on December 7
Per what you said above, I have no idea what the average sixth-grader is like now or what they're into. I was in sixth grade in the mid-seventies, which was a weird time culturally; there was a lot more information and culture dealing with sexuality available to my age cohort, and I was able to read and look at stuff that kids ten years prior to that could only dream of, and yet kids today have access to stuff that I couldn't have imagined at their age, thanks to the internet. There's a bit more adult content in the next episode, but nothing that I couldn't have seen in a single Playboy cartoon in 1974. (Probably in the Halloween issue.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:46 PM on December 7
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posted by Spike Glee at 7:57 AM on December 5