Is Creature Commandos, the first project in the DC Universe, worth your valuable TV-watching time? Find out in our Creature Commandos Review!
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If there is one thing James Gunn knows how to do, it’s to take odd-ball third-tier characters from comics and turn them into something you can rally around. Creature Commandos is exactly that, and it’s luckily something he excels at.
Set after the conclusion of The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker season 1 – despite those projects being in the previous universe – Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is stuck with needing a new task force. This time, she turns to monsters to form a new team, which will be headed up by Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo). They assemble The Bride (Indira Varma), Dr. Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), and Weasel (Sean Gunn) to take on a new dangerous mission that the U.S. can’t be seen as being involved in.
The series wastes no time in establishing that this DCU is very well-established. The team has been assembled to take on Circe (Anya Chalotra), a villain most often associated with Wonder Woman, while Clayface (Alan Tudyk) also clocks in an appearance. It is clear this DCU is not in its earliest days and we learn a lot about how these ‘monsters’ came to be in custody and how some of them fit into the larger DC Universe.
What Creature Commandos also does that may make this a bit harder for some to deal with is that it goes for it. From sex scenes to a lot of blood and gore, this series does not hold back from the story it wants to tell. If this was a film, there is no question it would be rated R.
While I enjoyed the series, and I still recommend it, it’s hard to ignore that there are a few points where the series feels slightly manipulative. James Gunn knows how to hit you in the feels, and toward the later half of the season there’s a lot of that. It’s not to say it’s bad, the storytelling is still compelling, but it also feels a bit like it’s one note.
The good news is, despite my misgivings, as slight as they were, I was still very ready to revisit these characters, especially Frankenstein (David Harbour). There needs to be a lot Frankenstein and soon.
SCORE: 8 out of 10
Disclaimer: MAX provided The Nerdy with all seven episodes of Creature Commandos Season 1 for the purposes of this review. We watched all seven episodes to completition before beginning this review.
