Yahoo Finance James Gunn On How ‘Peacemaker’ “Has A Lot Of Issues” – TCA
John Cena’s mercenary character in DC’s Peacemaker may not exactly be the most politically correct guy by today’s measure in his expletives to friends, enemies and waitresses.
Peacemaker follows the DC superhero who is dedicated to world peace and how he’s prepared to use force of arms to achieve it.
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Asked at today’s TCA session for the Max Original series spinoff of Warner Bros. The Suicide Squad, as to why the character has a lot of blind spots when it comes to race, and how the character is a spitting image of jingoistic racist America, creator James Gunn answered, “Peacemaker has a lot of issues.”
“I don’t sit down and say ‘Oh, how am I gonna make this character likable.’ I make it as fully fleshed as possible, and one of the things that I wanted to tell was a story in which he’s got a lot to learn,” added The Suicide Squad filmmaker.
By the end of this past summer’s movie, while other members of the Suicide Squad had made a nice arc, Peacemaker did not. “His blind spots are pretty terrible and there are other places of him being ignorant,” explains Gunn.
“He’s every guy I grew up with in Missouri, and not different from anyone I know,” he said.
“Everyone on TV is entirely good or entirely evil, although there are some great shows not like that, and it was fun to make a supervillain who has a lot of nuances,” says Gunn.
One of the characters making the crossover from this past summer’s film to the new Max original series this coming January is Jennifer Holland’s Emilia Harcourt who worked as an official under Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller who keeps the Suicide Squad in line, for better or for worse, and sends them on their impossible, deadly missions.
“She’s closed off,” says Holland about her character, “that comes from a life of seeing a lot of death and killing of a lot of people.”
“She also believes that close personal relationships are dangerous. I think she’s a lone wolf,” adds the actress who teased that Harcourt “will become a more well rounded person and create some relationships with people throughout the season.”
Gunn wrote all eight episodes and directed many episodes, and exec-produced alongside The Suicide Squad producer Peter Safran. Cena is Co-EP.
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