Creature Commandos review: New DCU’s promising start

On December 6, 2024By Littum

Creature Commandos premieres its two episodes on Max on December 5, 2024. New episodes stream Thursdays through January 16, 2025.

Creature Commandos will not be for everyone. It is violent, obscene and graphic. To top it all off, it’s animated, which may turn off some potential viewers (much to my dismay – and Guillermo Del Toro’s too). It seems like a surprising direction for the first project under the new DC Universe banner led by James Gunn and Peter Safran, but it says a lot about how the DCU is going to work. While Gunn and Safran have a number of projects with big names lined uptheir management style appears to be more laissez faire than their competitors at Marvel. They’ve also decided to pick and choose which parts of the now-defunct DC Extended Universe overlap with the DCU, which will no doubt be at least a little confusing. With all of that in mind, Creature Commandos does a solid job of bridging the gap between the old era of DC TV and movies and the new, while still being a really great show all on its own.

What’s obvious from the start is how much of a James Gunn project this is. The writer/director/producer/studio head is known for his ability to give the silliest, flashiest characters a bit of heart. He did it with Guardians of the Galaxyhe did it with The Suicide Squad and Peacemakerand he’s done it again with Creature Commandos. Every innocuous joke or extremely gruesome death is set against the backdrop of sincere character work. Each of the commands is given its due thanks to constant pacing and an expert mix of present-day history and backstory for each member of the team. Even the wild Task Force X survivor Weasel gets a tragic flashback! By the end of those seven episodes, I was absolutely in awe of the entire squad—which made the emotions of the finale hit even harder.

Ensemble casts can be fun, especially in a show like Creature Commandos where you’re not quite sure who the main character is until the story is over. The focus shifts as each Commando takes its time in the spotlight – but this is TV, so someone has to carry the arc of the series on their back. After watching the two-part premiere, you might think it’s Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) – but that changes as things progress. The Bride (Indira Varma) quickly takes the reins as the breakout character, with many of the best scenes of action and emotion revolving around her personal journey. She is the reanimated heart of Creature Commandos and Indira Varma does a fantastic job of pumping blood into the role.

The performances are an overall highlight here, even those from actors more used to live-action projects. Grillo and Varma are the deep-in-character standouts, but Zoë Chao and Viola Davis do good work as Nina Mazursky and Amanda Waller, respectively, and Alan Tudyk and Sean Gunn are well-suited to their various roles. David Harbor doesn’t always hit the sweet spot as the short and aloof but irrationally immature Eric Frankenstein, but that’s perhaps more about the writing of the lovelorn monster. But when it works, it works, and it will be interesting to see how these characters translate to live-action – according to Gunn, the actors will reprise their roles in other corners of the DCU.

Creature Commandos also features the carefully curated soundtrack you’d expect from a Gunn project: the next evolution of the oldies radio mixtapes that give Guardians so much of its personality, or the ’80s hair metal heroics that back it up about Peacemaker’s greatest triumphs. With Creature Commandos, Gunn matches the old world and heavy focus on The Bride and Frankenstein with the fusion of European folk music and punk rock played by bands like Gogol Bordello. The soundtrack is as weird and wacky as its cast, bringing a playful, immature-for-purpose attitude to the whole enterprise.

The one thing about Creature Commandos that doesn’t always work is its sense of sexuality. It is one extremely horny show: The characters are eager to get it on with each other, seemingly designed to fulfill the wildest fantasies of the horny straight guys watching at home. Even as Gunn and company try to critique this uber-masculine point of view—and the obsession and disregard for personal boundaries that can come with it—through the arc of Eric Frankenstein, the outlook colors the entire show in a way that can be off-putting. It certainly makes for a few moments of genuinely immature laughs, but it also feels like something we’re trying to move past in the entertainment industry of 2024.

While it often feels like it’s teasing us with little details about what’s happening in the wider world of this fledgling DCU, Creature Commandos is never too bogged down in world-building to focus on telling a contained story. It’s elevated by a sense of cohesion: everything hangs together so satisfyingly, and every little detail feels like it really matters to the big picture – and the episodes remain light on their feet, fun and entertaining. If this is the kind of quality we can expect from the new DCU, the future looks bright. It will be interesting to see what DC Studios can offer when a project isn’t completely spearheaded by Gunn, but I’ll be immediately excited for anything that comes out of this shared universe with his name in the writer/director credits .

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