I had been holding off on watching this because I had heard differing opinions on it. Many of which claimed the first two episodes sucked. Personally, I like giving a show more than a few episodes to air so it can likely get rolling. Notably, I felt the first episode of True Blood was atrocious, but the series overcame that start.

Creature Commandos is the official start of James Gunn being in charge of the direction of the DCU. This isn’t counting Peacemaker as that was technically before he took control. Each episode of Creature Commandos comes in at an average of 25 minutes (down to 21!) with a combination of a recap and a theme intro (which felt like 3 minutes total.) And the season is going to be 7 episodes. So the whole thing is going to be a bit longer than two hours. Seems pretty short for a run time. Especially when it is released weekly. Why not change it to a movie and do it together?

I’m going to be hypercritical of this. Hadn’t planned it that way. But man, this was kinda rough. For a start of the new DCU, I think it was a major mistake. This is the sort of quirky and peculiar thing that die hard comic fans are going to geek over, but that’s not how you build a universe for the average viewer. And I’m saying this as a die hard comic geek. You want something accessible.

And this isn’t that. Not by a long shot.

For one thing, it has a much larger amount of sex in it than expected. And there is no reason for that. It comes across as adolescent wish fulfillment. Infighting and discord among the group just comes off as dumb. Why would you send a dysfunctional team that has never worked together into a delicate situation? You wouldn’t. Because it isn’t going to go over well.

This feels like it is just an attempt to tell origin stories for the team. I know there was talk about how traumatic and sad episode four was. And I agree it was. Weasel has a weird and tragic background. But it also had nothing to do with the story being told. None of the background does. Each character deep dive is done in a meaningful way, but also manages to come across meaningless.

Sure, we know G.I. Robot likes to kill Nazis. And all you have to do is tell him “That building is full of Nazis” and he will go ballistic on them. But so what? And the Bride of Frankenstein had sex with her creator, therefore sending Frankenstein into a jealous rage for the past 150 years. But the montage of the two of them fighting throughout the decades just felt silly to me. hahaha, what if Frankenstein wore disco clothes. Or hippy clothes. Or a wild west outfit. Or samurai armor… Or… Enough already, is this montage over yet? Let’s get back to the story. What little there is of one.

So the story is sending the team to a tiny made up country to protect the princess. The story felt a lot like the Tick vs Pineapple Pokopo from the early 90’s animated series. But that show was intended to be silly and over the top. This is supposed to set up the DCU to rival the MCU.

I know the Superman teaser trailer has been released by now and is getting a lot of buzz. But the fact that Gunn delayed work on Superman in order to get Creature Commandos finished first is just flat dumb. As I try and confirm this, I am not finding anything that does. But I recall hearing it about a year ago, so this is purely going on my potentially faulty memory.

I hate that I am staring at the start of the new DCU and the best thing I can say about it is “meh.” But I disagree with some of the slams against the original DCEU. I don’t think having something like Shazam as “lighter” in tone is a bad thing. I found the varied stories a positive. Oddly, things I wasn’t a big fan of in the comics were things I enjoyed on screen. Shazam and Black Adam being comics I wouldn’t read, but movies I loved. This new DCU with a darker and consistent feel will be interesting to see. But if the adolescent naughtiness is part of that feel, I don’t know that it’s going to be a good thing. In four episodes of Creature Commandos we got two sex scenes, one attempted sex scene, I think two other partial nude scenes, several scenes of Weasel licking himself, and a lot of Flag flaunting his bulge like he’s auditioning to play the Goblin King in a Labyrinth remake ousting David Bowie because of bulge.

I’ll watch the remaining three episodes and be back with a wrap up about my thoughts of the series as a whole, but as you can likely tell already, it’s going to be quite a hill to climb for them to get a positive response from me. It’s short enough that I may rewatch it all before I do that recap, but at the same time I’m not expecting that to be something that excites me.

I’m going to give it 2 stars here. I realize that may not reflect accurately the negativity I have espoused here, but I am in a generous mood. Merry Christmas, here’s two stars for the top of your tree. Welcome to the new DCU. (As someone who isn’t a fan of Superman, I find it intriguing that I am looking to him to improve things. Dear god, please don’t make Lex Luthor the main villain attempting some sort of diabolical real estate scheme.) (Also, I’m kinda sad I chose to watch this for review ahead of Dexter Original Sin episode two. Rest assured I won’t make that mistake a second time.)