Peacemaker director James Gunn’s ‘secret to success’ is fighting for his vision
When filmmaker James Gunn was making HBO’s new superhero series Peacemaker, one of his goals was to defeat the enemy of every showrunner — the “skip forward button”.
So, in the opening credits, there’s a song and dance number featuring WWE wrestler turned Hollywood actor John Cena as Peacemaker and the rest of the cast, complete with lifts and choreography that, as one press member put it, would appeal to the TikTok generation.
“The skip forward button is our enemy. So, that was the thing we were trying to defeat. I hope we did it,” said the director-writer behind DC Extended Universe’s The Suicide Squad and Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy films during the recent intimate virtual roundtable with Southeast Asian press.
“A lot of people worked hard on the show and it’s great to be able to see their names. That was something that was in the script from the very beginning when I first wrote it. The song was in it from the very beginning when I first wrote it. And a woman by the name of Carissa Barton was the choreographer. She did a fantastic job dealing with these guys. We shot it all in a single day.”
In a way, Peacemaker dancing and spinning set the darkly hilarious tone of the spin-off series about the “most unlovable” superhero from Gunn’s 2021 film The Suicide Squad.
Apart from wanting to work again with Cena, Gunn wrote Peacemaker because he wanted to explore the origins of this “vainglorious superhero” and his “twisted” idea of peace. “I felt like… a lot of the other characters (from The Suicide Squad), from Ratcatcher 2, Bloodsport to Polka-Dot Man, we got to see a lot about their backgrounds about where they came from and how they came to be. We didn’t get the Peacemaker’s or just see little snippets of things,” he explained.
“There’s a lot more growth potential for Peacemaker over say, Ratcatcher 2, who had a wonderful arc in the movie. Bloodsport even becomes a much better person than he was at the beginning of the movie. I thought that there was a lot of room for growth and learning with this character, who is sort of harnessed by his ideals.”
For Gunn, Peacemaker mirrored a lot of people in America and around the world for believing in things at any cost.
“And those things are strangling his spirit in so many ways. I thought he was emblematic of that… I just thought it could be an interesting story to tell.”
Writing about “a**hole characters” and finding the beauty in them could be an opportunity to dispense some life lessons as well.
“I love to take a character like Peacemaker or Rocket Raccoon (from Guardians of the Galaxy) — characters that are really a**holes — and find that sort of beauty in them because I think that helps us on our journey to kind of love ourselves, to care more about ourselves, to not be so hard on ourselves. I mean, if Peacemaker is all right, then we’re all right,” Gunn said.
“I think it also allows us to be kinder to other people, to look past people’s exterior personalities and say, ‘What is this person trying to do? What is their intention in this situation?’ I think, often, people’s executions are a lot worse than their intentions. It’s a very forgiving thing to tell the story of a lovable a**hole because that allows us to love ourselves and others a little bit better.”
Distraction from pandemic
For Gunn, having created Peacemaker while editing The Suicide Squad became a diversion from COVID-19 lockdown blues.
“As we quit shooting Suicide Squad in March of two years ago, I was home for a couple of days, and we had to go into lockdown over the pandemic. So, during the pandemic, I edited and that kept my mind off of everything. But that started to slow down and I had nothing to do and I was trapped at home with my miserable thoughts,” he recalled.
“So, I started writing Peacemaker, basically, to give myself a distraction and something to do. I set a goal for myself to write one episode a week so that I could have it done. And while I was writing, it was really when I went and pitched it to HBO Max, and they said that they wanted to do the show.”
Pandemic realities made filming last year quite difficult to pull off. “You can’t hug people when you see them in the morning. You don’t even shake hands. And I miss giving people a hug, I miss walking up to an actor, putting my arm around them and telling them what a good job they did,” Gunn shared.
Nevertheless, they got through it and it was one of the most fun shoots he ever had.
Gunn said, “I’m glad we had it to do during that difficult time because it gave us all something to sort of focus on other than trying to not be sick.”
Did any of his experiences or ruminations over the pandemic find their way to the script? “Well, I don’t know. Again, I am safely in the realm of, I don’t know whether things happen for a reason,” Gunn said. “But I do think that obstacles are opportunities. I believe in that very strongly. Whether or not they happen for a reason, we can always use hardship to make our lives better.”
‘I’m like Peacemaker’
During the interview, Gunn looked back on opportunities that came out of the “very trying year” that was 2018. He didn’t go into specifics but at that time, he was fired from directing the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie over controversial, old tweets, which he apologized for.
That period taught him the value of relationships. “You know, at the worst moment in my life, so many people reached out to appreciate their love for me, from my parents to my partner to the Guardians of the Galaxy, all these people who are my close friends.”
He further remembered how the worst day of his life became his best ever. “I don’t think I ever felt as loved as I did on the day I was fired. I went to sleep that night and said to my girlfriend, ‘This has been the worst day of my life, but it’s also been the best in a weird way.’”
Gunn admitted that he had a hard time experiencing connection with people and “feeling like I’m loved.” “And I’m like Peacemaker in that way, he has a hard time connecting to other people. (But) that was what I got from that time.”
Shortly after his removal, he was reinstated for Guardians of the Galaxy 3. In between, Warner Bros. entered the picture and hired him to work on any DC Comics property he wanted. This was The Suicide Squad which, as per Variety, became Gunn’s “best-reviewed film” and established him as “one of the most unique and successful storytellers.”
The 2018 controversy also led him to his most creative times, as it reminded him “why did I start making movies in the first place?”
“I wanted to be rich and famous and all those things people want to be, but what is it that really drove me? And it was the creativity, it was the storytelling. And I feel like I have gotten distracted from the center of what I most loved, which is getting together with my friends and putting on a show, just like I did with all the neighborhood kids when I was a little kid and we put on a puppet show. Nothing has changed for me since that time.”
He further opened up: “I’ve felt this incredible creative outpouring over the past few years because I went back to my roots, to what I really love, what I really care about — and that’s collaboration and imagination and nothing else. That’s all that matters.”
Now, with the early positive reviews — it’s also been trending on HBO GO since the first three episodes were dropped on Jan. 13 — it’s safe to say Gunn has another hit in his hands with Peacemaker. The Philippine STAR had to ask about his “secret sauce” to churning out a successful or potentially successful show or movie.
He humbly said, “Oh, my goodness! If I could bottle that and sell it, I would (laughs). I don’t know. We don’t even know if Peacemaker is going to do well. Hopefully, people will like it.
“I feel like, for me, I am just as authentic as I possibly can be. I truly, truly love the characters I’m writing. I work incredibly hard on every aspect of making a show or a movie. I oversee every single aspect of it. So, for me, it’s been a combination of really working hard and also being as authentic as I can.
“Also, let me say I fight an awful lot with people. I’m not (fighting) with my cast or crew members, because we all get along very well. But, you know, I will fight for my vision every second of the way with everybody and it’s not always…. that doesn’t mean it’s a negative thing. Kevin Feigi (the primary producer of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise) and I fight and argue about things. But it’s never with any malice. It’s all for the good of the project.
“But I will always endlessly battle for what my vision is and take it as far as I possibly can. And I did that with Peacemaker as well.”
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