James Gunn Can't Escape Batman Even With a Killer 'Peacemaker' Episode

As the resident Guy Who Can’t Shut Up About Batman, I want to state right out of the gate that I know I’m the problem here. It’s me! To make things even worse, everything I’m about to point out in this article, I gleefully clicked on and almost definitely sent it to my son. How many Batman figures, comics, movies, and coffee mugs are in the room with me? It’s a miracle I’ve procreated. Let’s put it that way.

Anyway, James Gunn has been on a mini-press tour pumping up Peacemaker Episode 6, which to Gunn’s credit, fired on all cylinders. It delivered on promises made about setting up the Superman sequel, and it beautifully paid off the big Earth X reveal. More importantly, it transformed Peacemaker Season 2 from a tire-spinning exercise into a must-watch. I’m seriously jealous of anyone who gets to binge the first five episodes instead of having them doled out week-by-week.

While Gunn’s mission was to amp up the final episodes of the John Cena series, he could not escape Batman’s ever-present gravity well. That pull was only multiplied by the curiosity factor around who Gunn will cast as the DCU’s version of the Dark Knight while Robert Pattinson stays in his own little corner.

Here’s what we’ve learned from Gunn:

— After reports that The Brave and the Bold was having trouble and slipping down the timeline, Gunn has said the script is finally in a good place. He’s still very adamant about not pulling a Marvel and filming these things half-cocked.

— Despite rumors to the contrary, Brandon Sklenar has not been cast as Batman. In fact, he might not even be in the running at all. Ironically, though, his 1923 co-star Julia Schlaepfer might be getting called up to the DCU.

— Who wants to be Batman? Apparently, everyone. It’d be easier for Gunn to name the big actors who don’t want the part.

— Gunn is not terribly concerned with the blue and grey costume demands or any of the online nitpicking about comic book accuracy.

Again, I greedily devoured every single one of these nuggets and became the Matthew McConaughey smoking meme when I caught the Damian Wayne stuff. (He might not be Batman’s son?!) Turns out, James Gunn’s DCU is exciting, y’all.

But he is doing some great stuff with Peacemaker, which is why I was glad to see Variety at least ask, “Hey, what’s it like to find out America is basically Planet X right now?” Like The Boys before him, Gunn wrote this season years ago, so he wants to make it clear that he wasn’t trying to meet the moment. In fact, he wishes there was no moment to meet!

I mean, you’ll see some things next episode where, of course, there’s parallels. We’ve seen more racism lately, right? Is that because there’s more racism or because it’s more OK to be out in the open? It’s probably the latter. That’s obviously f*cking discouraging. And if my stupid TV show has anything to do with people being like, “Oh, maybe I should be more aware of my prejudices,” great. But that isn’t what I write the show for. I write the show for the emotional angle, just like I wrote “Superman” to be about kindness. If there was a sociopolitical aspect of “Superman,” it’s that there has been an absence of kindness and understanding and loving a human being, no matter what their thoughts or feelings are.

Everybody’s a f*cking antihero. Everybody’s too f*cking cool. What about not being cool? What about being a nice human being to someone?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Mike, Superman was very political because I saw on [insert brain-scooping social media platform here] that Hawkgirl clearly killed a proxy for Netanyahu. Everything is Gaza, so that’s obviously what that was. Nope!

“Absolutely 100% of that movie was written and done before anything ever happened between Israel and Palestine, and everyone continues to refuse to believe that that’s not what it’s about,” Gunn said. “It’s not. It just isn’t. You can take whatever you want from that, to mean what you want, but I didn’t write it to be a stand in for Israel and Palestine.”

Like the opening of this article, I say this as lesson to myself more than anybody else. I’m guilty as hell of not resisting this urge, but sometimes, stuff is just stuff. Not everything has to be a thing, and is that how we fix America? How the heck should I know? This is an article about Batman.