'The Peacemaker': The superhero against sex toys

Just look at the posters, stills, trailers, or individual scenes from The Peacemaker and you'd think it's a cross between Pocoyo and the Teletubbies. The superhero's ( Peacemaker ) look would appeal to five-year-olds, because, in fact, this comic-book protagonist wears a kind of potty on his head, and there are no better things inside it. He's accompanied by a colorful gang of eccentric characters, and, well, who wants to watch this garbage? It has an 8.3 on IMDb.

I watched this garbage because there was nothing better to do, and I had to start with the pilot, in a hurry because the second season had just premiered. I have a very healthy lack of knowledge of the so-called DC Universe , of which I don't know if Spiderman, Espinete, or José Luis Ábalos are part. Our elders complained about having to learn the complete list of the Visigothic kings. Now children, young people, and deviant adult cinephiles know four hundred names of superheroes or villains, and the childhoods of all of them, as if it were a test.

The Peacemaker, as this review proves, requires no prior knowledge, or even the lack thereof means you won't get lost in its plots and references. There's barely any plot, and the references are fascist , so you can't miss it.

The proposal by James Gunn , creator, writer and director of the series (and now more famous for having directed, I suppose with less obscenity, the new Superman ) is a mix of South Park and The Office. Basically, the characters spend half an hour maintaining insane and criminal dialogue before reaching a pretty cool action scene that moves the plot forward. The plot: some alien butterflies (seriously) have gotten into people's brains and want to take over the world. We have to get rid of the butterflies.

I don't know the DC Universe, of which I don't know if Spiderman, Espinete or Ábalos are part.

That's it. Eight chapters of butterfly netting that, in reality, give the special effects guys a chance to play, but don't constitute the bulk of the story. The bulk of the story is the incomparably unmatched brain of James Gunn .

On the one hand, there are plenty of witty jokes or monologues about the superhero status itself. On the other, there are sex toys everywhere, serving as confusing microphones or for whatever sex toys are for, or, well, just plain awesome. Dirty sex, without sex of any kind (no one gets naked or has it), is everywhere: brother-in-law lines, chav lines, jokes about weddings on their last legs , jokes about asses and penises... And so the minutes go by.

The funny thing is that they're funny, perhaps because they're persistent or because they're not used to it. It's been a while since I've seen such a cheeky, casual, and criminal series.

They say a lot of swear words , and I'll leave you with a phrase to illustrate everything that can be illustrated on this matter: "I saw you come out of your mother's cunt."

This is said by the Peacemaker's father, who is the one who accumulates the fascist referentiality . James Gunn plays with fire with this character, memorably played by Robert Patrick, you know, T1000 in Terminator 2. He is the classic conservative American father, very categorical with his children, a weapons expert and a hater of Jews and non-specular races. He also has a secret (and "quantum") room where he makes those urinals that his son puts on his head, and that can eventually be used as X-rays or to shoot projectiles. He and his gang dress up as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and do the fascist salute. If this isn't "playing with fire," I don't know what is.

John Cena plays the superhero, and I don't know why he's a superhero, since he has no powers other than his unfathomable stupidity. John Cena plays it wonderfully; he's a great actor of silliness, and that should only be possible if he hasn't gone to acting school. He comes from wrestling. James Gunn's wife, Jennifer Holland, accompanies Cena on his missions, and this is interesting because before becoming the director's girlfriend (since 2015), she hadn't appeared in any films. Now it turns out she's the perfect actress to play Emilia Harcourt.

Viola Davis, who we already mentioned here is discouraged because she doesn't receive as many awards as Meryl Streep, has the grace to appear in the series, but without her name appearing in the credits.

This may seem strange to you before you hear some of the dialogue in The Peacemaker. For example: “ She was our boss .” “She? How do you know she was a woman?” “She had a vagina.” “Do aliens have a vagina ? What was her name?” “We don't name our genitals.”

Viola Davis, who is dejected because she doesn't get as many awards as Meryl Streep, has the coquettishness to appear

In the second season, now streaming on HBO, the plot revolves around that quantum space I mentioned, where the Nazi father kept highly sophisticated weapons. It turns out the room allows for time travel, parallel realities, and things like that, "dimensional rifts." In reality, it's just another excuse, like the butterflies, to continue stringing together tasteless jokes and explosions.

A very funny joke is that the director's wife, Emilia Harcourt's character, goes to a psychologist and is diagnosed with " toxic masculinity ." Emilia spends the entire series knocking men out; she's very aggressive and single-minded, so she suffers from " toxic masculinity ."

Then all the drugs in the world come out and lots of frontal nudity .

Come on, Pocoyo has grown up, and the Teletubbies have just entered the after-party.