Alright let’s get it.
Initially I didn't know what this post was going to be about, whether it would be about the peacemaker series or it would be about Marvel’s Eternals. Whatever the case was, it was most certain that it would be a post about a movie review and with the way the thoughts are flowing in my head, it seems to be that Peacemaker would be the TV show to take the front seat today.
Introduction
So recently I had the privilege of proof reading a script which was recommended to me by a friend and by recently I mean thirty minutes before I started writing this post and in doing so my mind opened up to a ton of similarities between these two projects, a relationship only a twisted mind like mine could see. It seems that there are certain rules that define quality films from average films or at least, something that separates interesting films from shabby films and I dare say that it’s not the budget or the marketing. I think it’s just a list of simple things tested overtime which have been proven to work, qualities that have existed in the stories that were passed down from our fore fathers to us, qualities that made these stories meaningful and memorable to us, qualities that sadly I think are lost today in most films making them this lump of shallow pseudo-entertainment. This is what I think about when I talk about the peacemaker series. A shallow piece of comic debacle that’s supposed to be entertaining but which fails at the foundational level when it comes to storytelling and today, I’m going to try to highlight some of these failings in this movie review post.
With all that said, let’s look at how not to write dialogue in a story and a bunch of other things Peacemakers taught us not to do or for a better alternative title we can call it how not to write dialogue like a 15 year old kid and other failings of Peacemaker.
A closer look at the story
At the heart of it I think that Peacemaker is a film that should have worked on paper but in the end it was executed properly. I truly think that it had a lot of potential but the reason why it failed was that it felt like a rushed script and one that felt like it lacked a lot of things which would have made it richer and more enjoyable. Before we get into it let’s take a look at its premise. So the story follows Peacemaker aka Christopher Smith immediately after the events of suicide squad where he was shot in the throat, had a building collapse on him and somehow only managed to have a broken collar bone and nothing more [if that where a typical Nigerian, he would be in church the next Sunday saying the lengthiest praise the Lord you ever heard]. After his activities and Corto Maltese he is apparently a wanted fugitive who is trying to escape his actions, only for him to be recruited by this special ops team made up of a lesbian chick who happens to be Amanda Waller’s daughter, a generic round one dimensional character who happens to be their surveillance tech guy is this one dimension flat character who has ill-timed humour, same as everyone else in the story. Then there is the tough lady stereotype character who basically is the embodiment of the plot, whom personally I don’t have a problem with other than the fact that she is a shallow character whose only purpose is to embody the plot.
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Finally you have the head of their team, a focused character who drives the mission without really telling us what the mission is and we will come back to that shortly oh and I forgot to mention the complete bumbling psychopath of a side kick who follows Peacemaker around. Peacemakers along with the members of this new taskforce are tasked with taking out this insect alien race which threatens to destroy the all of humanity. This in itself is quite a simple plot and like I said is one which is supposed to work well in theory especially since it has everything it needs in itself to work. When the story begins it’s made clear to us where we are heading towards, we are introduced to our main cast and in a sense we identify each character archetype. The dialogue seems regular and nothing feels out of place that’s all until we get to end of episode one where they make the first mistake and it becomes clear to me that this story is going to be a cesspool of whole plots that have been compressed into subplots which are all written to try to make this whole story that looks like a dysfunctional hybrid. Let’s take a look at some of the things that went wrong
When it all started falling to shit
1.Characters going contrary to their established nature.
Like I said when we start the series, it’s pretty obvious whom everybody is, including and most especially Peacemaker. In the suicide squad movie it’s made clear to us who Peacemaker is, a capable powerful soldier who believes in peace with all his heart and who will do anything or kill any man, woman or child in order to protect this peace. This is made clear to us when he and Bloodsport easily lay waste to all of the rebel fighters in jungles of Qualta Maltese in a show to test their dominance and capabilities. There are also several places where he proves to be a highly capable efficient fighter who is a great asset to the team and a highly efficient killing machine that is near precise and makes very little mistakes in the field. He is shown to be humorous and witty but of course, highly capable. Compare this to the scene where he is given the dossier about the mission he just casually leaves it in front of the prostitute he meets at the bar that day and then she just by chance happens to be a member of the butterfly aliens the team is going after and she gets to have privy to the plans of the team. Now we can pass that as coincidence for the plot sake. Remember how I said that Peacemaker was already established as a highly competent fighter able to wipe out half of a rebel militia group, well that same guy couldn’t take down one half naked butterfly easily not only that but when he is eventually able to take her down,
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He has to escape from the building to go meet up with the other members of his team and he just casually fumbles at that too, almost putting the entire mission at jeopardy because of his carelessness.This is something we don’t see happen in the entire suicide squad. As a matter of fact we see the opposite of this when he is in the suicide squad team being able to go head to head with the likes of Bloodsport and Col. Rick Flag. Another example is when he refuses to kill with any weapon that doesn’t have his dove of peace symbol on it. I understand the argument that tries to justify these changes as his character experiencing his character arc however I would say that the motivation for his character deciding to switch up on us all of a sudden is in no way shape or form related or connected to the mission at hand which requires him to be the original version of peacemaker we got to see in the Suicide Squad movie. It’s like he was marketed as something in the beginning and he ended up being the direct opposite of that, yunno like those what I ordered vs what I got memes; and if you want further proof of this, look no further than how he escaped the police in the apartment scene and compare it with the invasion of the palace of the Qualta Maltese head of state.
2.Poorly timed and unfunny dialogue
Oh boy do I have a lot to say about this one. In my opinion I think that this was the biggest problem with this series. To put it simply there was a serious disconnect between the dialogue and the events with happened in the plot. The story is a simple one like I’ve said earlier, as it follows this new special opps team trying to stop an alien invasion. The dialogue is supposed to be written in such a way that each line of dialogue takes us one step closer to achieving our goal but instead what we have is a dialogue that is filled with unnecessary and might I add unfunny jokes that add no relevance to the progression of the plot. It’s a known fact that dialogue progresses the plot and establishes character traits and character relationships. This series takes this particular rule and throws it out the window choosing instead to have each character try to be comedic at every and anytime at all. Like I said earlier these comedic dialogue adds nothing to the plot or the direction of the goal other than trying to get the audience laughing and honestly I didn’t find many of the jokes funny. It’s an understandable choice making vigilante the comedic character but making Economous, Adebayo and all the other characters sound funny at unexpected times is just.. no. Well maybe this style of humour is not my thing I dunno, all I know is, it didn’t work for me.
Still within the frame work of bad dialogue another thing the story does it that its dialogue doesn’t really portray the intensity of certain scenes. For example; and mind you there are many examples of this, in the scene where Economous goes to plant the sonic boom helmet at the butterfly base, you can pretty much tell that he is scared shitless however the scene is written in such a way that Peacemaker and Adebayo make jokes of it. I understand the reasoning behind making something comic out of the situation however wouldn’t it make more sense if you the writers chose to focus more on the immediate risk at hand and the success of the raid completely dependent on Economous getting the bomb into the building but no.. What do they choose to do instead, give us an insight into Economous’ backstory and the reason why he dyes his beard, something which is absolutely meaningless and adds no value to the story, nor does it help the situation at hand. Like I said I could site several more examples of this and to a very large extent, I found myself skipping many of the talk scenes and not still missing out on the plot. That tell you something about the dialogue, it shows you clearly the inconsistence between the dialogue and the plot
Stakes and Urgency, the lack of thereof...
Every good memorable action thriller builds its foundation on three things. They are goals aka where we are heading or the what, stakes aka what we have to lose if we don’t get to our destination or the why of the story and finally urgency aka how much time do we have before we lose everything precious to us
All great action thriller films have thrived on the proper use of these three principles irrespective of whether they are comedic action thrillers, fast paced action flicks, or slow burner stories that take time to reveal themselves before our eyes. The reason why this is the case is simple because action thrillers are written to raise viewers’ adrenaline and get them very excited and focused on seeing the end of their story. Action thriller stories are unlike any other genre of storytelling in the sense that they primarily focus on taking advantage of viewers’ excitement and suspense in other to grab hold of their interest and attention. This is very much unlike what we see in other genres such as horror where the primary emotion targeted is fear and dread or comedies where the primary emotion targeted is of course you know it humour. The problem with Peacemaker is that it sacrifices two of these building blocks of action films in other to focus on increasing the comedic humour and the truth is doing that makes your story topple on its head because your film is first an action thriller before it is comedic one. Take a look at 2017 movie of the year [in my opinion] IT for example. It’s a film which perfectly blended intense, dreadful horror with comedy.
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At no point in that film did it feel like the tension was absent even when characters where cracking jokes in the middle of some crazy intense shit. The director and the screenwriter understood perfectly well that the film was a horror film with elements of humour therefore they followed the rules for scripting a horror flick and they didn’t allow the humour ruin the mood. Peacemaker on the other hand chooses to withhold the details of what’s at stake if we don’t succeed all throughout the film and even choses to give us shallow reasons as to why we are taking up this mission. We are simply told by some shady people that the butterfly aliens are bad for us all but in reality we don’t see them really do anything threatening until the third to the last episode where we see them take over the officers in the county. In my opinion this doesn’t even qualify as threatening because these Smith and his taskforce are the ones that stare up the retaliatory action from the butterflies. The writers of the show thought it wise to have the first five to six episodes of the story be Peacemaker trying to deal with his daddy issues while putting the main plot on the side. It’s a clear indication that nothing really is at stake, even these guys claim that the butterflies are here to kill us all and because there is no urgency on the part of Peacemaker and his team the stakes are very low. This is further confirmed in the last episode where the butterflies finally reveal that their plan was to actually disguise themselves on earth and live peaceful lives. Something the writers didn’t want us to know from the very beginning because they knew we wouldn’t watch it.
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In the end poor dialogue decisions, character misrepresentation and or negligence of the rules is what I think lead to this shows downfall. So Peacemaker what did you think of it let me know down below in the comments section of this post and tell me why you think this review might be a harsh unfounded criticism of this show and until I see you again
