HBO’s ‘Peacemaker’ Is The Highest Reviewed DCEU Project, Above Every Movie

So, how’s James Gunn’s Peacemaker, his HBO Max series spun out of his Suicide Squad movie, doing compared to the rest of the DCEU?

Well, four episodes in, the series is reviewing better than every single DCEU movie today, even Gunn’s much-heralded Suicide Squad itself.

Peacemaker’s blend of brutal violence, comedy and drama has scored extremely well with critics. The series currently boasts a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, just enough to allow it to lead the entire pack of DCEU films. Here’s the list of those:

1. Peacemaker – 94%
2. Wonder Woman – 93%
3. The Suicide Squad – 90%
4. Shazam – 90%
5. Birds of Prey – 79%
6. Zack Snyder’s Justice League – 71%
7. Aquaman – 65%
8. Wonder Woman 1984 – 58%
9. Man of Steel – 56%
10. Joss Whedon’s Justice League – 40%
11. Batman V Superman – 29%
12. Suicide Squad (Ayer) – 26%

So, those are impressive numbers, and shows that greenlighting this seemingly odd project was the right call for Warner Bros. But that’s not all, if you want to stack up it against all of DC TV, it’s still doing quite well. With animation as a separate category, here’s how it does among modern live action DC TV:

1. Doom Patrol – 97%
2. Watchmen – 96%
3. Peacemaker – 94%
4. Stargirl – 94%
5. Black Lightning – 92%
6. Swamp Thing – 92%
7. The Flash – 89%
8. Supergirl – 88%
9. Legends of Tomorrow – 88%
10. Lucifer – 88%
11. Preacher – 87%
12. Arrow – 86%
13. Titans – 86%
14. Batwoman – 82%
15. Krypton – 80%
16. Gotham – 77%

Booo Gotham deserves to be way higher than that. Anyway, you can see that TV reviews tend to skew a lot higher than movies overall, but even there, Peacemaker is holding its own.

HBO Max is about to get a lot more DC TV projects, including two that are being spun out of the non-DCEU The Batman, a show about the GCPD and one about The Penguin. We’re also getting an HBO Max Green Lantern series at some point from the CW producers, though it’s unclear whether or not it will be in the Arrowverse.

In short, it’s hard to discount that James Gunn has been a good influence on the DCEU with both of his projects scoring this well. Praising James Gunn does tend to upset some Zack Snyder devotees, but it’s really just two entirely different styles, and I think DC has been smart to lean into Gunn’s hard R take on the Suicide Squad here across two different projects now. We still have more Snyder-spawned projects coming in the DCEU like The Flash, Aquaman 2, Shazam 2 and Black Adam, even if Snyder himself has moved on to making zombie movies for Netflix lately.

Anyway, watch Peacemaker, it’s good, as you can see.

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