GOOD CONTROL
Writer/director James Gunn is the man with the plan
What was it about the Peacemaker character that you thought made him series-worthy?
I thought he was just a really cool, interesting character that could be pertinent to today and today’s world, in terms of his backwards way of looking at things. A lot of the show is about his friendship with these other characters, especially Danielle’s character Leota Adebayo, and their friendship that emerges out of all of this – even though they very much represent very different parts of America today.
In terms of how he evolves in this show, is Chris redeemable?
Peacemaker has a lot to learn, and it wouldn’t take just one season of TV for him to learn that. But it is that ability to learn that he does have, I believe, as a character. And it’s that ability to learn that, for me, makes him a little bit more likeable. His blind spots are pretty terrible, and then some places are just him being ignorant. I think that’s an important distinction to make as well. He is open at the same time, sometimes, but we get to see that journey. It’s just very, very basic. Peacemaker is almost every guy that I grew up with in Missouri. He isn’t that much different from a lot of people I know. As terrible as he is at times, he’s also kind of common. And I think that telling that story for a guy like that, with those blind spots, is important because everybody on TV is either totally good and totally perfect, or they’re evil, oftentimes. Obviously, there’s a lot of great shows that aren’t like that. But I think that it’s fun to make a superhero, or supervillain, or whatever you want to think of him as, that has a lot of nuances.
Tell us about your soundtrack choices.
This was the soundtrack I was probably the most excited to create since the Guardians Of The Galaxy soundtrack. And it really is all hair metal. It’s a lot of ’80s hair metal, but it’s also a lot of modern sleaze rock and hair metal that comes out of Europe. And a lot of really great bands that people don’t know about. I love that stuff! But there’s also a lot of really bad hair metal, so it was fun finding the really good stuff to inject the series with its flavour.