Peacemaker Hilariously Calls Out Steven Soderbergh Over His Superhero Movie Claim

DC’s Peacemaker is hilariously calling out director Steven Soderbergh over his recent comments about superhero movies. Soderbergh’s beef with superhero movies is very different than, say, Martin Scorsese’s view they’re not “cinema”: Soderbergh is upset because when it comes to superhero movies, “there’s no f*cking. Nobody’s f*cking! Like, I don’t know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing…the fantasy-spectacle universe, as far as I can tell, typically doesn’t involve a lot of f*cking.” 

Well, Peacemaker takes particular offense to that notion, as the DC anti-hero wants it to be known, in no uncertain terms, that “i’m doing a lot of f#cking. like so much that people tell me i need to do less of it.”

Like all of the marketing and promotion for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad spinoff series, this tweet from “Peacemaker” works on multiple levels of winking meta-reference. On the one hand, the tweet is very much an “in-character” quote from John Cena’s DCEU version of Peacemaker. On the other hand, Peacemaker has received some criticsm for its at-times overly raunchy content – especially where sex is concerned. A NSFW scene of John Cena in the buff during Peacemaker’s premiere certainly got a buzz – subsequent scenes of awkward group sex or numerous discussions about the sexual proclivities of DC heores have been equally good at getting a reaction. As indicated, some of those reactions have been fans (or the studio) asking Gunn to tone it down just a tad on the R-rated bits (not bloody likely!). 

In his longer explanation (if you care to read it, below) Steven Soderbergh was actually trying to explain his own personal roadblocks to directing a superhero movie, with the sexual aspect being just a part of the issue: 

“I’m not a snob; it’s not that I feel it’s some lower tier in any way. It really becomes about what universe you occupy as a storyteller,” Soderbergh explains. “I’m just too earthbound to really release myself to a universe in which Newtonian physics don’t exist [laughs]. I just have a lack of imagination in that regard… for me to understand the world and how to write or supervise the writing of the story and the characters — apart from the fact that I can bend time and defy gravity and shoot beams out of my fingers — there’s no f*cking. Nobody’s f*cking! Like, I don’t know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing…the fantasy-spectacle universe, as far as I can tell, typically doesn’t involve a lot of f*cking, and also things like — who’s paying these people? Who do they work for? How does this job come to be?”

Funny enough, Peacemaker is a fine example of grounded reality meeting comic book fantasy – and it all seems to work (albeit with some “f*cking” thrown in…). If he can’t grasp that kind of vision, maybe it’s best that Steven Soderbergh doesn’t direct a superhero movie. Just saying. 

Peacemaker is streaming its first season on HBO Max.