Next year, James Gunn will give us his bold new version of DC Comics on the big screen with his much ballyhooed Superman. While it’s certainly the most important of the first DCU titles, it’s not the first at all. This December we’ll see the first foray into this new DCU in the form of a foul-mouthed, graphically violent, darkly hilarious animated series, Creature Commandos. In some ways a strange choice to kick off a brand new universe, but with James Gunn, it actually feels perfect.
Ahead of the release of Creature Commandos, Nerdist spoke to showrunner Dean Lorey (Harley Quinn) about dealing with that kind of pressure while still doing justice to the most ragged of ragtag heroes. Additionally, we talked about casting voices with the idea of them jumping to live-action, and how Eric Frankenstein might be the biggest creep of the bunch.
Nerdist: Creature Commandos has to effectively launch a brand new cinematic universe. Obviously animated series take a long time to make. So at what point in the process did it become clear to you that this show was DCU number one, essentially?
Dean Lorey: From the beginning. We knew from the start that it was gonna be the first expression of James’s DCU. I won’t say it was stressful but it was something we took very seriously. I think it has, like all of what you would expect out of James. There’s action, there’s humor. But there’s also like real heart in it. I am not privy to really anything else about James’s DCU, so I don’t know what’s coming, really, but I I have to think that those are touchstones for James in general.
We embraced the script. I mean, we tried to do a faithful adaptation of what he wrote. But also, you know, I come off of Harley Quinn and Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, so I’m not like a stranger to R-rated material and although there’s probably more…I was going to say there’s probably more sex in Creature Commandos, but that’s not entirely true. Definitely the violence is on par with both shows.
What from your perspective has been the biggest difference between the Harley and Kite Man version of DC Comics and the Creature Commandos version?
DL: Well, the biggest difference is Creature Commandos, according to James, is canon right? So you
know. So that, and and Harley and kite man were never were never that. In fact, we just call it the Harley-verse, because it’s its own sort of thing, you know. So that’s a big distinction. I will say that we always broke the Harley seasons and Kite Man as dramas and fold the comedy in as it went along. Obviously. But it like we, you know, we took the characters seriously. We broke them as dramas and I think that’s true of Creature Commandos, even though it’s much more on the drama side. I mean, there’s humor, but it’s not principally a comedy.
Each of the episodes after the premiere focuses on the backstory of one specific member of the team and they each have their own visual style. Can you talk about giving each Commando a distinct look and tone?
DL: Our animation supervisor is a guy named Rick Morales who I think did incredible work. We also partnered with a French studio called Bobbypills and they brought a certain European flair to it, which is in keeping with the show. So we were always, in terms of the look, going for a sort of Eastern European Gothic, lush [aesthetic] and I think the episodes reflect that.
It’s also more colorful thank you might imagine. We started with this almost Hammer Horror aesthetic but it really broadened out. I feel real good about where we landed visually with the show.
The cast is so distinctive and I wonder if you could talk about bringing them together and what you were looking for with each of the characters. You’d worked with Alan Tudyk before and obviously Sean Gunn is James’ brother, but what were you looking for for the rest of the main characters?
DL: A couple of things. The hope is that if there’s a live-action version of them, these same actors will play those roles. So that was different. When we were trying to cast the show, we had to kind of cast it with with that in mind. So it’s not just pure voice acting.
There were characters that I had no idea what they were going to sound like. Like G.I. Robot is one. There’s a million ways to go with that. If you just start with a robot, what’s that gonna sound like? How roboty is that going to be? I just felt like Sean Gunn knocked it out the part with that, because he brought a humanity to that character, and weirdly an innocence to that character who does…a lot of killing. His take on it is so specific and I loved it.
And I also have to say that David Harbour’s take on Frankenstein was not at all what I expected. That’s another character where you look at it and think “How Frankenstein-y is this going to be?” But David just had a completely different take, really embraced the intellectual side of him. And Indira Varma’s work on the Bride I think is amazing and is sort of our lead character.
David Harbour is obviously great in everything, but I was surprised given that Eric Frankenstein has to be sort of the antagonist for a lot of the show before getting folded in, that David wasn’t afraid to be thoroughly unlikeable. Not every actor would be okay with being so gross and stalkery. Did you have to direct him like “hey be a little more simpy here?”
DL: Yeah, I mean, he’s not a great guy. All the other characters have a kind of sweet side but Frankenstein is a pretty dark dude. He’s a straight-up stalker with the Bride. Later in the season he does even darker stuff. So it really defines the line, “you wanted monsters, you got monsters.”
I loved that it got that dark and serious. Because at the end of the day, they are monsters. Nina Mazursky has a real heart and innocence, but by and large they’re all capable of bad, bad things.
I was delighted to hear so many songs from the band Gogol Bordello on the soundtrack. I listened to them a ton when I was in college. At what point did they become the house band, of sorts, for Creature Commandos?
DL: I’ll have to be honest. All that music was in the script. So James had, specifically, for every episode, probably had 4 or 5 songs written in it for specific points. It wasn’t just Gogol Bordello either, there were other great songs like “Coin Operated Boy” by the Dresden Dolls.
But yeah, we love Gogol Bordello. I actually can’t remember if they were scripted to be on screen in the show later. But at some point we decided to do that. And they were good to work with. They were terrific. Their music really defines the show.
Do you have a personal favorite of the Commandos?
DL: I think my heart goes to G.I. Robot. There’s just something so sweet and simple about him. But it’s hard! It’s hard to pick. The Bride is great, and obviously Nina Mazursky is such a sweet, lovely character. You haven’t seen the episode about her backstory, right?
No, not yet.
DL: She’s got a great backstory and you know, she’s had a rough go of it.
That’s really something that both this show and your previous shows in the DC universe have in common, these hurt people. Have you noticed that about the DC characters also?
DL: Absolutely. When we were doing the first season of Harley Quinn, we wanted to spend that whole time with her not in a relationship so that she could sort of define who she is. As a person aside from the Joker. So she breaks up with the Joker in episode one. And then we really did try to spend a season of letting you know, just like letting her kind of deal with the damage that she, you know, that she suffered being with Joker and not put her in a relationship. Just so we could see who she is. But yeah, all those characters are really pretty damaged.
Creature Commandos premieres its first two episodes on December 5 on Max.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
