James Gunn told John Cena not to read Peacemaker comics before The Suicide Squad. After the Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker was briefly fired by Disney for controversial tweets, Gunn crossed over to DC to fulfill a passion project of his, The Suicide Squad, despite David Ayer's Suicide Squad film from 2016. Gunn's version more or less acts as a standalone sequel to its predecessor, bringing back a few fan-favorite characters like Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) who assembles a new Task Force X team to head to the island nation of Corto Maltese to eliminate all traces of Project Starfish, a giant alien known as Starro the Conqueror.
Instrumental in this objective is John Cena's jingoistic killer Peacemaker. Dedicated to following Waller's orders, Peacemaker kills Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) for planning to leak evidence about Project Starfish and is about to do the same to Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior ) before taking a bullet to the neck courtesy of the sharpshooter, Bloodsport (Idris Elba). Presumed dead, a post-credits scene later reveals that Peacemaker is alive and recovering in a hospital, leading directly into the events of his HBO Max spin-off.
During an appearance on GQ's web series in which actors break down their most iconic characters, Cena opened up about his preparation for playing the character of Peacemaker. Early on, Gunn made one simple demand - "Don't read the comic books, read the script." Instead, Cena took inspiration for the character from famed U.S. generals George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, as well as Lee Ermey's drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. However, it was Gunn's dictum that Peacemaker should be a "douchey Captain America" that shaped the character the most. Read what Cena had to say below:
In doing my research, James told me, "Don't read the comic books. Read the script." This is a comic book persona that has a bunch of existences out there from different people putting out comics about Peacemaker. So I'm just gonna make my own thing.
It's understandable that Gunn would tell Cena not to read any Peacemaker comics. Both The Suicide Squad and the spin-off show's version of the character deviates heavily from the source material at times. As Cena points out, the Peacemaker comics have seen various different writers come and go for various different iterations of the character.
As an auteur, Gunn is more interested in crafting his work through a singular vision - his own. Sometimes, this means ignoring and honoring the source material and tweaking characters from the comics so they translate better to the screen. Gunn has a knack for plucking characters out of comic book obscurity and turning them into recognizable entities on the big screen. He's now done so with Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad, as Cena's peace-loving antihero will return for Peacemaker season 2.
Source: GQ
