So Suicide Squad has been released to shall we say extremely negative reviews but my feelings are a bit more complex than that so I figured I'd do this differently than normal. This time, instead of ten things I loved or ten that I hated, I'm breaking it down into three separate categories. The Good: the things I liked. The Bad: the things I thought were technically or structurally bad on a filmmaking level. The Ugly: The unpleasant, awful things that we need to talk about. Overall I did not enjoy this movie and I would call it a bad film, buuuuuuut there were things I did like so let's start with one of those positives.
PS: MAJOR SPOILERS INBOUND
Source: comicbook.com
10. The Good: An Improvement for the DCEU
This was the first DCEU movie I’ve seen where I didn't leave the theater seething with rage. Okay, I know, not THE HIGHEST of praise, but hey, it's an improvement.
This film had moments I liked and characters I would want to see more of. I cannot say the same about the rage-inducing Man of Steel or the "does not even count as a movie" Dawn of Justice. This movie shows a slight trend in the right direction and, while it isn't quite there yet, it leaves me hopeful for good movies later down the line.
I know that "This wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen" might feel like a backhanded complement, but my expectations were set shockingly low on this one. And not just because the marketing looked like the result of a one-night stand between a condemned Hot Topic and an Ed Hardy t-shirt. Although I can't say that wasn't a part of it.
But overall, this was an actual improvement, and one that leaves me with high hopes that I'll enjoy Wonder Woman. Maybe that'll be the great one.
Source: screenrant.com
9. The Bad: Still a Structural Disaster
Can someone please buy Warner Brothers a book on the three act structure? Please?
Much like Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad has serious structural problems. The setup takes upwards of thirty minutes of the film's runtime, and the third act is somewhere between forty-five minutes and a full hour. The last hour of your movie can't ALL be the climax! It gets incredibly boring and exhausting. Every scene feels like it was edited to the bone and shoved awkwardly into place in the film.
We are introduced to Deadshot three separate times. Three. Separate. Times. Instead of sliding flashbacks and origins into the plot naturally, we get an obscenely long series of introdumps accompanied by music cues that were so transparently trying to knock off Guardians of the Galaxy's charm that it was kind of hilarious.
Character motivations change from scene to scene and major plot elements are completely forgotten. Harley's bomb being shut off? Forgotten. The team hating Katana as much as Flag? Totally abandoned! Diablo's arc being set up as an abandonment of his violent ways? What's character development?
It's possible that this film was destroyed in the edit, but that doesn't excuse this paper mache and swiss cheese structure of a film. Embarrassing.
Source: nerdist.com
8. The Ugly: The Visual Aesthetic
Behind the scenes info!!!!!!! So the original cut of this film was dark and dour and depressing and, from all reports, boring as sin. But when that great pop-y Bohemian Rhapsody scored trailer kicked everybody's ass, Warner freaked out and realized they needed to redo the movie. So they hired the company that edited the trailer and let them edit the movie. This is what people in and around the entertainment industry refer to as "a really bad idea".
As a result, most of this movie feels like the longest trailer ever made. Quick cuts that make it difficult to understand what's going on, scenes and shots being jarringly stitched together and oh my god the stylization. This movie is a literalization of the phrase "style over substance". The in-your-face music cues and cartoonish visual transitions try to communicate some sort of uniqueness, but wind up seeming like a particularly "edgy" 13-year-old covered the screen in the doodles he did in the margins of his history book.
Want to know what the movie looks like? Check out the posters. Look, I'm glad the DCEU discovered that colors are things that exist, but why'd they have to find sickly greens and washed out pinks first?
There is a reason color palate matters. If you pay attention to it, your movie won't look like someone threw up in a washing machine.
Source: liveforfilms.com
7. The Good: Establishes Some Solid Characters
Here's the thing: I'm a legitimate fan of some of the characters in this movie.
The "˜80s Suicide Squad was one of DC's most influential books, completely changing the dynamic of team books as a whole. As a result, characters like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang have firm places in my heart.
On the list of things this movie got super right was Boomer himself. From his careless demeanor to his unabashed racism, George Harkness felt like he stepped right off the comic page. Same for Viola Davis's portrayal of Amanda Waller. The Wall was nothing less than in charge for her entire time onscreen. Even when surrounded by murderers and monsters, she is the one to fear. I have immense respect for the film's work not undermining her authority at any point. She is The Boss.
Also in the category of characters I liked, Deadshot. Will Smith was a good choice and, even though they made Floyd Lawton dramatically less complex and interesting for the film, he still did a great job with what he was given. And Margot Robbie did good work with her portrayal of Harley Quinn, even if I had some serious issues with it that I'll get to later on.
Source: screenrant.com
6. The Bad: The Villains are Atrocious
If we're talking about characters, we need to address the large boring elephant in the room. Our main villains, Enchantress and Incubus, are a couple of, if not THE, least interesting villains in any superhero movie I've ever seen.
While I'll concede that Enchantress had the potential to be interesting when she was acting like a creepy monster from a Japanese horror movie, the second she meets up with Incubus and turns into a modern version of Rita Repulsa, my eyes glaze over.
Incubus is somehow even worse. A lot worse. Even if the CG didn't look like it belonged on a PS3 launch title, Incubus has less personality than the pavement he's walking on. If you asked me to explain one thing about his characterization, I couldn't even make a snarky joke about it because there is NOTHING to work off of.
Having Enchantress go coo-coo before she's ever sent out with the Squad means that she has no personal connection to most of the team, and Incubus has no connection to ANY of the team. This results in a drawn out but impossibly uninteresting climax. Also, they are ludicrously overblown antagonists. As soon as they started having overwritten monologues delivered through subtitles, I actually laughed out loud in the theatre. It feels like the kind of goofy overblown mythology from the original Ghostbusters movie, but there it was a joke.
And speaking of jokes"¦
Source: variety.com
5. The Ugly: The Friggin’ Joker
This performance should be embarrassing to everyone. The actors, the director, the studio, everyone who has ever written the character, everyone. But not because of Jared Leto's BS method acting, not because his behavior towards the cast makes him an actual serial harasser, not EVEN because his physical appearance in the movie is laughable, but because he is boring in this movie.
Seriously, I went in expecting to laugh at his terrible performance based on the trailers, but he was just nothing. Heath Ledger did something interesting and different with the role, Mark Hamill brought the comic book character to life like no one else, Leto just"¦ sort of exists on screen.
It's only when he tries to act "edgy" that he transcends boring and becomes actually embarrassing. Honestly, not as bad as Jessie Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, but still really, really bad. It is legitimately impressive to be able to take two of the most interesting villains of all time and screw both of them up. Yeah, Leto LOOKS stupid. Yeah, he treated the cast unforgivably. Yeah, his Joker voice is cringe-worthy. But under all that, he's just boring. Maybe he'd be worse if they hadn't cut most of his scenes out for being atrocious.
Hey directors, THIS is why you rein in your actors when they start to go off the rails.
Source: screenrant.com
4. The Good: Universe Building
Ok, let's get back to things I liked, things were getting pretty negative there.
This movie starts to build the kind of setting you need for a superhero movie universe. We get introduced to ARGUS, the concept of metahumans being prevalent and the idea of costumed criminals. That might not sound like a big deal, but it really is.
Ben Affleck's triple cameo as Batman was actually the most I've liked him so far. I was underwhelmed by him in BvS, but here, it felt like he was more in line with the character I wanted to see. In fact, I wanted more of him. If there was an actual legitimate fight scene between him and Will Smith's Deadshot, I would not be NEARLY as down on this film as I am.
The DCEU up to this point felt sterile and empty, but now we are thankfully working toward fleshing that out a little bit. Although the backwards compatibility isn't up to code (Man of Steel doesn’t even HINT that there were any powered or costumed people before Superman, even though Batman and all his villains have apparently been active for years, according to this film) but we're getting there.
Source: postguam.com
3. The Bad: Terrible Direction
I never have trouble with action movies. Shaky-cam: no prob. Quick cutting: fine by me. POV filmmaking combining both of those things: I loved Hardcore Henry.
But in half of this movie's action sequences, I had real trouble following what was going on. The office building fight jumps rapidly between different characters so frequently that it's impossible to read who is doing what to whom. Also, there is legitimately a fight scene that takes place ENTIRELY IN A CLOUD OF SMOKE. It's like they don't want anyone to follow it.
As I've previously mentioned, the editing is slipshod and creates a film tied together with twine. And, the weird method encouragement Ayer is said to have given his cast seems violently misguided. A stronger director would have reeled in worse performances from Joker and Enchantress and would have beefed up motivation for Katana and Boomerang.
He also wouldn't have spent so much time letting the camera leer grossly at Margot Robbie's body in every scene she's in. Oh yeah, we're talking about that because"¦
Source: themarysue.com
2. The Ugly: This Movie Has Serious Issues with Women
The comments on this just got about a thousand times more fun, huh?
Look, I get it. I'm the least "get offended by a movie" dude out there. But this movie has an undercurrent of violence and objectification of women that is unignorable and inexcusable. Let's break it down.
First, let's tackle the small stuff and we'll build to the big one. There are two separate instances in this film of women being straight-up punched in the face as comedic beats. One, you can totally have, criticism-free. If you want Batman punching Harley, take it, that one works. But you can't also have the moment in which Slipknot (who in an earlier draft was stated to be a serial rapist) punches a lady in the face for legit no reason. And I could ignore that, if it was the only grossness in the film. But it isn't.
El Diablo's flashback also includes him smacking his wife on the ass, an action Deadshot instructs Flag to do to Enchantress to "get her under control". Funny on its own, sure, but it adds to the pattern of horribleness weaved throughout this movie.
And then we have the big bad one. The Harley/Joker relationship in this film is absolutely unforgivable. It's an abusive relationship that the film makes no attempt to address. No character comments on it, Harley runs back to her beau at the end and it's played like a happy finale. When Harley thinks the Joker is dead, this should be a happy moment for the audience, even if not for the character. But it isn't played that way. Harley's scene is mournful and solemn and played as a sad moment. The film finds this moment sad, which legitimately disgusts me.
To quote comic book writer Nick Spencer: "The issue is not showing an abusive relationship, it's trying to package it as a good thing." If you have a scene in which the Joker offers Harley as a sexual object to Common (the rapper), and then expect me to be happy that they're reunited at the end? You're just gonna get an upturned middle finger in response. Maybe two.
And don't pretend the female characters we got were "strong" or "well-written". Viola Davis was good, I'll give you that, but Enchantress was a nonentity, and let's be honest here, I'm pretty sure the finished film has more shots of Harley's ass than Katana's face.
Source: rottentomatoes.com
1. Overall Thoughts
Better than Batman v Superman.
I'm not kidding, this is actually a step up. Even with its boring villains, poor direction and blatant misogyny, this was still a better movie. Not a great movie, not even a good movie, but a movie I can see good in. Which is almost sadder. Every person I've talked to about this film has their own theories about how to fix it. Because this wasn't a terrible movie. It's not. It's just a bad movie.
I know some people in the comments are going to accuse me of "wanting to hate it", but that couldn't be further from the truth. I really want to like a DC movie. I LOVE DC Comics. I have shelves and shelves and boxes and boxes of DC Comics. I want these movies to be good so, so bad. But they aren't. And we need to acknowledge that. Because the negative publicity for BvS got us this movie, which was better. Maybe if we keep pushing back against bad movies, we'll eventually get a good one. I mean, we will, because Lego Batman looks fantastic, but y'know what I mean.
Here's hoping I get to write "10 Reasons I LOVED Wonder Woman." Fingers crossed.
