I saw the new DC film, the Suicide Squad on Thursday but wanted to let it seep a little before reviewing it. It’s the kind of movie like Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman where you have been more or less entertained while watching it but with a little time you realise that the movie was kinda stupid and pointless.
It hits many marks by having Margot Robbie walking around in short-shorts and being ridiculously cute and Will Smith was really good, being the only character with any depth whatsoever, but it’s a complete failure.
Most of the characters are useless or underused. Apart from Deadshot and Harley Quinn, none of the character were developed in any way. The film mistakenly uses these criminals to fight a save-the-world confrontation with super-beings by fighting them with a couple of guns, a baseball bat and a boomerang. This team should have stopped a crime-syndicate, terrorists or stormed Arkham Asylum, not fight god-like beings. You can be sure that Hawkeye won’t be the one sent in to fight Thanos in the Infinity War. This burlesque-dancer god and her brother should have been saved for the quick first-battle scene in the upcoming Justice League pic.
The Story gets a big, fat zero (-0), the Look gets a +2, the Overall Casting gets a +1 because of Smith,Robbie and Leto only, and the Commitment to Genre gets the full +2 because yup, it’s unmistakably a comic-book movie.
The things that are stupid, don’t make any sense and I hated are too many so I’ll point out the good things. I still think that Affleck is the best Batman, Jared Leto is the best Joker surpassing Caesar Romero, Margot Robbie was great as Harley Quinn although everything was shown in the trailer, Will Smith was surprising a great anchorman in the movie and my bias that Toronto’s Yonge Street looked good. This stretch on Yonge Street is the same seen in The Incredible Hulk when he fights The Abomination.
Ten Point Review Score: 5
Coming Soon Nerdstalking.com full podcast on the film.
So I just took the kids to see Suicide Squad, and I didn’t hate that much more than the first time. A couple of things I missed the first time was that when Harley Quinn asks Headshot if he had ever been in love, he replied that he hadn’t and that’s why he slept well after killing so many people. She momentarily becomes her former psychiatrist self and refers to him as a textbook sociopath. I liked that. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be true because he obsessed about his daughter, wouldn’t kill women and children and then didn’t kill Harley Quinn when offered his freedom.
Also, the woman that runs the show has the worst script ever. Everything she said was stupid right up to when she said to the demon-possessed immortal goddess when threatened, “bring your worst!” Oh, she’s so fucking tough, like Arnold in End of Days.
I also hated Killer Crock more than ever, and noticed at one point he had his hands taped up, so I realized that the Tyson-similarity was not accidental.
I also see now that the reason the native rope guy tried to escape and then died was because the Boomerang guy riled him up on purpose so he would flee and Boomerangatang would see if the bomb threat was genuine.
It’s pretty apparent that the movie is only incidentally bad; a victim of studio panic after the faltering of BvS. Editing, like in the case of the original Star Wars, can save a film. It can also take a director’s vision and ruin it.
The biggest problem is that you were able to take your kids to it. Suicide Squad would have turned out much better if it had followed in the wake of Deadpool, where it was shown that a superhero movie can cater to adults with R-rated content and be a big success. Unfortunately, it followed in the troubled wake of BvS, and the studio second-guessed David Ayer’s desire to have the characters act in an appropriately dark manner. Hence you have those frustratingly few glimpes you mention, of them acting in their true nature. DC and WB obviously came to the conclusion that Angry Batman and Distressed Superman were the problems with BvS and attempted to brighten up the worst of the worst of DC villainy.
For me personally, the real source of vitriol for the movie comes because, to quote Whittier: “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been'”.
So true. I will say this though, if the movie had been about a challenge that Navy Seals could do but the government wanted it off the books, it would have been a lot better. The second time around had me constantly, CONSTANTLY, wondering what this team actually brought to the table.
This movie, while being somewhat entertaining never delivers to its potential. There was never follow-up to threats made to anyone, ANYONE! Not the guard from Deadshot. Not the Guard from the Joker as Harley Quinn implied, Not Rick Flag, (Lastman’s voice) “no-body!”. Another thing that was stupid about the team’s challenge was, besides being unequipped to battle a goddess, was the fact that she had decided to build a machine to retaliate against the humans for no longer worshipping her. What? Today, right now, the Enchantress drops her cute little gyrating self on a downtown street and she would take control of the citizens with little resistance and she’d be worshipped again.Why build a machine? She could kill everybody one by one if she wanted, kill five and 6 Billion would bow to her.
I really do love seeing Batman battling the Joker down Yonge Street in Toronto as well as the action later on. It’s fun to watch a place you’re so familiar with being dressed up with comic book characters. This same stretch of Yonge near Dundas was the same location where the Incredible Hulk battled the Abomination in the Edward Norton version. Not to mention way back in 1982 in the Canadian film Class of 1984. There’s some street scenes outside of a club that takes place on Elm Street at the same stretch of Yonge.
Lastly, the Joker is awesome. I still stand by that he’s the best Joker since Batman: TOS.