This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows, from left, Jay Hernandez as Diablo, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag and Karen Fukuhara as Katana in a scene from “Suicide Squad.” (Clay Enos/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
I honestly wish I could be typing up a glowing review of Suicide Squad right now. Sadly, DC comics’ latest foray into their cinematic universe was anything but good.
In between moments of unearned pathos, shoe-horned humor, overused musical cues, and the same action beats we’ve been through a million times now, there are flashes of a good movie inside Suicide Squad. More accurately, there are flashes of maybe five good movies.
So begins the first of many problems with this mess of a movie. Being a comic fan, I’ve noticed that having a pre-existing knowledge of the characters helps some of the harder to follow movies. Batman V. Superman was difficult for some people coming in blind because Snyder did nothing to explain, well, anything really, about the hows and whys of the characters in his movie. No amount of preparation could have prepared me for the mess that David Ayer left on screen.
Ostensibly about a team of villains assembled to battle some world-ending shenanigans, Suicide Squad rapidly descends into a nonsensical mish-mash of scenes stitched together over what is literally the world’s most overused songs. Not just one or two, but an absurd amount. In the first fifteen minutes alone, there are at least ten different songs played, from “House of the Rising Sun” to “Fortunate Son” to a baffling Eminem insert, the music is constant and assaulting and incongruous with anything happening on the screen.
Suicide Squad is honestly everything people feared Guardians of the Galaxy was going to be. The fact that the two franchise films about ne’er-do-wells saving the world are both built around classic rock soundtracks doesn’t help to differentiate them all that much, either. But Guardians stands as an example of all the ways to do a movie about a bunch of no-name heroes or villains the correct way, where Suicide Squad basically reads as a list of what not to do.
There is just a tiny amount of redeemable things about this travesty of a movie. Amanda Waller, the Squad’s creator as played by Viola Davis, is basically everything she needs to be with an extra bit of terrifying thrown in. Will Smith’s Deadshot is a lot of fun, which makes you miss the days of yore when Will Smith could be counted on for a fun action flick at least once a year. Margot Robbie is great in her performance as Harley Quinn, Joker’s, at least in the comics, horribly emotionally and physically abused girlfriend. In the movie, there’s much more of a “star-crossed” element to the Joker and Harley Quinn, which just kind of sucks to anyone who knows where these characters came from.
The most hyped bit of this movie is far and away the biggest let down of all. I’ve had quite a while to get used to the Hot-Topic-employee version of The Joker, as played by Jared Leto. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about his absurd, insane antics done in the name of “method acting” but coming off as someone play-acting at crazy in the weirdest possible ways (sending pig carcasses and used condoms to cast mates, for example). No amount of prep could prepare me for seeing that all in action though. Leto’s Joker is beyond a let-down, it’s almost embarrassing to watch. Like watching a little kid try to pick a fight with a teenager or something, it just kind of makes you want to laugh, pat his lime green hair and say “aw, you sure did try though!” There’s no levity to his character, there’s not even a “wow, that dude is CRAZY” feeling that Ledger or Nicholson brought to the role, there’s just an emptiness as you count the seconds until Harley’s “Pudding-with-a-G” walks back off screen and we get back to the actual movie. Joker isn’t the big bad of the movie, he’s a minor plot point and mostly a hindrance to what little actual story there is.
This doesn’t even touch on the massive mess that the rest of the characters were. The movie seems constructed like a trailer, which makes sense since WB actually allowed a trailer-making company one of the final edits of the film. The result is a sad, sad imitation of what might have, could have, should have been.
But hey, there were some laughs, and it shattered August box-office records on Friday (before experiencing one of the worst second-day drops ever), so I’m sure this is far from the last time we hear from the Squad, or at least the characters that make it up.
Suicide Squad Disappoints Astoundingly
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows, from left, Jay Hernandez as Diablo, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag and Karen Fukuhara as Katana in a scene from “Suicide Squad.” (Clay Enos/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
I honestly wish I could be typing up a glowing review of Suicide Squad right now. Sadly, DC comics’ latest foray into their cinematic universe was anything but good.
In between moments of unearned pathos, shoe-horned humor, overused musical cues, and the same action beats we’ve been through a million times now, there are flashes of a good movie inside Suicide Squad. More accurately, there are flashes of maybe five good movies.
So begins the first of many problems with this mess of a movie. Being a comic fan, I’ve noticed that having a pre-existing knowledge of the characters helps some of the harder to follow movies. Batman V. Superman was difficult for some people coming in blind because Snyder did nothing to explain, well, anything really, about the hows and whys of the characters in his movie. No amount of preparation could have prepared me for the mess that David Ayer left on screen.
Ostensibly about a team of villains assembled to battle some world-ending shenanigans, Suicide Squad rapidly descends into a nonsensical mish-mash of scenes stitched together over what is literally the world’s most overused songs. Not just one or two, but an absurd amount. In the first fifteen minutes alone, there are at least ten different songs played, from “House of the Rising Sun” to “Fortunate Son” to a baffling Eminem insert, the music is constant and assaulting and incongruous with anything happening on the screen.
Suicide Squad is honestly everything people feared Guardians of the Galaxy was going to be. The fact that the two franchise films about ne’er-do-wells saving the world are both built around classic rock soundtracks doesn’t help to differentiate them all that much, either. But Guardians stands as an example of all the ways to do a movie about a bunch of no-name heroes or villains the correct way, where Suicide Squad basically reads as a list of what not to do.
There is just a tiny amount of redeemable things about this travesty of a movie. Amanda Waller, the Squad’s creator as played by Viola Davis, is basically everything she needs to be with an extra bit of terrifying thrown in. Will Smith’s Deadshot is a lot of fun, which makes you miss the days of yore when Will Smith could be counted on for a fun action flick at least once a year. Margot Robbie is great in her performance as Harley Quinn, Joker’s, at least in the comics, horribly emotionally and physically abused girlfriend. In the movie, there’s much more of a “star-crossed” element to the Joker and Harley Quinn, which just kind of sucks to anyone who knows where these characters came from.
The most hyped bit of this movie is far and away the biggest let down of all. I’ve had quite a while to get used to the Hot-Topic-employee version of The Joker, as played by Jared Leto. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about his absurd, insane antics done in the name of “method acting” but coming off as someone play-acting at crazy in the weirdest possible ways (sending pig carcasses and used condoms to cast mates, for example). No amount of prep could prepare me for seeing that all in action though. Leto’s Joker is beyond a let-down, it’s almost embarrassing to watch. Like watching a little kid try to pick a fight with a teenager or something, it just kind of makes you want to laugh, pat his lime green hair and say “aw, you sure did try though!” There’s no levity to his character, there’s not even a “wow, that dude is CRAZY” feeling that Ledger or Nicholson brought to the role, there’s just an emptiness as you count the seconds until Harley’s “Pudding-with-a-G” walks back off screen and we get back to the actual movie. Joker isn’t the big bad of the movie, he’s a minor plot point and mostly a hindrance to what little actual story there is.
This doesn’t even touch on the massive mess that the rest of the characters were. The movie seems constructed like a trailer, which makes sense since WB actually allowed a trailer-making company one of the final edits of the film. The result is a sad, sad imitation of what might have, could have, should have been.
But hey, there were some laughs, and it shattered August box-office records on Friday (before experiencing one of the worst second-day drops ever), so I’m sure this is far from the last time we hear from the Squad, or at least the characters that make it up.