As both clueless critical buffoonery and misplaced nerd rage reach peak levels before implosion, we take a look at DC Comics’ divisive Suicide Squad film.
Watching critics get all fired up about Suicide Squad over the past few days is painfully reminiscent of their response to Batman v Superman only a few months ago. They pounced on it, acting like it was one of the worst films ever made. BvS was by no means perfect. The plot was confusing and was bogged down by too much superfluous nonsense. That being said, there were more than a few bright points including Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck as Batman. Overall, it was a decent watch despite its faults.
The same can be said of Suicide Squad.
This movie is about a secret government program headed by a woman named Amanda Waller. This program takes super villains and forces them to do good. Help on a suicidal mission to save the world or die. It’s as simple as that. This team includes characters like Deadshot, Diablo, Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang, Slipknot, and Harley Quinn. Waller has also sent Jack Flagg and Katana to supervise them. On top of that, we also get Batman, Joker, and The Flash in the mix.
The first problem with this movie is that there’s just too much going on in the early stages. We get pseudo origin stories for some of the characters, or at least how they got in jail, but not for everyone. Just jump into the story and knock off the excessive exposition. Too much time is spent building backstories we honestly don’t need.
The same is true of the appearances of Batman, Joker, and The Flash. Batman and The Flash in particular feature only in the previously mentioned the jail and/or origin flashbacks. Joker factors a bit more into the main plot but not in a necessary way. All three characters are in the movie but don’t play particularly substantial roles. So why are they there? Because DC/Warner Bros. weren’t confident in a crop of C-list comic books characters being able to successfully carry a summer blockbuster on their own. Batman, Joker, and The Flash are involved for name recognition. Nothing else.
Marvel took a similar chance with Guardians of the Galaxy. They made the right choice to just let those characters breathe and be unencumbered by unnecessary additions there for no reason.
One can’t help but wonder how much of that lack of confidence was inspired by Warner Bros. perceived failure of Batman v Superman. It would be interesting to see what this movie would have looked like before the reshoots happened. And $873 million worldwide box office gross is by no means a failure.
All of that being said, once you get past those early scenes and the real story get rolling it’s one hell of a ride.
There are honestly some truly great performances in this film. Will Smith absolutely kills it, pun intended, as Deadshot. It’s one of the best parts he’s played in years. Jai Courntey, Karen Fukuhara, Joel Kinnaman, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Jay Hernandez all knock it out of the park. Adam Beach also appears as Slipknot but it is unfortunately a brief, expository role that doesn’t really utilize his talents. But there are two performances that stand out. Viola Davis is outstanding as Amanda Waller. She’s powerful, imposing, and is easily the most frightening badass in the film. This is a movie filled with literal monsters and her character is still the most dangerous one in the movie.
Then there’s Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn.
Harley Quinn is to DC Comics what Deadpool is to Marvel Comics: an outside-the-box, anything is possible character that can be inserted into almost any story and made to work. She is the ‘it’ character in DC these days. And Margot Robbie brings it 100%. She is perfection. Crazy, capable, intelligent, and dangerous yet somehow still vulnerable. She is everything Harley Quinn needs to be on the big screen to be engaging on every level.
It’s also worth mentioning that despite the fact that the characters aren’t really necessary both Jared Leto and Ben Affleck are great in their respective roles at Joker and Batman. Affleck continues to build his version of the character while Leto is establishing his. And his version of the Joker is intriguing, perfect for this new DC film universe.
Honestly, the scenes with Joker only seem to be in the film to introduce us to him and set up his character for future movies. And it would definitely be a good call to get this Joker involved in more movies.
One of the other issues this movie has is the villain. The Enchantress is one of the Squad’s first recruits and almost immediately betrays them to…well, that’s where things get cloudy. She seems to want to destroy the world but the how and the why are exceedingly vague. She’s casting a spell. Probably. But what she hopes to gain is confusing at best. Her end goal seems to be to end humanity. Or is it to rule humanity? Yeah, it could be that. This movie needed a better villain with a clear plot for the Squad to thwart. It’s hard for the story to effectively coalesce without that.
But it still comes together in the end.
Once you get through the drawn out, unnecessary build up and get into the nuts and bolts of the story, there is a really enjoyable movie waiting for you. With a better villain and a tighter plot with less extraneous scenes and characters, this easily could have been the hit of the summer. What you do get is a solid comic book action flick with a several great performances that set us up well for future movies.
Just like Batman v Superman, do not let the critics dissuade you from seeing Suicide Squad. It may not be a perfect movie but it’s also not the steaming pile many of them have been acting like it is.
Go.
Enjoy.
Make up your own minds. And judging by the big opening weekend box office numbers, many of you have.