At this point it may very well seem like all I do is go and watch movies I know I'll hate, just so I can hate them. Ordinarily I would refute that allegation, sling some half-hearted insults about and casually saunter off into the sunset muttering to myself about how completely misunderstood I am. Today, as you might have guessed from the context, is not one of those days.
I watched Suicide Squad's trailer with the vague hope that it would be a nice little action movie with some with one-liners and plenty of carnage. I'm a fan of carnage. I was cautiously optimistic (bear in mind I hadn't seen BvS: DoJ yet) that a rebooted Batman would bring a fresh slew of classic villains and this was going to be a good start. It took one glimpse of Harley Quinn and The Joker for me to realise that this movie was going to be a giant mess. I wrestled with the prospect of even bothering to watch it for a considerable time and finally decided I'd rather see it and make my own mind up. I should know better by now.
The perennial dilemma of where to begin? Even before you get to the plot, dialogue, editing, marketing, everything else, the aesthetics of this movie are just awful. As much this is a comic book movie, there really is little excuse for how horrendous the characters in this film look.
Consider, if you will The Joker; iconic Bat-villain, The Clown Prince of Crime, multiple-time resident of Arkham Asylum, cad, bounder, and all round bad egg. You would have thought it would be a Herculean task to screw The Joker up, what with extensive back catalogue of work by such a vast number of talented comic artists, writers and editors. I guess it could have been an accident; the lead production designer takes his eye off his child one evening who then proceeds to take the neon Sharpies to some of Jared Leto's head shots and boom! All you need to do then is tattoo him with a bunch of clowns, smileys, a "ha ha ha" sleeve and "damaged" on his forehead and you're a winner. Only no-one's a winner here.
Harley Quinn fares no better. I don't know if she's supposed to look like an adolescent wet dream pseudo goth cheerleader/roller derby player (is player the right word here? Is it skater? I have no clue), but she looks more like Rainbow Brite fell face-down into a Tippex spillage and there's only so much salvage work you can do. So just in case you didn't know she was a bad guy, she has "Rotten" tattooed along her jawline. It's like the only way they know how to give any sort of depth to their characters is by literally spelling it on their faces.
My biggest problem with the movie wasn't necessarily the plot, which is pretty standard: 'oh no! There's an insurmountable evil thing doing things of evil, we have to find a way past our glaring personality flaws to work together and surmount the evil. SURMOUNT THE EVIL!' It isn't necessarily that they clearly attempted to cash in on Deadpool's over-the-top craziness and R-rated fun times whilst managing less than one fifth of the charm. It wasn't just the awkward, witless, bone-dry dialogue. Actually my biggest problem was that for a film full of "The Worst of The Worst" none of the Suicide Squad actually seem like very bad guys.
Will Smith's Deadshot is kind of Will Smith from In Pursuit of Happyness with guns. Sure, he's a feared assassin who never misses and commands exorbitant fees for his services, but it's OK though because he's doing it all for his daughter. Single solitary tear. That Batman scene for example: all he needs to do is stand up and shoot over his daughter, right into the face hole of the Bat Cowl. Or use his pre-established ricochet trick shot. Or just anything other than give up without any sort of fight at all. Wuss.
Harley Quinn says "crazy" things out loud (crazy here having the actually meaning of cringe worthy). I assume she's been involved in The Joker's escapades, but that makes her an accomplice at best. The worst thing a remember her doing in this movie is steal a handbag which is in the trailer anyway and just being generally snarky.
Killer Croc does, in fairness, chow down on some guards at the prison, but if you're stupid enough to go into his cell and assume he isn't just hiding in the custom built sewer section you deserve to get eaten. Aside from that, the guards all seem like dicks anyway.
El Diablo is of course actually a Mayan/Incan/Aztec/Generic Mexican Fire God. That would probably have been a lot handier a lot earlier but I guess dramatic tension is hard to come by in a script possibly crafted in crayon on restaurant napkins [citation needed]. He's a crime lord by all accounts, but he blew up his entire family by accident and so now he refuses to do anything other than David Blaine style parlour tricks. So far so sympathetic.
Boomerang, who sadly has been demoted from the comics and lost his Captain rank, is a picture perfect, stereotypical Aussie. Offensive as that might be to our Antipodean brethren, you'd be hard pushed to call him the worst of the worst. I think he steals some beers maybe? I can't even remember now.
Slipknot, who anyone with half an ounce of deductive reasoning could tell from the trailer, is simply here to demonstrate the old "exploding device implanted in your head so you'll do what we say" cliche. We can tell he's evil because he punches the female security guard. Don't get me wrong, that's a bit shitty of him, but "a bit shitty" doesn't really cut it for me.
And what of The Joker? Well if you don't take into account the controversy surrounding quite how much of his footage hit the cutting room floor, the one guy with the most potential in the entire whole mess is reduced to an over-protective boyfriend with bad dental work. You could have re-cast that role as literally anyone and it would have made the same amount of sense.
So the film's actual villain, Amanda Waller, has a grand scheme to counteract the supernatural terror she negligently unleashed on the city. Rather than send in trained Military (which they basically have to do anyway) she gathers together an assassin with a heart of gold, a pair of hotpants with a baseball bat, one genuine monster (who basically just does one bit of swimming), a mopey ex-gang banger/reluctant Fire God, Merv Hughes (just Google him) and a some guy who like ropes but dies before he does anything remotely useful. And we're supposed to swallow that said strategic genius has somehow worked out that Bruce Wayne is in fact Batman? Spare me.
Wait, I just remembered Harley Quinn sort of leads the self-help group in the bar towards the end so I guess that makes her a Lifestyle Coach maybe? I might have to take it all back.
The perennial dilemma of where to begin? Even before you get to the plot, dialogue, editing, marketing, everything else, the aesthetics of this movie are just awful. As much this is a comic book movie, there really is little excuse for how horrendous the characters in this film look.
Consider, if you will The Joker; iconic Bat-villain, The Clown Prince of Crime, multiple-time resident of Arkham Asylum, cad, bounder, and all round bad egg. You would have thought it would be a Herculean task to screw The Joker up, what with extensive back catalogue of work by such a vast number of talented comic artists, writers and editors. I guess it could have been an accident; the lead production designer takes his eye off his child one evening who then proceeds to take the neon Sharpies to some of Jared Leto's head shots and boom! All you need to do then is tattoo him with a bunch of clowns, smileys, a "ha ha ha" sleeve and "damaged" on his forehead and you're a winner. Only no-one's a winner here.
Harley Quinn fares no better. I don't know if she's supposed to look like an adolescent wet dream pseudo goth cheerleader/roller derby player (is player the right word here? Is it skater? I have no clue), but she looks more like Rainbow Brite fell face-down into a Tippex spillage and there's only so much salvage work you can do. So just in case you didn't know she was a bad guy, she has "Rotten" tattooed along her jawline. It's like the only way they know how to give any sort of depth to their characters is by literally spelling it on their faces.
My biggest problem with the movie wasn't necessarily the plot, which is pretty standard: 'oh no! There's an insurmountable evil thing doing things of evil, we have to find a way past our glaring personality flaws to work together and surmount the evil. SURMOUNT THE EVIL!' It isn't necessarily that they clearly attempted to cash in on Deadpool's over-the-top craziness and R-rated fun times whilst managing less than one fifth of the charm. It wasn't just the awkward, witless, bone-dry dialogue. Actually my biggest problem was that for a film full of "The Worst of The Worst" none of the Suicide Squad actually seem like very bad guys.
Will Smith's Deadshot is kind of Will Smith from In Pursuit of Happyness with guns. Sure, he's a feared assassin who never misses and commands exorbitant fees for his services, but it's OK though because he's doing it all for his daughter. Single solitary tear. That Batman scene for example: all he needs to do is stand up and shoot over his daughter, right into the face hole of the Bat Cowl. Or use his pre-established ricochet trick shot. Or just anything other than give up without any sort of fight at all. Wuss.
Harley Quinn says "crazy" things out loud (crazy here having the actually meaning of cringe worthy). I assume she's been involved in The Joker's escapades, but that makes her an accomplice at best. The worst thing a remember her doing in this movie is steal a handbag which is in the trailer anyway and just being generally snarky.
Killer Croc does, in fairness, chow down on some guards at the prison, but if you're stupid enough to go into his cell and assume he isn't just hiding in the custom built sewer section you deserve to get eaten. Aside from that, the guards all seem like dicks anyway.
El Diablo is of course actually a Mayan/Incan/Aztec/Generic Mexican Fire God. That would probably have been a lot handier a lot earlier but I guess dramatic tension is hard to come by in a script possibly crafted in crayon on restaurant napkins [citation needed]. He's a crime lord by all accounts, but he blew up his entire family by accident and so now he refuses to do anything other than David Blaine style parlour tricks. So far so sympathetic.
Boomerang, who sadly has been demoted from the comics and lost his Captain rank, is a picture perfect, stereotypical Aussie. Offensive as that might be to our Antipodean brethren, you'd be hard pushed to call him the worst of the worst. I think he steals some beers maybe? I can't even remember now.
Slipknot, who anyone with half an ounce of deductive reasoning could tell from the trailer, is simply here to demonstrate the old "exploding device implanted in your head so you'll do what we say" cliche. We can tell he's evil because he punches the female security guard. Don't get me wrong, that's a bit shitty of him, but "a bit shitty" doesn't really cut it for me.
And what of The Joker? Well if you don't take into account the controversy surrounding quite how much of his footage hit the cutting room floor, the one guy with the most potential in the entire whole mess is reduced to an over-protective boyfriend with bad dental work. You could have re-cast that role as literally anyone and it would have made the same amount of sense.
So the film's actual villain, Amanda Waller, has a grand scheme to counteract the supernatural terror she negligently unleashed on the city. Rather than send in trained Military (which they basically have to do anyway) she gathers together an assassin with a heart of gold, a pair of hotpants with a baseball bat, one genuine monster (who basically just does one bit of swimming), a mopey ex-gang banger/reluctant Fire God, Merv Hughes (just Google him) and a some guy who like ropes but dies before he does anything remotely useful. And we're supposed to swallow that said strategic genius has somehow worked out that Bruce Wayne is in fact Batman? Spare me.
Wait, I just remembered Harley Quinn sort of leads the self-help group in the bar towards the end so I guess that makes her a Lifestyle Coach maybe? I might have to take it all back.
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