Posted 06 August 2016 - 12:22 PM
I slept on it and gathered my thoughts. Spoilers ahead, though frankly there isn't much of a plot to spoil in the first place.
I'm not much into superheroes and never read comic books, though I enjoyed some of the movies from the superhero bonanza we live in for the past 10 years or so. Avengers 1 & 2 were good, Civil War was fine, I liked the Batman trilogy a lot, Guardians of the Galaxy was decent. On the other hand, X-Men movies (I saw something about Wolverine and the latest one, Apocalypse) are awful, Deadpool was meh, and Man of Steel was as entertaining as a shot of tranquilizer. I skipped some major releases (BvS, WInter Solider) because I don't care that much. But I had high hopes for Suicide Squad. The trailers were great, Robbie Margot looks incredible, and the premise of anti-hero squad action movie is pretty cool. Dark humor plus action sequences that could rival those from Avengers? Count me in!
So that's it for expectations.
I guess the original shot of Suicide Squad was too long and they had to cut. A lot. And they cut the wrong parts, crippling the plot, crippling the pacing, crippling character development. It's either that or someone submitted the screenplay for this as a joke and people in the studio just didn't get it. The script just falls apart right in front of your eyes. We have this heist movie sequence giving us the backstory of Squad members but when the actual action starts, there are two more characters, totally out of nowhere, no introduction, nothing, they're just there. Katana at least sticks around for the rest of the movie, but this other guy is dropped immediately when they explode his neck for trying to escape. Is he even named before he dies? And what's the purpose? Who the fuck was this guy, anyway? Did showing Suicide Squad that the government has control over their life and death really require bringing in and immediately killing a new character? Anyway, after he is executed no one really bothers, no reaction, just moving on. Which brings me to the worst (which should have been the best) moment in the movie. Squad arrives and rescues Waller. Before leaving the building she murders some mission operatives in the control room in cold blood. She's a cold blooded bitch all right, but this is intense. So I'm watching that thinking now shit is about the get real! We see who's the proper villain. But everyone just shrugs it off. Flag, the uptight self-righteous Captain America wannabe is like 'ah you know, you get used to that'. WHAT THE FUCK, NO YOU DON'T. You should be freaking the fuck out, you pussy. She just executed a handful of government operatives and you didn't even blink, you fucking twat. Any characterization Flag received up to that point (not that there was much of it) is wiped out with that scene. Poof, out the window. The Squad also has no reaction AFAIR, except Deadshot throwing a one-liner. This scene is bullshit.
Flag suffers the most from bad writing, but it's not much better for other characters. Until revealing his backstory in the bar scene, El Diablo has almost zero interaction with anyone. He only unleashes his power when Deadshot drives him mad. Then in the bar Harley berates him. And suddenly in the final scene he's all like 'yo they're my family!'. What the fuck. They're not. For the whole movie you gave zero fucks about them, they gave zero fucks about you except being mad at you not using your powers to help, and now they're your family?What? The boomerang dude and Killer Croc are there... and that's as much as can be said about them. Harley definitely stands out and not only because Robbie Margot looks fantastic. Her Joker subplot adds some flavor to the character and she's generally the only memorable role: not sure though if it's her acting or writing for this character was that much better than for the others. But it quickly becomes the fault of the movie. Around halfway through you start to feel that the writers were aware they have nothing to offer beyond Harley's quips, so they just throw them at you in every scene with no substance. Which is every scene, period.
Jared Leto as Joker was a big point of contention before the movie was released. I never quite understood this. People tend to have some sort of religious devotion to Heath Ledger's Joker. And don't get me wrong, Heath Ledger was INCREDIBLE as Joker, but that doesn't mean there is no space for other interpretations. Especially that Suicide Squad has a different aesthetic from Dark Knight trilogy, so it's only natural that the Joker is different. I'd say Leto holds his ground, but he gets around 10 minutes of screentime in a 130 minute movie. His/Harley's subplot is odd, it doesn't really tie well into the main narrative (or lack thereof) and would probably work much better as a separate movie. But I like the new Joker, a pity we didn't get to see more of him.. He's menacing, he's batshit insanse, he has a cool dynamic with Harley and he would make a much better villain than Enchantress and whatever her sidekick was.
The villains are the biggest flaw of Suicide Squad's plot and that should tell you something. They get close to none characterization, they have no apparent motives, they come from nowhere. In one scene they babble something about 'building a machine' but then they create an army of clones or whatever. They just sit in one place for almost the whole movie and wait for the Squad to come and kick their asses. Somehow in the process they shoot down a satellite and destroy and aircraft carrier but honestly I don't really know how this happens. Then one of them is killed by a landmine. Which is another WTF moment, because he was being shot at by multiple people, cut with blades, put on fire, and mauled by the supersaiyan El Diablo, and shrugged it all of. But a landmine, yeah, that got him good. There more ridiculous moments in the plot. From what I gather, there were supposed to be two major twists: first, when the Squad finds out the rescue mission is actually for Waller, and then when Deadshot finds the TOP SECRET binder and discovers... I don't really know what he discovers, but anyway both 'twists' fell flat.
The rescue Waller twist is like 'oh, so what?'. Even characters quickly forget to give a fuck. It was a big secret who is the target of the rescue mission but now that we've found out it's kinda meh. Right after we get the execution scene I criticized above. The second twist is even worse. First, the idea of Deadshot walking around clone/mutant/whatever-infested city, busy with reading a 100-page TOP SECRET binder is silly, but he says he read it all so I imagine that's what must have happened off screen. He must be a super fast reader. Anyway, I either didn't get it or it wasn't explained what exactly is in that binder. Was it information about Enchantress and her heart? If so, why does Deadshot make such a big deal out of it and goes all 'booo, we need a miracle'. They're a bunch of supervillains who have to bring down a big, mean guy. Hardly news. And BTW, Squad drags around El Diablo who himself is an even bigger, even meaner guy, so what exactly makes it so bad? To be fair, apparently they reach the same conclusion because after a brief moment of being total downers about it, the Squad + Flag head to a bar, have a drink, and then all's good again. That's it for the plot twist.
There are other minor flaws, probably too many to even list them. What caught my attention was that in DC universe no one ever dies in a helicopter crash. I think we see three of them in the movie, no casualties. Also, how the fuck did Waller survive? She was captured by two supervillains and an army of clones for god knows how long and apparently her whole entourage was wiped out, but in the ending scene she just waltzes in like nothing ever happened. What the fuck? Why are you still alive? Did the screenwriters forget they killed you? The magic thingy used by Enchantress is also funny. It's some floating structure the size of a building. She uses it to shoot down a satellite and to cut an aircraft carrier in two, but throw a grenade at it and it just collapses. Whatever. Also, why was Enchantress getting away shown to us as a flashback near the end of the movie and skipped when it actually happened, if the narrative made it clear the she broke free? God, this movie is such a mess.
I would accept all that mindlessness if the action was good. Furious 7 didn't have a bad plot, it didn't have a plot at all, and it was super fun to watch. Avengers was essentially bad guy from space or wherever comes to kill us, we need to defeat him and it was great as well. But Suicide Squad comes nowhere close to Avengers or Furious 7. It suffers from the same problem as X-Men Apocalypse: it's 2016 and we are fed another 'superheroes fight bad people in a city that's being destroyed' flick. It would have been cool 5 years ago, but it's boring now. The fight scenes are bland, choreography is boring (except the one shot where Harley bends backwards to shoot someone and the short sequence when everyone fights Enchantress), there's almost no cool moves or effects . The action also does nothing to build up tension, which only reinforces the pacing problems this movie has. Everyone who worked on Suicide Squad should be made to watch the airport fight from Civil War as homework. And then there's music. The licensed soundtrack is awesome but they wave it like a blunt mace. The Squad assembles? Cue Seven Nation Army. They're gearing up? Eminem's Without Me. Prison sequence? House of the Rising Sun. Really, the audience are not morons. You don't need to be this explicit.
tl;dr Suicide Squad is a disaster.
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QuickTidal, on 04 August 2016 - 10:07 AM, said:
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