[QuickTidal]

My turn to chime in.

I thought it was an absolute blast! Really fun flick. I think part of the issue with the critical drubbing is that those people may have walked in expecting a straighforward superhero flick. This is not that. Like even a little bit. Ayer pulls off exactly what he stepped up to pull off. A mishmash action film full of villains figuring out how to work together, and taking down an even more threatening baddie. Sure it's got the odd editing woe, and one or two plot hitches, but none of that overshadows just how much fun it is. I think if you walk into this expecting some serious dramatic action wonder...you will be disappointed...but if you walk in expecting solid character turns, fun action setpieces, great villain banter, and darkly humourous time...you'll be just fine.

It's a nice conpanion piece to BvS and MoS (including the cameos, those you know about and those you don't) but it never feels completely locked to that either.

Like the ridiculous idea of a bunch of villains in exploding dog collars being let out of a black site prison to take on a big baddie? You'll dig this.

Standouts:

Margot Robbie 100% completely NAILS HArley Quinn in live action. Every single thing she utters, and every choice she makes, and even her ass-kicking skills...are alll note perfect for that character.

Will Smith. Wow. I was prepared to not be impressed by his Deadshot. But damned if this isn't his best role in years. He gives Deadshot the joy of his love of weaponry, his sassy mouth, and his basically cool factor...but adds a gravitas to him I wasn't quite expecting. Really great.

Jay Hernandez. Christ, if there is one completely unexpected star here, it's Jay Hernandez Diablo. He is calm, cool, and collected...badass...and when needed simply amazing. He's also given his character a deep gravitas I wasn't expecting. Easily one of the best things about this flick along with Harley and Deadshot.

Jared Leto's Joker. Instead of trying to ape Ledger's Joker, he decided to create his own...which seems very much based off the New52 Joker created by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. This nouveau-ganbanger Joker with hipster hair and a deep voice with weird intonations. And you know what? He pulls it off. This is a very different Joker from what we've seen before...but damned if he didn't win me over. You know how Ledger's Joker was scary in a "matter-of-fact" kind of way. Like nothing you did was going to stop him, and he'd just calmy watch you sqiurm? Well Leto's Joker is much more smile 3 inches from your face, and then punch it, and then shoot it, and then laugh his maniacaly slow laugh. Really solid perfromance.

Everyone else gets much less screen time generally speaking (but then I'd say these are the people I'd have focused on anymways in a larger team), but are no less entertaining...Killer Croc, Katana, Enchantress, Cap Boomarang, Flagg all get enough time to pull some nice turns in their scenes, and never felt like they got shortchanged all that badly.

There are a FEW lines of hokier dialogue (I caught one or two cringe-worthy ones...just in the fact that they were obvious things that the script made a chaarcter point out for some reason) but overall the script is solid for an ensemble piece like this. There is a particuar scene with Harley in a bar that sells her as Harley Quinn more than any other, where she gets suprememly dark for a few moments.

I think one of the things I liked most is that for a film about villains being forced to work for the good guys...they pay close attention to the fact that every single one of them reacts to being out in the world in the same fashion...every time they get even the smallest chance to bolt, or futher their own interests...they do, no hesistation. That reads as real to me, because they could have easily just had everyone decide early on that helping is better than furthering ones agenda...but that would have felt tonally fake...so this works better.

Soundtrack is fantastic (score AND songs).

The credits in 3D are some of the finest credits I've seen in a 3D film.

Mid-credits cene was a nice one

Spoiler

setting up how Bruce finds out about Aquaman and Flash to recruit them for the Justice League.

Anyways, I loved this film. I loved it probably for all the reasons the critics hated it. It delivered to me exactly what I was expecting. A balls-to-the-wall action flick full of badasses, superpowers, and just plain fun...and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. I will probaly see it again soon provided the baby doesn't come this weekend.

@Worry:

Kanyemander West, on 05 August 2016 - 11:34 PM, said:

The only reviewer whose opinion I respect has chimed in and it isn't pretty. Sorry, folks, but that's a wrap.

Not sure if you're being facetious...but his premise is immediately flawed...he says this was "supposed to be DC's answer to Guardians of the Galaxy"...which is laughably incorrect. This was never that, nor was it ever marketed as that. If people decided that's what they were going to get, then they were grossly misinformed going in.

EDIT: Also, looks to be sitting pretty at the box office so far, with early returns setting it at a 140mil opening weekend (Thursday night was 20mil, and Friday was apparently another 60mil). I love it when the audience defies the critics to see the movie they've been jazzed to see for months.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 06 August 2016 - 12:37 PM

[Aptorian]

Interesting to see Sergiej and QTs opinions being so opposite.

I sort of want to go watch the film for Jared Leto's Joker alone and just let the rest be what ever it is.

[Macros]

I want to watch this now to see why the two opinions differ so much

[Nevyn]

Just watched it.

Going to have to side with the critics on this one, it is pretty bad.

Harley Quinn is just about the only thing worthwhile in the movie, and you've seen her best moments in the trailers.

The problem with Leto's joker is of writing, not performance. He is 'also ran' Joker. He is Joker for the purposes for giving Harley motivations and backstory. Not funny, not particularly clever. Joker the green haired mobster. They don't show enough Joker and Harley to really give any investment in the characters, and they show too much for a plot you have no investment in.

Deadshot is fine. A couple cool scenes, and otherwise Will Smith as Will Smith.

A lot of the story drives around Flag and Enchantress, and their entire backstory is summed up in 20 seconds of flashback with voiceover.

Even the justification for putting the squad together feels off. To me, the focus of any story putting together a dirty dozen type group should be on the deniability and expendability. But they waste a lot of time selling this as an answer team as an answer to meta-humans. Which is great except so many of the squad aren't. At least three of them would be inferior to have in a fight to a run of the mill soldier. Again, if you make it just about expendable and dangerous, you can make that work. But the way they pitch it, the recruits they choose make little sense.

Slipknot is irrelevant. Katana is a seat filler. I had heard people talking about them trying to use Boomerang for comedy, but nothing he says is remotely amusing. His timing was off and awkward. They hit a better balance for a satellite squad member in El Diablo, but even his arc by the end feels forced.

So we had a fun movie that wasn't fun enough. And as a serious movie deeply flawed. Surprising reveals that are not that surprising, Plot points jammed in at inopportune times. And the squad suddenly liking each other based on a brief, not particularly deep intermission where they get to know each other. And overall, the DC universe seems to still suffer from too badly wanting to get to the 'good part'. Why do origin stories to introduce characters and built to having them together, when you can just throw them in the mix and let flashbacks sort them out?

[Silencer]

Yeah, saw this last night and unfortunately I have to jump on the "not that good bordering on bad" bandwagon.

I think QTs post says it best (ironically): look at how his post is laid out. Character 1 is X. Character 2 is Y. That's this movies biggest problem imo.

The individual characters are OK to good. Diablo, Deadshot, and Harley were all good, Killer Croc, Katana, Boomerang, et al were average/irrelevant.

Together, though, they're terrible. There's no chemistry, all their interactions are forced, and while that may potentially be 'realistic' for a bunch of disparate convicts thrown together, it doesn't do the movie any favours.

The new Joker is bad. He had a couple of moments where the potential shone through, but otherwise he was both a non-entity and had no real presence. 'Bad' might not be entirely fair, but definitely not "good" and is one of the worse renditions I've seen in live action.

Overall the reason for the Squad and their application makes no sense in this film. They chose a terrible villain for them, too - no-one in the Squad as it stands except Diablo even had a hope in hell of being useful in those circumstances, and a regular military force would have been much more suitable, less risky, and you don't really need the "deniability" aspect given the scale of the villain. Never mind that the entire cause of the incident in the first place was because of the basis of the squad (and the thing that convinced people to let them be a thing). I mean, I get it, playing with fire etc etc, but seriously? As far as "plot" goes that was barely passable and required an insane level of arrogance and ignorance from half of the cast.

Pick a lower-tier villain for the Squad or actually have them die. Sheesh.


In all honesty, Batman: Assault on Arkham was a *much* better exercise in setting up the Suicide Squad and was properly executed. This just felt like a mishmash of random scenes to have our protagonists do action scenes (which, don't get me wrong, were mostly good - but nothing stellar to see here, and with no real investment in the outcome there was no weight to the scenes), when they could at least have had a coherent plot and proper set up and still had the same action. Like Nevyn posts above, rushing to "the good parts".
Also, now very suspicious of those reshoots or whatever a couple of months back. But hey, no way to tell what that changed, right?



Anyway, I went in with low expectations, so it was a decent flick, but it falls short on basically all the things it set out to do (spectacle/dark/humorous/origin story/fun popcorn moments/whatever else you might have expected from a Suicide Squad film), and the only really good parts were a few individual performances, which weren't even all that good unless they were not interacting with anyone in a meaningful way. Oh, and gun porn. Kindof.

[polishgenius]

Apt, on 06 August 2016 - 12:31 PM, said:

Interesting to see Sergiej and QTs opinions being so opposite.

Pah. Sergiej's just ripping me off!


Although lately me and QT have been agreeing a bit (I haven't seen SS yet though).

[Morgoth]

Not a great movie. Editing was clearly done in a rush, and by someone other than the people who made the movie. The plot is barely sensical, the villain entirely uninteresting, and the CGI surprisingly poor. The 'brother' seemed taken straight out of a last gen console game.

Margot Robbie was fun, I thought the Joker in this game was quite well done if it hadn't been for the shitty dialogue, but then that's not Leto's fault. Their attempts to humanize Deadshot were seriously cringe worthy, but since they had Will Smith deliver the lines it wasn't too bad.

[QuickTidal]

Minor Spoilers in my reply...

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

Together, though, they're terrible. There's no chemistry, all their interactions are forced, and while that may potentially be 'realistic' for a bunch of disparate convicts thrown together, it doesn't do the movie any favours.

This was exactly what it was supposed to be. Lack of chemistry. It's uncomfortable. It's haphazard, and prone to people jumping ship the moment they need to. The unity doesn't come till VERY late in the film when Deadshot spares Harley, and they hear Diablo's tale. Before that it's meant to feel completely unbelievable as far as team unity goes. Hell, even after that you aren't supposed to feel an Avengers-like unity...rather a begrudging "we can work together" vibe, tempered more positively by Diablo's more "these violent clowns are be my family now" dysfunctional gang banger aesthetic.

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

The new Joker is bad. He had a couple of moments where the potential shone through, but otherwise he was both a non-entity and had no real presence. 'Bad' might not be entirely fair, but definitely not "good" and is one of the worse renditions I've seen in live action.

Is it possible this is just Heath Ledger casting an extraordinarily long shadow for casual movie goers who have seen his Joker? I found that Leto embodied the New52-era Joker to a 'T' up to and including the look (minus the tattoos obviously). As to being a non-entity. I keep seeing the comment that he was not in the movie enough, or that his part was kind of just "there for no reason". I think people may have expected too much when they realized that Joker was in this. He's there for one reason and one reason only. To be a part of Harley's introduction (he's intrinsically locked to her introduction, you literally can't introduce her without him). The fact that he shows up later on attempting to save her (twice) should be looked at as unexpected bonus Joker sequences. But yeah, I thought the portrayal was amazing. Totally different from what we've had before. It's the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Ledger's portrayal and skews closer to Hamill's animated version if it were crossed with the New-52 one as well. He scared me as the Joker...and that's something I could not even put at the feet of Ledger's turn (a turn I loved...but for different reasons). I still hate the grills in his teeth though...but I HAVE heard that they are the result of Batman beating the shit out of him so hard that he knocked his teeth out...which is kind of cool.

Also, anyone else notice that Harley's 3D rap sheet text that comes up says SHE killed Jason Todd's Robin? I'm not sure if we can seriously lay that at her feet...but it's funny it's on that rap sheet.

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

Overall the reason for the Squad and their application makes no sense in this film.

Waller is almost as nuts as the teams she assembles. If you look her up in the DC compendium, she is deemed and antagonist and a villain who sometimes "helps" the good guys. The scene in the military boardroom is supposed to illustrate that fact. She literally holds them for ransom. "Let me build and use my team...because I have an ancient witch at my disposal, look what she can do!" Captain Subtext: "I have an ancient witch at my disposal, whom I coerced by putting her into a relationship where she fell in love, and if you don't watch out I can do what I want with her." Literally her whole conversation with the guy at the restaurant is about how bad she really is. This includes the mid-credits scene with you-know-who...who threatens her. So yeah, it makes no sense because Amanda Waller doesn't care. She wants her team, and screw everything and everyone who gets in the way of that. Further illustrated by her actions later on in the film. The fact that it all feels so disjointedly nonsensical works from a source material standpoint. But that's possibly because I've read most of the Suicide Squad comics in the New52.

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

They chose a terrible villain for them, too - no-one in the Squad as it stands except Diablo even had a hope in hell of being useful in those circumstances, and a regular military force would have been much more suitable, less risky, and you don't really need the "deniability" aspect given the scale of the villain. Never mind that the entire cause of the incident in the first place was because of the basis of the squad (and the thing that convinced people to let them be a thing). I mean, I get it, playing with fire etc etc, but seriously? As far as "plot" goes that was barely passable and required an insane level of arrogance and ignorance from half of the cast.

Except Diablo would not have let go fully without them present, and with a few meta's on the team who are seriously OPed like Diablo, you need the others to run the smaller gamut of tactical objectives to get him in close. Even then he had trouble and they needed the explosion to do the final work. And Look at that final act... Harley tossing her gun to Deadshot who takes that shot. Diablo was the brute force to push through the wall of power, Harley was the weapon holder, and Deadshot the final sharpshot while Croc, Katana and Boomarang kept the "minions" at bay. Was Enchantress a weird villain choice? Sure. But in the end it still forced the team to work together to pull off the win. Would I have liked to see a different villain for them to have taken on? Sure. But who? You need someone at LEAST powerful enough to deal with Deadshot's aim, and Diablo's final form power. In light of that, and tying it into the use of Flagg (through his love for her) and keeping the team together, it all worked more often than not for me.

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

Pick a lower-tier villain for the Squad or actually have them die. Sheesh.

Boring. I don't want a low-tier villain for a sizeable group of metahumans and villains. I want something worthy of their assemblage. It's not perfect here, but it's better than it could have been (See: THOR 1; which WAS a low-tier villain and TOTALLY got called out by audiences for that fact).

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

when they could at least have had a coherent plot and proper set up and still had the same action.

Could you elaborate on what you found incoherent? I thought it pretty straightforward. Bad guys are assembled by Waller. Bad Guys forced to worth together by Waller, do so poorly. Bad guys called in to stop rogue member though they don't know it. Rogue member brings in her big brother, Waller is trapped and Bad guys are set to rescue her. Bad guys save trapped Waller. Bad guys then decide to take out big bad, for shits and giggles (and possibly SOME morality) and BET, and visitation rights, and an espresso machine. End story. I fail to see how that's not coherent.

Silencer, on 08 August 2016 - 01:55 AM, said:

Anyway, I went in with low expectations, so it was a decent flick, but it falls short on basically all the things it set out to do (spectacle/dark/humorous/origin story/fun popcorn moments/whatever else you might have expected from a Suicide Squad film), and the only really good parts were a few individual performances, which weren't even all that good unless they were not interacting with anyone in a meaningful way. Oh, and gun porn. Kindof.

Sorry you didn't think much of it Silencer.

Yeah, I figured I'd be in the minority here with my opinion. That's okay, I thought it was great fun still. Best Scene is Harley in the elevator.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 08 August 2016 - 02:03 PM

[amphibian]

Briar King, on 08 August 2016 - 04:05 AM, said:

I think we all knew Scott was going to be in denial for this one lol! Waits to see if Ben is as well.

Not the best etiquette to use real names when most of the forum doesn't know real name = forum name. I'm Ben.

I said simply that the content of superhero movie reviews have some component in the movie preceding the current one being reviewed. A bad predecessor will bend the review worse, while a good one will bend it better. So there's some element of BvS backlash even though the two movies have very little to do with each other directly. Different directors, different casts, different aims, yet the same shared universe.

I also think that there are worse movies released that get raves or reviews that don't call it the worst movie of the year. Zootopia is a perfect example of this. Rave reviews because it buried terrible concepts in cuteness and didn't dawdle.

[Nevyn]

My detailed, spoilered explanation of what I did and did not like

This is basically going to spoil the whole movie so DO NOT READ if you haven't seen. I am going into this detail to explain how it ties into the common complaints of bad editing, bad plot, little character, etc.

Spoiler

It is tough to figure out the best way to explain how completely the movie failed. I started out basically doing a scene by scene takedown and synopsis, but that would take kind of awhile. We'll wait for the cinema sins video, which I imagine will be longer than the movie.

So instead, I thought I would break this into installments, breaking down what was and wasn't done for each character, and then maybe summing up a few other major issues after.

I will do character installments in ascending order of importance, so we begin at the bottom ... Slipknot


Wow, did Slipknot get screwed. The movie starts out with Waller telling people about her planning and running through the bad guys she has rounded up. It gives you sometimes voiced over background scenes so you can see the bad guy/girl in action. AND ... Slipknot does not get one. Most of the squad have little interations with the guards at Belle Reve ... not Slipknot. I guarantee you they wrote filmed some of this for him. But once you take a chainsaw to the movie, I guess some trailer editor decides that if you are going to kill someone off first, no one knows to know who he is. Why would Waller tell people about her whole team? Unneeded apparently.

So he gets introduced by being dumped out there when they finally get the squad ready to go on their mission. So how does the audience find out who he is? Does he, you know, talk to someone, and say what he can do? Of course not. Can't let him talk, he is going to die. So some other character sees him, and says "that's Slipknot, the guy who can climb anything. That is IT. Character introduced.

But hey, we won't need him long. Boomerang convinces him to try to escape to test the killer app that blows up their neck implants, and it works. That must take a lot of persuasion you say ... not really. Boomerang says "I don't believe the app, I'm going to escape. You with me". Slipknot nods. Yep, that is the closest thing to a conversation Slipknot has. They try to escape RIGHT THEN (because who needs plans or opportunities), Slipknot climbs, bye bye head.

So what could have been an amusing Indiana Jones-esque character buildup and easy death is just pointless filler.

List of characters with more prominent roles than him:

• Several intelligence/military guys who get to say words at the beginning.
• Two prison guards.
• Joker's henchman
• Teenaged girls really upset that the evacuation of a city inconvenienced them.
• Deadshot's daughter.
• Diablo's family
• Batman
• The Flash

Lines of dialogue: 0
Cool scenes: 0
Characterization: -1 out of 10


Next up ..... Katana


Katana also does not merit a Waller introduction, possibly because she isn't a captured villain ... she is apparently an asset who will in some way help Flagg control the team by ... doing and saying nothing.

She is introduced late. She does get a flashback, of her killing a random Japanese guy to avenge her husband. One line there.

When the characters meet her, does she say anything? Nope. It is up to Flagg to tell the rest of the team that she is dangerous, and you don't want to get killed by her sword because soul stealer.

She gets little on screen fight time. At some point she says about 4 random words to one of them about not being a villain. And in a brief aside she is talking to her husbands soul in the sword for ten seconds. This is explained by Rick "Info dump" Flagg because otherwise she would have to say more words herself.

Lines of dialogue: 3
Cool scenes: 0
Characterization: 0.5 out of 10

Next up, Boomerang


Boomerang is apparently an important enough team member to merit a Waller introduction. Not a long one, but he gets some backstory. Whoopee!

He's an Australian (Shocker!). He robs a bank or something with some one else, then takes him out, with a Boomerang (so THAT'S where his name comes from!). Then the Flash shows up, and he is caught.

Boomerang must be important, because he even gets to TALK in the movie! I mean, nothing that advances the plot is any way or reveals his character's emotions, but words and jokes and stuff.

He talks Slipknot into not being in the movie. He fights things with knives briefly. He has a recurring stuffed animal fetish joke for reasons. And in the infamous bar scene to set up the third act, Flagg tells them they are all free to go, and he just walks out. HAHAHA! No one reacts to him leaving, he says nothing, and it is done at the side of a wide shot, and very fast. So instead of playing for the laughs it was designed it, the joke kind of dies.

And instead of having a climactic Han Solo return (character not important enough), or ever justifying people doing things, he just walks back in in the slow walk montage when they leave the bar. This is Suicide Squad. Things don't need words, damnit.


He then has a boomerang/drone/camera to try and spy on the enchantress. And he survives while being mostly unimportant.

Lines of dialogue: 15 or so
Cool scenes: 0
Characterization: Um, he gets to talk, so .... 1 out of 10?

Next up, Andrea Waller


Tough to figure out where to place her in this. I mean, in one way, she drives the entire movie and could be considered the most important.

But in another way, she is simply the machinery and the connecting tissue of the movie. She is there to set things in motion and to instigate, and be a good guy worse than the bad guys. But they don't really examine her thoughts and motives, the is just a foil for the plot to play off of.

Now, it was a good performance. And she gets to talk A LOT. And she gets to casually shoot her assistants so the director can ham-fistedly underline to you that she is bad. With Deadshot speed and accuracy too.

Of course, her plans are bad and ill explained. She tells the random military she needs approval from that she is putting the team together because of Superman. What if he had been bad? And he is not here, so what if another meta-human (god kills a puppy whenever someone says that dumb catch all word ... I'm sure of it) shows up and is bad? Then we'll use a crazy girl with bat! And a crazy guy with a boomerang! And someone with good aim! And a soldier she tricked into doing this instead of, you know, ordering him. And someone with undefined fire related skills, who was once in a latino street gang. Yep, they'll fix scary bad potential superman.

Oh, and an all powerful sorceress/goddess who is evil and is possessing an archealogist.

But don't worry, she can control that goddess because she has her voodoo heart and can poke it with a pen.

For some reason (such as having no true plan.monitoring to keep track of what the evil sorceress is doing and when she needs a good ball point to the heart), the plan goes awry. But no worries, we'll just send all those less effective than conventional military bad guys in to do away with the much more powerful villain we failed to control. Because after an American city has been wrecked and evacuated is the perfect time for scapegoats and deniability.

Lines of dialogue: 10000?
Cool scenes: A couple (I like steak)
Characterization: 3 out of 10.

More whining later

[Abyss]

For what it's worth...

Movie and 1989 comic spoiler

Spoiler

The Slipknot n Boomerang thing is a direct nod to an early original Suicide Squad storyline in the Ostrander Yale series.

I realize that's lost on 90% of the audience, but there it is.

[PLUGO]

My Biggest gripes were with those moments I've seen before.

The faceless hordes: Avengers 1 & 2 + THOR 2 & Guardians of the Galaxy, Amazing Spider-Man

The CGI doomsday machine: Fantastic Four, Avengers & Thor (again), Amazing Spider-Man 2, Man of Steel

Introducing Slipknot (in an unforunately misogynist manner) just to kill him was weak. Might as well just have Boomerang be the one who makes a run for it and dies, it's not like the character contributed that much . . . (well the DEADPOOL Unicorn joke I guess) actually more of them should have died. Leave only Waller, Deadshot, Quinn & Katana.

I thought it was most fun when it was all disjointed and non-linear. That said, even Ayer himself has stages more interesting gun-fights and heavy fire-power scenes.

Still people are going out to see it and these are the first generation of a kind of movie that doesn't progress in a linear fashion (like the building of the Avengers franchise) but more sideways. One can watch it before or after Batman v Superman.

[QuickTidal]

PLUGO, on 08 August 2016 - 07:12 PM, said:

I thought it was most fun when it was all disjointed and non-linear. That said, even Ayer himself has stages more interesting gun-fights and heavy fire-power scenes.

I have a feeling some of those fights were cut for running time or other reasons...but you can sense in MOST of the action scenes that there are longer cuts in there. I hope Ayer's cut is more complete in that regard.

[Nevyn]

Continued ...

Spoiler

Next up, Killer Croc


Ok, I screwed this one up. Should definitely come before Waller in ascending importance order . Maybe Boomerang, too. So many forgettable characters that I forgot.

Killer Croc MERITS an intro at the start. He doesn't merit a getting caught scene, but he gets the Waller voice over, and you get to see him in prison a lot. He has a sewer cell! He kills guards.

And for someone whose voice seems badly coordinated with his mouth (next movie he needs to meet Godzilla), he gets to talk a surprising amount. Not conversation mind you, this is SS. People don't talk to people. They talk at people.

So killer croc gets to say one sentence when you meet him, one in the bad, one near the end, and a joke after the fight is over. And he gets to fight things about as much as the other background characters get to do.

In the final battle, they need someone to swim through flooded tunnels to retrieve a bomb to blow up a bad guy. And they have a crocodile. So Flagg decides to send ... Random Seals. No worries though, the crocodile insists on coming. And after he helps set off that bomb and lives, he shows up, and throws another bomb.

The whole movie, there is no indication that he is moved by, cares about, likes or dislikes or fears, any other character. His lines are apropos of nothing.

Lines of Dialogue: 4?
Cool scenes: 1 maybe?
Characterization: Back down to 0.5 out of 10.

Next up, June Moone/Enchantress/ Enchantress' Brother


Now, you'd think that the central villain of a film would be a pretty darn important character. But when you are a generic end boss with a generic impending disaster CGI machine, the details of your character (and motivations) don't matter a lot. And when you hire a model to play said character, her alter ego probably won't use words and things too much.

June Moone and Enchantress do merit a Waller intro though. Waller voice over of Spelunking, and description of the goddess.

June also gets to be part of Flagg's intro. Says one phrase. No reply needed. Mostly Waller voiceover. And a love story is born.

Then Waller parades her in front of generals to show how cool her plan is. Here is the pretty girl we don't talk. Here she is turning into an evil sorceress I assume I can control with a flawed plan. Here she is stealing Iranian nuclear plans.

Enchantress takes over for June later, Flagg won't shoot or call because she shows him a vision of June dying (ah, love, and again, talking not included ... the movie would be identical on mute). She tries to steal back her voodoo heart, can't, and so frees her brother and sets him to work. Then goes back to Flagg until her brother is strong enough.

June is BACK! Can we let her talk? Dare we? Sure, lets let her say "if you have to make that choice again, kill me to stop her". Awww, self sacrifice. Love. Wooden acting.

Any way, in an interrupted to set up obvious reveal sequence, he brother attacks a subway, and they send her and Flagg to stop the unknown threat. And instead of ordering the Enchantress into, say, turning this unknown threat into a toaster, she is to deal with him by teleporting in a timed explosive and teleporting back out.

But she doesn't do it ! (Shocker) Waller tries to kill her with the Ball Point of Fate poking her heart. But apparently her brother can now protect her.

Then they sit there, turning humans into humanoids with blackberries for heads, and building a generic CGI machine that when completed will blow up all the weapons that the army are currently not sending against them in this completely abandoned city, when earlier a simple bomb was going to be able to deal with them.

Later on, they capture Waller, she gets her heart back, and starts weird-magic-dancing. The suicide squad show up, kill her brother (more on that later) , fight her conventionally because she would totally do that. Then she takes there weapons and falls for the most telegraphed trick in history. They get her heard, blow up her machine, then squish the heart and kill her.

But June lives ! Oh thank goodness. I am so emotionally invested in this love story where they have not had a single back and forth conversation all film that I would have been devastated if she actually made the sacrifice she was totally willing to make.

Lines of dialogue between Enchantress and Brother (yea, subtitles): 10 or so, explaining the entire villain plot of the film
Lines of dialogue between Enchantress and others: 2ish
Lines of dialogue from June: 3ish
Cool scenes: 1, the first reveal. Basically a camera shot of her hand.
Characterization: A whopping 2 out of 10. We know June doesn't like being possessed. We know Enchantress doesn't like humans anymore, and used to be worshipped. That's rather a lot for this movie.

[Nevyn]

And continued:

Spoiler

Now we are coming to the heavy hitters:

Next up: Diablo!


Diablo gets the all important Waller voice over. He used to be in a gang! There was an incident with fire and he gave himself up! Look at this cool video of him blowing up a prison mob attacking him.

They go to talk to/recruit him. Nope, he won't help. Won't use his powers. Fair enough.

Later, it is time to round up the team. Sure, he said nope, but lets put an explodey thing in his neck and bring him anyway.

They get in some fights, and he does nothing. Well, that's what he told you he'd do. But I guess he has to keep walking with you or you will blow up his head.

They get in some more fights. More nothing. As good as his word. But then Deadshot makes him angry, So, flamethrowing. Lots of blackberry heads die. Nice, I knew we brought him along for something, and it wasn't lively conversation.

Later, in the random bar scene to set up the third act, they have an actual group conversation of sorts. Yep, third act, first conversation.

And since they are sharing, he gets his monologue. He was a bad ass, a powerful gangster who could burn things. With a wife and too kids. But apparently she didn't like him burning things, and he lost it and killed her.And Harley puts together that he killed the kids too. No one else says much. Conversation over. Glad he god this off his chest. These bad guys who listened to him are like his family, because they heard it and stood there in quiet judgement.

So they get there to fight enchantress, and she is trapping them all in fantasy worlds. But not him. He is a fire wizard, she can't trick him. So he rejects the vision of having his family back. And it is time for him to shine, to save his suicide squad family. And he has a clear job to do. They are going to blow the brother up with that bomb from earlier. But the brother needs to be standing/lying over that not-big-enough-blast-radius-to-hurt-anyone-else-there bomb. And that is in the corner! They are going to have to move him .... 20 feet. So he shoots flame out of his hands trying to force the god who will be killed by a small bomb into the corner. No good. Beaten back. Time to go full giant fire demon. This scene actually looked pretty badass.

But his job as a giant fire demon is to push him those 20 feet and hold him there. The weak bomb does the rest. And presumably takes fire demon Diablo with it.

Lines of Dialogue: 20ish
Cool scenes: 2
Characterization: 8.5! We get to know what drives him, what he fears and feels bad about! Aside from a too convenient and not set up enough conversion to loving his compatriots, he is something like an actual character in an actual movie.

[Nevyn]

And more:

Spoiler

Next up, Rick Flagg


Flagg gets a lot of time in this movie. And he is kind of important. I mean, he is both the squad's babysitter, and the villain's PG boyfriend.

He gets a Waller video. Explaining how she manipulated this person who has to follow her orders anyway by having him meet a possessed girl. And Waller knew he would fall in love with her because Cara Delavigne.

As mentioned in her section though, just because he loves her doesn't mean they ever talk to one another. They have a love that words can't express.

So he follows her around, and then rounds up the squad, and then leads them about. Argues a bit with Will Smith.

He also gets to speak for all the characters who are not important enough to be allowed to talk (see first 2)

And then in the end he has to kill the Enchantress by squashing her heart even though it will presumably kill his girlfriend. But don't worry, it totally doesn't.

Lines of dialogue: 100ish
Cool scenes: 0
Characterization: 6. He gets a love story and everything, and gets to be mr soldier man. And gets to make assumptions about Deadshot and then realize he is wrong. And gets to give a "I'm not going to threaten to blow you up any more, but please help" speech. But the love story is shallow and most of the rest of him is as a verbal bounceback for Waller or Deadshot.




Next up Will Smith

err, I mean Deadshot.

Deadshot gets a proper introduction. He gets what you would expect the whole team to get ... a scene showing what he can do, and one showing how he got caught. And he gets more than that. The scene showing him killing someone features a pretty cool shot. And to make the shot look increasingly impossible, they let the tension roll while Will Smith has a Will Smith negotiation with the client on the phone. Pay me first and it will instantly show me. Pay me again because you tried not to pay me. I need screen time. Bullet. Scene.

Now we get the catching him scene. This is where we make the bad guy look redeemable. He has a daughter. She knows what he does but loves him anyway, Batman tries to catch him, he might have a shot ... his daughter stops him. As suicide squad scenes go, this is about as complete a thought as you'll get. Aside from the I'm Will Smith outfit they have Deadshot wearing for a night out with his daughter, it is well done.

Then we get Deadshot in prison. They give him crappy food. A guard messes with him. Yes, all this is time that could be spent on any other underdeveloped team member.

Then they go to recruit him. But first, we have to give him a tryout to see what he can do. Do we do that for anyone else on the team? NO. But this guy who is a notorious sharpshooter assassin must be evaluated, so they give him guns. Funny almost shoots the mean guard. Hahaha. Now that early scene was totally worth it. Does good things with guns .... for rather a long time ... really hammering this point home .... what do you mean we still haven't met half the squad, this is WILL SMITH!

He negotiates with Waller to participate. Not that anyone really has a choice, but we need to underline that he really loves his daughter. Really.

He gets in to some friction with Flagg. Makes a Phil Jackson joke because Will Smith.

On the mission, more friction with Flagg, who thinks an assassin is not a soldier and Deadshot will run. Deadshot is planning with Harley to kill Flagg and run. More on the "plan" later.


They get in their first fight, and it is going badly. And Deadshot gets to bail them out and prove Flagg wrong (wow, they added some story!) with a very cool shooting spree. Many dead blackberry heads.

Some stuff happens with Harley (her section later)

He finds out they have ALL BEEN LIED TO! Because he is a speedreader. And that lie in no way changes what they would have done anyway since they were basically forced in at gunpoint, and would have done basically anything, but he is still shocked, SHOCKED! at the lying that has been going on.

So they go to a bar. Where he actually has little to say. Thats right, talkiest scene in the movie, but this time Will Smith does not get to monopolize. He listens to a story of someone burning their daughter (and son and wife) alive, and the guy who gave up on freedom and killing Batman for the sake of his daughter barely reacts.

Then final scene, and he gets to shoot a bomb to destroy a weapon while Enchantress taunts him with images of his daughter.

Lines of dialogue: 10000000000000
Cool Scenes: 2
Characterization: 9 -- gotta give it to him. You give someone the screentime of every non Harley Quinn character combined, and a backstory, and you end up with a character you can almost root for, plus Phil Jackson jokes.

Sometimes over the top, but hey he was a non cardboard cut out.

This post has been edited by Nevyn: 08 August 2016 - 08:42 PM

[Nevyn]

Abyss, on 08 August 2016 - 07:06 PM, said:

For what it's worth...

Movie and 1989 comic spoiler

Spoiler

The Slipknot n Boomerang thing is a direct nod to an early original Suicide Squad storyline in the Ostrander Yale series.

I realize that's lost on 90% of the audience, but there it is.

Spoiler

And that is fine, except it was an excuse to not even bother introducing Slipknot like a squad member (making it obvious how disposable he was), and even the scene itself was rushed. As in, quick, we need to throw in this gag. Can we write it in as little screentime as possible?

[Nevyn]

And finally:

Spoiler

Last but not least, Harley Quinn and the Joker


Obviously, Harley gets a lot of screen time. And she gets to be both a key piece of the team, and the driving force of the subplot. But if you actually count stuff up, you find that they really had a tough time figuring out how to have a crazy girl actually interact with anyone.


Anyhoo, Quinn gets a big Waller introduction. But it should have been bigger (its own movie PRE suicide squad) or smaller, most likely.


She is the only character that gets an actual origin story (except sort of the enchantress). Waller explains she used to be a psychiatrist. But instead of showing her trying to treat Joker in any way and being won over, she first appears already pretty much won over. Hardly any talking, Joker asks for a gun. Then there is the breakout scene, which is mostly random costumed people shooting. Then on a funny quick cut camera shot, they show Harlene being held out. Cue the trailer Joker torture scene. You've already seen ALL the dialogue. And sure, she was already on his side and crazy, but why not? Hurt her, puddin.


Fast forward to Joker and Harley as "King and Queen of Gotham". And apparently the King and Queen behave like they have their own reality show. Clubbing, bottle service, stripper pole. Random flirtiing and then murder of guy who makes offhand comment.


Then a car chase. Very short. Date night joke, car into the water. Batman saves Harley, ends up having to punch her (haha). Then pulls her out, tries to resuscitate and gets kissed (haha). Both could have played for more fun if they were not cut to play so fast. No comic timing was set up. The joke lands when they've already moved on.


Harley in prison. Head guard shocking her.


When it is time for side story, you get the Joker talking to henchman. Or rather, the henchman does almost all the talking. They've found out where Harley is. Joker lies back encircled by knives. But no actual talking or anything. That's what henchmen are for.

The head guard gets in deep gambling, so they leverage that to get him to smuggle Harley a phone. Yep, he absolutely needed to be in debt. Can't just threaten him. He is not scared of anyone he doesn't owe money to.

So Harley gets a phone before being sent with the rest of the squad .... and SHH. It is a secret. Somehow Deadshot spies it (perhaps because Harley is doing nothing at all to conceal it) and gets shushed. She cleverly hides it while wearing next to nothing and carrying multiple weapons, and surrepticiously checks it when only EVERYBODY is watching. But hey, that purse she steals is probably a great hiding place.

Harley and Deadshot have a clever escape plan. Kill Flagg, Joker will take care of the exploding heads. So they get into their first scrap ... and they .... save flag. I guess because Joker hasn't deactivated the bombs yet.

After the first mission, Joker ambushes the squad and turns off Harley's exploder, and they start to escape. Deadshot makes no attempt to go along. He has a gun and both people with app controllers are right there, but hey, no more escape plan. Waller tells deadshot to kill Harley, she has the helicopter shot down (more on later). Harley gets out. Joker goes down with the ship.

Harley does a lot of talking in the bar, they save the world, then Joker breaks her out.

The good news is Margot Robbie did was she does. She was hot, and a magnetic personality, and she gets all sort of funny crazy girl lines. Sometimes they are even set up properly (sometimes not). The bad news is you have seen more of them in the trailers.

The further bad news is that a crazy girl is tough to write anything two dimensional for. Especially with a one dimensional Joker boyfriend hardly saying anything. They have one further flashback scene where she lets herself fall into an Ace Chemicals vat and he goes after her. But they really have hardly anything to say to one another, because it cannot he earnest, and it is not set up to be all that funny.

Lines of dialogue: 150ish
Lines of dialogue that aren't non-sequitor gags from the trailer: 5
Cool scenes: 5ish. It might be tough to do a story around her, but she almost makes things fun enough that you don't notice
Characterization: 4 for Joker. 6.5 for Harley.

The truth is, even though she is the standout performance of the film, it probably would work better with LESS Harley and Joker. Have fun with the two of them, have him try a rescue, show the car chase, make the jokes land.

But they did half a disjointed origin story, and they are going to have to redo all of that when she has her own movie. It could mean so much more to show Harlene pre-madness, show Joker actually manipulating her, and show the descent into what they become. If they weren't going to do it right, they shouldn't have done it. 5 other characters could have used that oxygen.

[Tsundoku]

I'm getting the feeling this is going to be like BvS and I should wait for the extended (original?) cut.

[Khellendros]

Watched it on Sunday and have to go with the majority opinion, it wasn't great. It wasn't awful, but considering the premise it was dull and unmemorable. Something Nevyn said really struck me as absolutely true: The characters don't have conversations, they just talk at each other.

I also got the sense that there was some weird cutting in the film. Some parts were just too nonsensical. I'll watch an extended cut if it ever comes to tv, but I'm certainly not going to dish out money for it (is it me being a conspiracy nut, or is this something we're seeing more of? Release a poorly reviewed film in the cinema, because you know people will see it anyway and you'll make a profit, and then release a "proper cut" in order to strengthen DVD sales? That is, deliberately make two different films).

The villains weren't villainous. They weren't even antiheroes. They were just the hero squad who were sometimes snarky. Actual bad guys were awful.

And when the film begins with half an hour of pure exposition and backstory, you know there's a problem. Perhaps they feel audiences really are that stupid and won't be able to follow, but how about filling in the backstory and characterisation over, you know, the course of this movie, as we see the characters in action and actually interacting and conversing with each other?

This post has been edited by Khellendros: 09 August 2016 - 11:32 AM