With the split reaction among fans and critics for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner Bros. and DC are betting a lot on their next DCEU film with Suicide Squad. The film is set out as a contender to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy with hopes to reestablish the trust with their fans and to show that DC films is a force to be reckoned with.
At this year’s San Diego Comic Con, many people were thrilled to see the trailer for Wonder Woman and a little bit of footage from Justice League that showed Warner Bros. Pictures might have course corrected their path and were on their way of being the powerhouse they need to be to compete with Marvel. Does Suicide Squad help that cause? The short answer is no – but let’s take a few minutes to go over the reasons why.
Suicide Squad is the story of super-villains that are strong-armed to work together under Amanda Waller (Davis). A long time established character of the DC Universe and one serious cold blooded woman.
After that, the plot (if there even is one) – is introduced in a such a clunky a way that had me scratching my head most of the film. There’s a bad guy doing something bad that’s going to get a lot of people killed with a big blue beam in the sky. That’s it. I wasn’t asking for a deep long drawn out plan of the antagonist’s intentions, but when you don’t see the point of all the shit that’s going on, you just don’t see what the stakes are other than the Squad will be blamed for it.
The acting in the film is actually not that bad. Margot Robbie and Viola Davis fit perfectly in their roles. If there was any wonder what a Harley Quinn would be like in the real world, you got your answer in this movie. Will Smith is doing his “Will Smith thing” that adds a bit of drama to the film when needed but still felt forced in so that you can care about something for at least one or two of these characters. Diablo (Hernandez) was a nice touch and was the true bad ass of film when it was needed.
A couple of honorable mentions go to Killer Croc (Akinnuore-Agbaje) for really impressive costume design and Captain Boomerang (Courtney) showed the actor can have some fun in his roles.
Now, Leto…
From the jump people were crying “foul” about Leto being cast as the Clown Prince of Crime and that crying only became louder when pictures of the Joker serviced. Well, Leto’s Joker is passable. His take as a gangster type is interesting but is nothing more than just a costume change to the character. To tell you the truth, there was almost no point in him even being in the movie other than to show the chemistry between him and Harley Quinn – which I wanted to see more of. They were better off just waiting for him to appear in another Batman film.
The biggest crime of this film was the direction. Within the first ten minutes of the film, you can see where the studio interference was in play. There were so many times that certain music cues were off by a mile – with the adding popular well known songs that had almost nothing to do with the scenes. Some characters that were introduced just kind of pop up out of nowhere, without being eased in authentically and are almost completely forgettable. There have been reports of two separate companies editing this film and there being an attempt to mash those edits together. Fuck me.
It’s so badly put together that it almost looks like two separate directors made the movie. There are certain parts that you can clearly see what David Ayer was going for and it was starting to work. Then, out of nowhere, you get a forced in joke, a really weird edit or some stupid bit of useless dialogue that was used to explain something that the audience can clearly come up on their own and it was just plain annoying.
What makes this film so god damn frustrating is that it had such potential and such a cool premise that was given with the first trailer, that the WB’s interference only hurt the film. David Ayer is not a seasoned director but was fully capable of handling this group and the story if he was just given more time to work on the script and left alone to edit it the way he wanted. You can guess that that there is an Ultimate Edition for this film with Ayer’s original vision that will be announced sometime in the near future.
When Batman v Superman wasn’t a monstrous hit like some many people thought it would be, Warner Bros. panicked and tried so desperately to inject humor that was DOA and tried to lighten the mood to a cast of characters that doesn’t need lightened up. Here is when the “dark tone” that Warner Bros. wanted would’ve worked just fine.
WB really needs to take a seat and let the directors do their job. Otherwise, this shit is only going to get worse… and it’s pretty bad already.