Jack Brickman
Hall-of-Famer
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2012
- Messages
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- 148
Suicide Squad - 3/10
Writing this as I watch it because it's better than watching the actual movie, so this is gonna be a long one.
Holy shit was this movie bad. First off, the entire premise is flawed. This is supposed to be some metahuman task force, but half the people on the team don't even have any actual superpowers. Harley Quinn is just crazy. Killer Croc's only power is being really ugly. Boomerang and Deadshot are expert marksmen, but they too have no actual powers. I guess Deadshot has his cyborg eye accessory, but that's not a power, it's an accessory. I don't really see how these guys would be any better than the army at taking out the army of generic bad guys in this film.
The animated version (Batman: Escape from Arkham) made a hell of a lot more sense in this regard, as the mission was more grounded and, thus, a much better fit for a group of criminals. In that one, Waller sent the Suicide Squad into Arkham to retrieve information stolen by Riddler. It's the type of mission the Suicide Squad is suited for...illegal and under the table. Despite being a Batman movie in title, it was really a Suicide Squad film, as they were the main characters and Batman was just there to play his role.
This film is clearly trying to ape the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, but it lacks the sense of fun and charm of that film. The jokes mostly fall flat here, and the characters are all just kind of dicks, but not lovable dicks like in Guardians. You're not really given a compelling reason to care about any of them. Flag, who is probably supposed to play the Peter Quill role here, is just as much of an asshole as everyone else. He's not even remotely likable. There's a scene later in the film where he witnesses Waller kill a bunch of government agents in cold blood and doesn't even blink, and even justifies it after. This is the good guy?!?
Early in the film, when they first encounter the nameless, faceless bad guys (nothing gets the audience invested like faceless bad guys who are just there to be cannon fodder), the soldiers comment that fighting them is useless. Seconds later, they fight them and it's very much not useless, as these bad guys clearly die to gun fire and bludgeoning. Yet, scenes earlier, we are shown the army being completely ineffective against them. It's just dumb, and awful writing to boot.
Stannis mentioned the music, and there, too, it's clear they are trying to piggyback on the success of Guardians. The problem is that it often feels like the music here is just thrown in because it sounds cool. There's no real consistency to the soundtrack like in Guardians, and sometimes they will play multiple different background songs in a single scene. It's the audio equivalent of throwing as much shit at the wall as possible and hoping something sticks.
Another issue is the way this film was rushed out the door. You have all these villains who are in jail, but we never see any of them put there. Harley Quinn is a character who would presumably come in relatively late in Batman's career, and yet we're just meeting her here for the first time. That's a major wasted opportunity, as Harley being turned by the Joker could have been the subject of an entire film, either stand-alone or as the main subplot of a Batman movie, rather than a two minute flashback to start this one. It's not as much of an issue for lesser characters like Killer Croc who would never get to be the main bad guy in a film, but it just seems off to introduce villains like Harley and Deadshot in this manner. The entire first act of the film is devoted to flashbacks about who these characters are, and that's just bad filmmaking. Guardians didn't need a long series of flashbacks to establish each character. They introduced them and we got a sense of who they were through the dialogue and their actions. The only character who got a flashback was Peter, and that was the first scene of the film that established how and why he ended up in space, and also why his music was important to him.
I didn't like how they treated Joker and Harley's relationship either. The Joker I know doesn't give a shit about Harley. She's a means to an end, and that end is chaos. She loves him. He manipulates her. In the movie, he's just pussy-whipped. Individually, Leto and Robbie give good performances, but their love story is cringe-worthy bad. That kind of sums up the film, though. The performances are mostly fine, but the writing is shit and nothing really makes a lot of sense.
And this is kind of minor, but toward the end of the movie it starts raining really hard. The characters are outside for a decent stretch of time, all of them soaking wet. They walk into a bar. The next scene, which follows seconds later and is inside the bar, all of them are completely dry. Harley's hair is a bit wet, but her clothes aren't damp at all. It's shit like this that just feels lazy.
Probably the most hilarious scene in the movie was a flashback where Diablo is having dinner with his family and his wife throws down a paper about a fire he started like she's shocked that the man she married who has a fucking reaper's scythe tattooed on his fucking forehead is a bad guy. It's supposed to be a somber scene, but I was fucking dying. I also hated how they did the "hero moment" during the bar scene when all the bad guys decide to help save the world. These aren't fucking heroes! They're psychopaths, thieves, and murderers! It would have played much better if most of them had selfish motivations for helping. The world is about to be destroyed, so they would help because they don't want to die. Instead, they had dramatic music as all of them walked together to save the world. Fucking awful. Whoever wrote this shit clearly does not understand who any of these characters are. Deadshot is the only one who might plausibly help in that instance, and more to save his daughter than himself.
Oh, and where the fuck were Flash and Batman while this shit was going down? Seems like they really could have helped.
Time to move on to Doctor Strange and be reminded what a good superhero flick is supposed to be like.
Writing this as I watch it because it's better than watching the actual movie, so this is gonna be a long one.
Holy shit was this movie bad. First off, the entire premise is flawed. This is supposed to be some metahuman task force, but half the people on the team don't even have any actual superpowers. Harley Quinn is just crazy. Killer Croc's only power is being really ugly. Boomerang and Deadshot are expert marksmen, but they too have no actual powers. I guess Deadshot has his cyborg eye accessory, but that's not a power, it's an accessory. I don't really see how these guys would be any better than the army at taking out the army of generic bad guys in this film.
The animated version (Batman: Escape from Arkham) made a hell of a lot more sense in this regard, as the mission was more grounded and, thus, a much better fit for a group of criminals. In that one, Waller sent the Suicide Squad into Arkham to retrieve information stolen by Riddler. It's the type of mission the Suicide Squad is suited for...illegal and under the table. Despite being a Batman movie in title, it was really a Suicide Squad film, as they were the main characters and Batman was just there to play his role.
This film is clearly trying to ape the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, but it lacks the sense of fun and charm of that film. The jokes mostly fall flat here, and the characters are all just kind of dicks, but not lovable dicks like in Guardians. You're not really given a compelling reason to care about any of them. Flag, who is probably supposed to play the Peter Quill role here, is just as much of an asshole as everyone else. He's not even remotely likable. There's a scene later in the film where he witnesses Waller kill a bunch of government agents in cold blood and doesn't even blink, and even justifies it after. This is the good guy?!?
Early in the film, when they first encounter the nameless, faceless bad guys (nothing gets the audience invested like faceless bad guys who are just there to be cannon fodder), the soldiers comment that fighting them is useless. Seconds later, they fight them and it's very much not useless, as these bad guys clearly die to gun fire and bludgeoning. Yet, scenes earlier, we are shown the army being completely ineffective against them. It's just dumb, and awful writing to boot.
Stannis mentioned the music, and there, too, it's clear they are trying to piggyback on the success of Guardians. The problem is that it often feels like the music here is just thrown in because it sounds cool. There's no real consistency to the soundtrack like in Guardians, and sometimes they will play multiple different background songs in a single scene. It's the audio equivalent of throwing as much shit at the wall as possible and hoping something sticks.
Another issue is the way this film was rushed out the door. You have all these villains who are in jail, but we never see any of them put there. Harley Quinn is a character who would presumably come in relatively late in Batman's career, and yet we're just meeting her here for the first time. That's a major wasted opportunity, as Harley being turned by the Joker could have been the subject of an entire film, either stand-alone or as the main subplot of a Batman movie, rather than a two minute flashback to start this one. It's not as much of an issue for lesser characters like Killer Croc who would never get to be the main bad guy in a film, but it just seems off to introduce villains like Harley and Deadshot in this manner. The entire first act of the film is devoted to flashbacks about who these characters are, and that's just bad filmmaking. Guardians didn't need a long series of flashbacks to establish each character. They introduced them and we got a sense of who they were through the dialogue and their actions. The only character who got a flashback was Peter, and that was the first scene of the film that established how and why he ended up in space, and also why his music was important to him.
I didn't like how they treated Joker and Harley's relationship either. The Joker I know doesn't give a shit about Harley. She's a means to an end, and that end is chaos. She loves him. He manipulates her. In the movie, he's just pussy-whipped. Individually, Leto and Robbie give good performances, but their love story is cringe-worthy bad. That kind of sums up the film, though. The performances are mostly fine, but the writing is shit and nothing really makes a lot of sense.
And this is kind of minor, but toward the end of the movie it starts raining really hard. The characters are outside for a decent stretch of time, all of them soaking wet. They walk into a bar. The next scene, which follows seconds later and is inside the bar, all of them are completely dry. Harley's hair is a bit wet, but her clothes aren't damp at all. It's shit like this that just feels lazy.
Probably the most hilarious scene in the movie was a flashback where Diablo is having dinner with his family and his wife throws down a paper about a fire he started like she's shocked that the man she married who has a fucking reaper's scythe tattooed on his fucking forehead is a bad guy. It's supposed to be a somber scene, but I was fucking dying. I also hated how they did the "hero moment" during the bar scene when all the bad guys decide to help save the world. These aren't fucking heroes! They're psychopaths, thieves, and murderers! It would have played much better if most of them had selfish motivations for helping. The world is about to be destroyed, so they would help because they don't want to die. Instead, they had dramatic music as all of them walked together to save the world. Fucking awful. Whoever wrote this shit clearly does not understand who any of these characters are. Deadshot is the only one who might plausibly help in that instance, and more to save his daughter than himself.
Oh, and where the fuck were Flash and Batman while this shit was going down? Seems like they really could have helped.
Time to move on to Doctor Strange and be reminded what a good superhero flick is supposed to be like.
