Filmology Rating: 1.8 out of 4

Suicide Squad, a group of criminals with special abilities brought together to fight the battles that nobody else can. If they die, it doesn’t matter and if they are successful, they get some time off their sentence and the government looks good for putting the team together.

Where to begin with Suicide Squad…. Well how about that I didn’t think that it could be possible for a superhero movie to be worse that Batman vs. Superman and yet this one was far worse. Suicide Squad was a complete disaster that was sometimes painful to sit through. I am torn between not even wanting to write about this movie and going on a complete rant about how bad this movie is….. I'm thinking I’ll go with rant. Strap in folks because this is going to be a doozy.

Even though this movie was horrendous, I’ll start with the good! Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn was brilliant. She nailed the character and the characteristics that come with her. She looked the role, acted just how Harley does in the comics, and was a wild child. Every line that she delivered she owned and made it her own so watching her was very enjoyable. However, they overly sexualize her throughout the film. Her character looked like Michael Bay was filming her and wanted her to be sexual in almost every frame. Yes Harley Quinn is a sexual character but you made that point in the first minute of her screen time. Move on, we get it. Alongside Margot Robbie was Will Smith who brought Deadshot to life in a very fun and accurate way. For me, I think that he was the star of the film. His character had the most depth, emotional turmoil, and also like Harley Quinn, was fun to watch. He challenges the notion that being a criminal doesn’t make you a bad person (something that I will get into much more later on). So these two characters were the ONLY good thing about Suicide Squad. There are two more characters Diablo and Rick Flag that were good but could have been better. They had a lot of potential but never reached it.

Now notice that was only 4 characters that were either great or good…. That is only half the squad! Killer Croc, Katana, Captain Boomerang and Slipknot were all awful! They try and give these characters some depth, humor, and something fun about them but it didn’t work at all. Let’s back it up for a second. Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, we are introduced to all of these characters and given very little backstory for the “non-important” members (Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Diablo being the most important). So right off the bat you are bombarded with all these characters and given very little info about them. It feels so rushed and forced down your throat; it never had time to grow naturally and into something where you could care about these people. Let’s look at what the Avengers and Marvel did. They built up the series of characters slowly and took time to grow them into people that you care about….. DC apparently doesn’t get this! DC is so far behind Marvel that it is painful to watch.

Now let’s talk about the “plot”. I use quotation marks because it is so spotty with so many plot holes that don't make sense that I have a hard time calling it an actual plot. It was borderline annoying sometimes with a mixture of a whole lot of crap. Multiple times I threw my hands in the air and verbally said “what” or “are you kidding me” to the friend I saw this with. I really can’t get into these plot holes without spoiling things for you guys and I don't really want to do that. I’d say it would ruin the movie but the movie is so bad already that it ruined itself. Enough said.

Onward to the action and adventure behind that Suicide Squad had. It was flat out boring. Except the action were Deadshot was the main focus, the action was actually really dull. Even the finale, the finally hope for the film to really get exciting and make one last statement…. It sucked. There wasn’t a fun factor throughout the film and it was really dark (both the tone and the color scheme as well). Circling back to Harley Quinn and Deadshot, without these two and the humor and fun that they brought to the table, this film lacked both of those things. The worst thing about this whole situation is that after the terrible reviews that Batman vs. Superman had, they reshot several scenes in this film to add more humor and fun…. WHERE WAS IT AND HOW DULL WAS THE FILM BEFORE YOU “ADDED” MORE JOKES!?! Sorry for yelling, I apologize.

Next we have something that I feel a lot of people are wondering about, how was the Joker? Well Jared Leto was great….. the Joker was not. He did an excellent job of really owning this character but the character itself was just awful. I couldn’t stand him. I feel that Leto played the character how they wanted him to but the character is just terrible. The Joker is a joke and a very unfunny one at that. Each Joker throughout the decades has had their own spin on things but this rendition was just awful. Heath Ledger has forever ruined the Joker character. He was just too good and I honestly think no Joker has ever or will ever live up to Ledger’s Joker. I feel that with how good Ledger did, the writers felt like they needed to go even more extreme and make his character really different to stand out. Well different he was but not at all in a good way. I'd also like to say that he doesn't get nearly the amount of screen time that the trailer had lead us to believe. Since he wasn't the main villain, there was another and she was even worse than the Joker was.....

So after all of this being said, I still have a bigger complaint! The government workers, agents, prison guards are the bad guys in Suicide Squad, NOT the Suicide Squad members. Yes they are in jail and have done bad things but compared to the actions of the “good” guys, they look like model citizens almost. The leaders and people in charge of guarding and assembling the Suicide Squad (excluding Rick Flag) should have also been locked up in prison because they were actually horrible people through and through.

Wow….. Suicide Squad signed its death wish with this film which is very disappointing because it had so much potential. Between a bunch of plot holes, things that don't make sense, lack of humor/fun/depth, poor characters, and much more, all adds up to one big budget disaster.

Rating: Skip It

-Nick

What more can I say? In spite of my hopes and wishes, Suicide Squad proves that the folks behind the DC cinematic universe don’t have a full grasp on what makes for a good movie. Suicide Squad will do down as another unfortunate misfire in the infancy years DCCU (DC Cinematic Universe).

Suicide Squad is founded on the question of what the U.S. government would do if Superman actually turned bad. The solution to this question seems to be the assembling of a team of supervillains that have superpowers that aren’t really that super. A 15-minute-long musical montage briefly sets up each of the members of this team and establishes some of their basic motivations. Included in this team are a wide variety of DC villains including Deadshot, Harley Quinn, El Diablo, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc and Slipknot. The order of these members also indicates the relative importance of each member to the film (notice Slipknot is barely mentioned in any trailers). Also including in the film are small cameo appearances by Jared Leto’s Joker (his part is small), and the supernatural hero/villain Enchantress. Government Agent Amanda Waller assembles the team to respond to a cataclysmic supernatural event that is beginning to unfold in a nearby city. 

Early promotional material for Suicide Squad looked promising. What had been shown seemed to promise a fun comic book movie about bad guys being bad for a good reason. The final release of the film seems to reveal Suicide Squad as a rather tame action comedy that doesn’t feature much in the way of exciting action or comedic elements. A great deal of this is due to the films poor development of the groups dynamic. Although I did not expect anything on the realm of a Marvel movie such as the Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, I did hope that the film would be smart enough to balance its characters and their comradery. It didn’t. Deadshot (played by Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (played by Margot Robbie) served as the two most important members of the team in the film. Both were played effectively and provide the film with its only real highlights. Director David Ayer gives small bits of attention to his other characters, but not enough to make them feel well developed or useful in terms of the films progression. This distinct lack of balance is only further heightened by the films inability to take any real risks. Suicide Squad plays out like every other standard action movie with the only exception being that the main villain of the film is laughably conceived. Certain sections of the film felt like the most mundane sections of any modern Call of Duty campaign. The characters and the banter should have been the most important part of Suicide Squad, but instead they take a backseat to the dull action scenes that studios must think audiences want. 2008’s The Dark Knight proved that you can make an excellent superhero film that audiences will love that doesn’t focus on tedious action and poor one liners. The folks behind the DCCU may need to start looking at the past instead of relentlessly trying to prepare for the future. 

In the end, Suicide Squad plays out as just another Hollywood blockbuster. Although director David Ayer and the studio could have taken risks and made Suicide Squad truly unique, they ended up making a film that lacks the intelligence or the creativity to guarantee its relevance in a future full of comic book adaptations.

Rating: Skip It 

-Tyler