Suicide Squad (2016)

Yet another polarizing film in the DCEU. Has anyone else seen it, and what did you think? Spoilers obviously.

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The movie's being trashed by critics and (from what I can tell) Marvel fanboys, but I dunno, I actually really liked it. I liked the costumes and the look and sound of the film. Enough of the characters were developed enough for me to care about what happens to them and want to see more of them. I thought the acting from the cast was mostly very well done, and the characters I had some problems with I feel were the result of the cut story and script/directing. Jai Courtney actually surprised me with how much I liked him in this, and I've never been blown away by him before. The story was generic save-the-world bullshit, but while I wish it had been more imaginative, I still enjoy that sort of thing, so I can't say the basic story really bothered me.

What I thought needed work: I felt like executive meddling interfered with the story, and the suits either forgot that the main characters are, in fact villains, or were afraid an ensemble of genuinely shitty people would be unmarketable. I don't want to say that the characters were "nice", exactly, but they were awfully charismatic and came together as a group awfully quickly. I thought there should have been more backstabbing, or at least more criminal activity out of the squad. I think it would have worked better if the mooks actually looked human- watching Harley laugh while beating a black blobby thing with a baseball bat is one thing, watching her do it to a recognizable human would have been something else entirely. And since the characters, to me, were likable and more anti-hero than villainous, and the "heroes" of the DCEU kind of suck, it's going to be hard to want to see them be brought to justice. I don't know.

Also, the movie cut too much stuff out. You can tell a lot of backstory (such as the relationship between Flag and June, and Harley and the Joker) was cut that IMO should have been left in. I don't know why WB thinks they have to meddle, but they aren't doing such a great job so far, so maybe they should leave each movie in the director's hands. The novelization (yeah, I'm that loser who read it) fills in some of the holes, but it has other problems.

Anyhow, the movie could have been better, no doubt, but in my opinion, it is not deserving of the backlash it has received. There are way worse movies. I'm sure I'll think of more to ramble about later.

 

I had heard that the studio ordered reshoots to lighten the tone. There are also scenes from the trailers and some production stills that show things that have been cut. I understand a lot of Joker scenes got the axe, for one.

The novelization doesn't add much new content, but it helps flesh out the characters a little more. It gives the Enchantress and June some personality, and goes a little deeper into Flag and June's relationship (which, I'm a girl, I like that shit), whereas the movie didn't show much of them together. The novel also changes some scenes around- for example, the scene with Common in the club where he find himself in trouble for looking too closely at Harley plays out as more of a mindfuck. You get scenes from the Joker's POV. Two scenes in particular in the movie where I felt like characters weren't behaving as themselves played out differently in the novel- Batman in the novel waits for Deadshot to drop off his daughter with her mother before he corners him in the alley (and Deadshot thanks him for it), instead of putting a child in harm's way like he did in the movie, and in the scene when Waller guns down her people when the Squad comes and gets her, in the movie Flag sort of shrugs and says "I've buried my share of mistakes," which seemed like an odd reaction from a guy who is not supposed to be one of the villains, while in the novel, you get some of his inner monologue to go along with it that shows he knows she'd put a bullet in him in half a second if she didn't need him right that minute, and he thinks to himself that he'll make sure he takes her out before she gets the chance.There was a little more of some of the background characters, like Scott Eastwood's SEAL character. The novel does change some of the dialogue, not really for the better (I think it must have been going for a PG rating), but for $6 at Walmart, I can't complain.

 

RE: The Joker, I was fine with the amount of time he spent in the movie, because I never thought he was the focus of this particular film. The bits of him in the novel were nice for me only because they expanded on scenes with Harley, who I liked in this film. As far as this portrayal of the Joker goes, I'm sort of "meh." Some things worked, and some things didn't. I'm not familiar with many things Batman (watched the 80s and 90s movies, saw a few episodes of animated series, and that's about it), so I don't have that Joker fatigue, or strong opinions on how the character should be handled.

RE: Batman and Deadshot, the scene worked fine in the movie, but 1) I felt like Batman, as someone who witnessed his parents' murders, wouldn't be so eager to put a child in a position to possibly witness the same thing, and I thought it took an unnecessary risk with her life, and 2) I didn't feel like Deadshot needed to feel like he should stop being an assassin. It kind of goes back to my big complaint with the movie- the Squad are supposed to be the bad guys. We already had the character burdened by his past evil actions in Diablo; I didn't feel like all of the characters needed that arc, and I felt like the movie made all of the characters too sympathetic. Don't get me wrong, I really liked just about all of them anyway. But I thought they should have been less anti-hero and more villain. *shrugs*