It's one thing when movie viewers criticize a movie, it's one of the things that's expected, because obviously you can't please everybody. Just ask Kevin Costner and his success with "Dances with Wolves", and how pissed off the Indians were with him. That was a very long time ago. BUT, in referring to the movie in question, when there's a movie that is successful in such a strange way, a person can't help but wonder one simple and possibly universal thing: "What The Fuck?!" And I say this very honestly because, it IS one thing when fans don't like a movie, but it's very different when the ACTORS don't like the movie they were in! Then it becomes something more like, when somebody might wonder, "Was this a good idea after all?" or perhaps more along the lines of "Exactly what did I get myself into here?"
"Suicide Squad" is the movie that has both promised a cinematic rapture to die-hard fans of the comic, and absolute, apocalyptic disgust from critics who probably haven't even seen the damned movie! I've been working on this article for the last two days, and it has been both a total pain in my ass in terms of writing it, and a pain in terms of reading reviews from people who can't keep their story straight. I'm not talking about anyone on moviepilot or creators.co, I'm talking about magazines and newspapers. Not that I have total faith in bloggers on either of those sites, but I am willing to give to them the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I'm an old-fashioned newspaper and magazine reader, so it's easier for me to know which ones to believe and which not to.
Something that really nails me is that I really looked forward to seeing this movie, just because of the fact that the idea was so abstract in comparison to the garbage that is currently pissing on anything that could/should have been entertaining. Imagine it! A team of the worst bad guys in DC Comics Land put together to do what? FIGHT CRIME! It's like, oh, what the hell are we even thinking? Is there even a margin where this could even be successful? The answer to both the idea of such a team NOT killing each other and everybody else, as well as this movie being successful, is sadly, no. It did not work, it did not succeed. One possible question would be, obviously: "What went wrong?" The answer is not so easy to figure out. Why is it that a well-liked comic book was badly written into a movie that seemed like it was designed to fail from the beginning? I admire the cast of the movie for telling the critics to "kiss their ass" while at a press conference in London to promote the movie, but another question could be who's going to be kissing who's ass, ultimately, at the end? Could this be another "Passion of the Christ", in a very direct, say-goodbye-to-your-career-in-Hollywood way? It's hard to say, but it's not looking good for what success the movie has actually enjoyed. Oddly enough, Jared Leto, who plays the Joker, said that he felt "tricked into being in the movie", although in an interview in GQ Style Magazine, he hardly mentioned much of the movie outside of his playing the Joker. He gave incredible praise to the late, great Heath Ledger, whose performance of the Joker which he said was "Perfect. Period." But then, we are talking about Jared Leto, after all, and he is one of the weirdest people around. And yet, as I read his interview, even he was not sure there was a chance for a sequel. The over-all impression I got was that Leto was not happy with the movie, officially speaking. He was happy with his performance, certainly, but not with the movie. His disappointment with the treatment of the finished movie is not a secret to anybody these days.
One of the things that was too much for the movie to survive, obviously, was the hype that was built around it. There was so much of it prior to release, it could be that it doomed the movie before it was actually released nation-wide. Rabid comic book fan-boys were so feverish about the release of the movie, a lot of them were silently hoping for their chosen savior, whoever that is to them these days, to show up magically and make "Suicide Squad" the great hit that "Batman Vs. Superman" failed to be. And yes, unfortunately, this movie looks to be an even bigger failure than "BvS". Exactly HOW this movie has earned any money and became the Number One movie in America is one hell of a mystery! Ok, so now is the part where I talk about the movie itself, and I have no doubt the amount of hate-mail I have will probably double after this, but hey! Get over it. It IS just a damn movie, after all.
To start with, sadly, the first thirty minutes of the movies absolutely drains a person, beginning with the explanation of exactly how the members of the future team comes together is thrown in everybody's face with almost the same amount of subtlety as a sledgehammer taken to your head. It's possible the most evil person in the movie isn't the Joker or the Enchantress, and not even Harley her debut, but Amanda Waller, who very literally holds the lives of all the squad members in the palm of her hands; or more directly, in the hands of Rick Flag, the team's field commander. The prison scenes alone are so full of shit, no self-respecting prison official would ever want to watch this kind of trash. I should know, enough of my family worked in the prison system over the years. What's really weird is that once the helicopter scene comes up where Joker shoots down the chopper that has Harley in it, the movie suddenly becomes nothing more than a B movie with an all-star cast. This is where the real disappointment gets started; what should have been a great action movie with the very real possibility of becoming a subversive cult classic turns into nothing more than "The Harley Quinn/Joker/Deadshot Variety Hour". Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, the cheerleader from hell herself, takes the center-stage as not only the funniest part of the movie, but it's almost as if the movie is based on her, not to mention her boyfriend, the legendary Clown Prince of Crime, the one and only Joker. But even the Joker takes a serious back-seat to Harley in this movie, it seems as though there's no room in this movie for anyone except her and Will Smith's Deadshot, and the two seem to be getting more and more friendly all through the movie. The truth about this movie is that the story needed to be worked on and developed much better than what fans were given, and there's a lot of room for improvement. I hate to agree with mainstream papers and reviewers, but the fact is there were certain plot holes in the story that needed serious re-consideration before just basically throwing it together. You also have no idea why more time couldn't have been spent helping define the characters--that is, the members of the squad. Of course, the movie is just slightly over two hours, so you can only marvel at someone's story for so long. Or in this movie's case, Harley's ass. I'm not kidding, there is more time spent on Harley's ass and her cutesy psycho bit than anything else in the movie. There are a handful of redemptive moments in the movie for different bad guys, Diablo, Commander Boomerang and Katana mostly, courtesy of Deadshot since he's too busy shooting everybody and everything in sight, and well, Harley's already the star of the show, so she doesn't have to prove anything except that she's definitely hot. I'm not saying I wasn't watching her, too; I was, but Jesus Christ, you cannot base an entire movie on a woman's ass! Unless of course it's a porn, and then in that case, what do I care?
But porn this is not, it's meant to be a comic book-based action movie. Seeing as how Enchantress is the main bad guy-girl(sorry, ladies!) in this plot, she's given a lot of leeway and story time which is a lot more that can be said for other characters who should have been more than just seen and mentioned as a foot-note. There's a clear way that this movie has set itself up for a sequel, if not simply for "Justice League", which has already built substantial hype of its own. I don't even want to mention Batman, I mean Ben Affleck, sticking his nose in and making himself look even more like a bad guy than before in "Batman Vs. Superman". I can't even stand writing about the son of a bitch anymore, or having to admit that there are going to be more movies made of him with His Majesty Ego Affleck in the leading role. I think, however, that director David Ayers is the one ultimately responsible for the failure of the movie, far more than the cast. And the cast did nothing wrong. I have nothing against anyone in the cast, I thought they were all perfectly picked. They are all extremely well-chosen to play their parts. But the writing is what really suffers, even the directing is fine if the pace could have been slowed down a little, to help better define all of the characters, not just Harley, the Joker, and Deadshot. Diablo got about thirty seconds to tell his story, but hey, kids, that was it. No room for unimportant characters, obviously.
In the shortest terms, "Suicide Squad" was a great idea for a movie that never should have been made without a functioning story, and things just aren't looking good for DC Comics or Warner Brothers right now, especially Jared Leto's relationship with WB. I can only hope "Wonder Woman" will do a lot better next year. But I shudder at that thought, because I'm looking forward to that one, too.