The Suicide Squad is vulgar, immature, and gratuitous—and that’s what’s great about it
James Gunn's take on DC's squad of amoral antiheroes take the Guardians Of The Galaxy filmmaker's style to new, R-rated heights
Film Reviews Suicide Squad
James Gunn could have blown up a whole island, if he felt like it. Accurate numbers for upcoming movies are difficult to come by, but with the original Suicide Squad budgeted at around $175 million, it seems safe to assume that the writer and director of its sequel had some pennies to play with when constructing his take on DC’s bankable squad of incarcerated villains-turned-reluctant-antiheroes. So what did he choose to do with that money? Did he create a breathtaking sci-fi cityscape, or pull off mind-boggling stunts that would make Tom Cruise jealous? No. He gave us John Cena in his skivvies and multiple characters whose prolonged, painful deaths are played for laughs. In many ways, the gleefully profane, anything-goes mayhem of The Suicide Squad feels like a mega-budget version of the Troma Studios productions that gave Gunn his start. And thank goodness for that.
Sure, you have your Shazam!s and your Ant-Mans, but on the whole, American superhero cinema has become preoccupied with the somber responsibility of being a demigod in a world full of helpless victims. In tone and content, The Suicide Squad is the antidote to that self-seriousness. (The simple fact that these are supervillains takes a lot of the weight off.) Opening with an orgy of bodies being torn to pieces in a wild beachfront massacre, Gunn’s film has little regard for human life, superpowered or civilian, and characters are offed with such irreverent abandon that it really feels like anything could happen. Combined with a giggly sense of humor that delights in all bodily functions (but particularly in poop and dick jokes), the giddy effect is akin to sucking on whippits while doing donuts in a grocery-store parking lot.
The volatile energy of the film’s intro carries through to the expository scenes, as boss lady Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) fetches incarcerated master assassin Bloodsport (Idris Elba) from his cell in the notorious Belle Reve prison and informs him that he has two options: join the infamous Task Force X, a.k.a. The Suicide Squad, or let his teenage daughter go to jail for shoplifting and endure a gauntlet of horrors in Belle Reve. The Waller of this film is even more amoral than the convicts she manages, and the mission she gives them is suspiciously simple. Step one: Invade a fictional South American banana republic, Corto Maltese, which recently ousted its American-backed government in a military coup. Step two: Liberate a sketchy-sounding piece of alien tech from a laboratory in the capital city under the control of evil super-scientist The Thinker (Peter Capaldi). Step three: Spread freedom or something?
By the time he’s dropped on the beach with a cache of very big guns, Bloodshot has been joined by a full crew of D-list DC miscreants. His traveling companions include Peacemaker (John Cena), a hyper-patriotic vigilante committed to protecting America’s shadier interests; Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), a thief with a special affinity for rodents she inherited from her father, played in flashbacks by Taika Waititi; The Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), a neurotic mess with mommy issues and a lifelong case of what can loosely be called color poisoning; and King Shark, a.k.a. Prince Nanaue (Sylvester Stallone), a big galoot introduced holding a book upside down and rumbling, “So smart me! Enjoy book so much!” Along the way, they’ll meet up with fellow agents Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), who were dropped off the night before on a different top-secret mission with a different team of costumed heavies.
Gunn excels in developing the dynamics of colorful, offbeat groups of characters. In this film, he has three, which almost feels like showing off. There are the Squads, of course, but also Waller’s staff back at Task Force X HQ, who observe and comment on and squabble about the action much like the control room crew in The Cabin In The Woods. The commentary is similarly meta, and very funny: In an early scene, the staff places bets on who will die first, throwing down cash in a generic office conference room like they’re at an underground dog fight. Steve Agee stands out as Waller’s second-in-command John Economos, but picking a favorite from among the supervillains is a more challenging task. King Shark, with his massive body and childlike mind, will almost assuredly be an audience favorite. And Cena once again proves himself to be a talented comedic actor as living action figure Peacemaker. But Melchior may be the film’s secret weapon, keeping the crew together when the guys’ macho dick-measuring contests get out of hand.
There’s a difference between smart-dumb and just plain dumb, and the shrewdness with which Gunn chooses his targets places him in the former category. The Suicide Squad skewers American exceptionalism and intervention abroad, satirizing people like Waller who are fine committing atrocities as long as the public doesn’t find out about them. Early on in the film, the Squad marches towards the camera in slow motion in front of a massive American flag, a shot we’ve seen many times before in movies about the U.S. kicking ass and taking names in some developing nation or another. Here, “defending freedom” is exposed for the absurd idea that it is.
It’s also hard not to interpret that shot as a bit of a flex from Gunn, who reclaims as his own the stylized aesthetics of Ayer’s Suicide Squad, a film that was reportedly recut to be more like another James Gunn movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy. He’s certainly better at needle drops, which are as prevalent here as they are in the 2016 Suicide Squad but also better chosen (fans of the AM Gold on the Guardians soundtracks will find a lot to like) and more organically woven into the fabric of the film. Although the action inevitably gets overwhelmed by CGI mayhem in the climactic set piece, Gunn’s colors are brighter, his compositions more legible, and his storytelling livelier than in Ayer’s version. This is a long film, as most contemporary superhero movies are. But it doesn’t feel like it, largely because the quip-a-minute script is full of jokes that, for the most part, actually land.
Perhaps the best metric for comparing Suicide Squads is how they treat the character of Harley Quinn. In Ayer’s film, Harley is a side character, obsessed with her boyfriend, who the camera continually ogles in short-shorts and high-heeled sneakers. In Gunn’s, she wears a red ball gown and work boots for much of the film, and is the focus its most prominent subplot, a save-the-princess scenario where the princess chokes a man to death with her thighs before bashing in the skulls of a couple dozen flunkies. Continuing the colorful whirl director Cathy Yan brought to Birds Of Prey, Gunn punctuates Harley’s big action-hero sequence with bright blooms of CGI flowers that spurt out of the wounds of the men she’s killed. The set piece makes sense as a glimpse into Harley’s demented mindset, but it’s also so bone-crunchingly, mind-numbingly violent that it raises the question of whether this is a workaround to avoid an NC-17 rating a lá the black-and-white sequences in Kill Bill, Vol. 1.
That this thought could even arise while watching the latest big-budget DCEU blockbuster underlines how much of a reset The Suicide Squad is for the genre. Now that superhero movies have gone from disreputable entertainment for children to global events ushered in with awed reverence, it was time for someone to come along and pop the balloon. Pulpy and outrageous, irreverent and ultraviolent, The Suicide Squad does so with a smile.
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Ah, Joel Kinnaman. I was staring at that header image, trying to remember where I know that generic man from… maybe I need to see him in a Swedish-language production because he has not wowed me in his English-language roles.Depending on how I feel after seeing this, I might tentatively move him off my list of Dull Leading Men Who Must Be Stopped.
He’s among the Sam Worthingtons and Jai Courtneys of the world to me, ie. the Boring Lead Men Who Must Be Stopped, although ironically it was the last Suicide Squad that actually almost took Courtney off that list for me, with his goofy scenery chewing Captain Boomerang. While Kinneman sucked in the first Squad, maybe this one is his breakout?
Australia truly has to answer for its bland crimes against the entertainment industry. Worthington, Courtney (who I gave a pass to due to Spartacus), Joel Edgerton and Jason Clarke… I hate it!Maybe it’s a monkey’s paw situation where we have to accept them in exchange for every Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Thandie Newton, Mia Wasikowska, Elizabeth Debicki, etc. Also, obligatory:
Courtney is so damn good in Spartacus, and he’s also easily the best part of the Ayers Suicide Squad. He has a lot of junk on his resume but the talent is there.
It honestly took me forever to realize that it actually WAS Jai Courtney in Spartacus, because he’s actually acting and doing things.I think it was Terminator: Genisys that really soured me on him. He was the epitome of wooden and bland.
Wasn’t that Sam Worthington in Genisys? (Or is that the joke?)Oh damn, no, Worthington was in the other awful Terminator movie, Salvation. My bad. But I think we’re proving the point here.
He’s so charming and charismatic in Spartacus; it’s wild how boring he is in almost everything else.
Because everyone was charming and charismatic in Spartacus. The show had a great ensemble cast, decent direction and actors appeared to be enjoying a chance to ham it up a bit.
I feel like Jai Courtney can either act or he can do an American accent.
Jai Courtney was surprisingly not bad in the also surprisingly not bad Jack Reacher movie.
As an Australian, I do apologise for Courtney – who’s a plank – and Worthington, who was momentarily interesting in Cate Shortland’s Somersault, and then wasn’t ever again. In our defence, however, I would cite Daniel Henshall, Damon Herriman, Ben Mendelsohn, Scott Ryan and Joel Edgerton . . . all of whom are excellent. (And Ryan and Edgerton are also extremely talented writers.)
While Mendelsohn is starting to make a name for himself in Hollywood, I feel bad that most Americans probably haven’t seen him go, as we say here, “full Mendo” like he did in some of his earlier films.
American here—I feel like I see Mendelsohn all the time. But “moral complexity” is like, my #1 favorite thing in all kinds of art, and he plays a lot of unlikable, creepy guys in weird indies, so I may just be statistically predisposed to see a lot of Mendelsohn.But God, I loved him in Bloodline. Definitely the first time I noticed him, whether or not it’s the first time I saw him; probably a lot of Americans in the same boat.Does he ever get to play confident, well-adjusted characters in Australian media? Or is pretty much more of the same?
As in Killing Me Softly Mendelsohn? That’s the most extreme I’ve seen him, considering I’ve only otherwise seen him in Marvel and RP1.
I imagine Damon Herriman is most familiar to Americans (certainly to me) from Justified where he was fantastic, but I only just learned recently he’s in that FX show Mr. Inbetween that seems to be one of those that’s just, you know, there and was never promoted by the network and is really under the radar— which shows often seem to become cult faves. So every so often I wonder if that show was / is worth checking out, and then I forget it existed for a while.
Mr Inbetween is the first Australian TV show since Love My Way (and maybe the first season of Underbelly) not to fill me with shame and despair. Our TV industry is an embarrassment. Anyone who hasn’t seen it should check it out. (And while on the subject of terrific Australian actors, should note Nicholas Cassim’s incredible work as the protagonist’s brother.)Herriman’s best TV work, to me, is his single appearance on Mindhunter as Charles Manson. Which is Heath Ledger-as-Joker level – just constantly astonishing and surprising and fully “inhabited” – no small feat, considering Manson already lives in our collective unconscious. It blows me away every time I look at it.
Love Mr Inbetween. It is the only FX show I watch religiously.
…Margot Robbie, Eric Bana, and, of course…Plus David Wenham, Richard Roxburgh, Geoffrey Rush, Miranda Otto, Kylie Minog- actually, forget that one.Granted, they’re mostly older actors. And my guess is it’s because the younger generation are embarrassed to act Australian, which is why most of them just piss off the America or London as soon as they turn 17.
What? Minogue was the best thing in Neighbours.;)( after the guy who played Joe Mangle, unless he went on to do something bad )
Thandiwe
We used to be able to tout Heath Ledger and Geoffrey Rush too, but one died and the other one was revealed to be a sexual harasser.
Full Mendo’s a fucking breathtaking thing. And Rush is a c***.
Agreed on Rush 100%.Americans might have seen ‘Animal Kingdom’, since it made a bit of a splash and inspired a US TV series. That definitely has some of Mendo’s most full on and frightening work.
the other one was revealed to be a sexual harasser.Rush is finished, by his own admission. But, it should be pointed out, that after being accused, he won a record defamation case against a Murdoch-backed paper. His accuser had just told some people that he’d done some stuff she thought was pretty off while she was co-starring with him in a theatre production, and the Daily Telegraph couldn’t resist the headline “KING LEER”. (Accuser’s name omitted because she was essentially forced to come out by the media.)He was accused again the next year by Yael Stone, for much the same kind of thing. Her quote from the NYT story though is pretty amazing:
“Not all #MeToo stories are the same. Each dynamic is different. For some, a criminal process is essential,” she said. “In my case, I’m not interested in punishment. I am looking to change my industry and to work toward healing and growth.” This is a smart way of dealing with the bullshit uselessness of the legal system when it comes to sexual harassment that falls short of rape. Though in Australia, the social tolerance for actors who assault women is actually pretty low – few actors survive any accusation of sexual harassment, let alone assault. (We save all our injustice for the victims of priests, politicians, and footballers.)Meanwhile, Geoffrey Rush is a fucking idiot who should have understood that as an older established actor, he needed to be a paragon of impeccable behaviour when working with women, especially his much younger co-stars. BECAUSE he had the privilege of working in an industry that lets 50+ year-old men suck 25 year-old women’s faces and have them appear naked before him, live in public, for money.
Theatre, man. Someone should look into that shit. Lot of plays where old men get to caper naked in front of young women, or watch young women get naked, or simulate sex with young women etc etc…
Rush is ? Ah shit.
To be fair to us, there’s a multitude of Australian actors who slip under the radar who are very good and I didn’t even realise were Australian until I discover it years later on interviews and the like.
This is exactly what happens to me:INTERVIEWER: “We’re here with Tom Smith, who plays Billy-Bob Earl-Ray Leroy Scruggins Jr, the son of a corrupt Kentucky sheriff in Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film set amongst the Appalachian meth trade. Hi, Tom – or should I say ‘G’day mate’?”TOM SMITH (Sydney accent): “Haha, yeah.”ME: “What the fuck?”It’s because most of them fuck right off to LA as soon as they leave high school. It’s kinda funny; I went to uni with one or two who came back because they didn’t make it…
Thandiwe Newton’s a Pom. Not Aussie. Not even as Aussie as Worthington. But we get it. You’re hetero.
I like this Zoe Saldana interview. Her English accent’s on point!Seriously now, she was credited as Thandie so long because someone doing the credits on a film she made in Australia couldn’t spell, right?
Pretty much. Her first name’s Melanie.
I always think of her as Australian because of her early friendship with Nicole Kidman. I even edited that post to add her in, smh. Another weird one for me is Kylie Minogue, who I absolutely do not think of as Australian, but we can chalk that up to her decidedly Europop leanings.I’m a lesbian, but go off.
But we get it. You’re hetero.I agree this is really weird. Meanwhile on not thinking of Kylie as Australian because of her UK pop career… totally get it. However as an Australian born in the 1970s, I can only ever approach Kyle Minogue and fellow (but much less successful) UK pop singer Jason Donovan like this:(Start at 6:52 and see how far you can get…)
Holy shit.
Kylie (or at least her producers) will always get a nod of respect from me, because when they did the clip for “Can’t Get You Outta My Head” they decided that of course she needed to arrive in the de rigueur hot supercar… but the car they chose is a DeTomaso… and not a DeTomaso Pantera, but a DeTomaso Mangusta.
I lasted 15 seconds.
As a very general rule, the “good” leading-man Australians are actually from New Zealand or were born in the US, grew up in Oz, and then moved back to the US. They also go mad after the age of about, I dunno let’s say 45-50.Australia is better at producing supporting male actors.
I have a controversial hot take about Australia not needing to exist because New Zealand is superior in every way (especially the accent), but the world isn’t ready for my thoughts on Kiwi supremacy.
Jai Courtney is not exactly a leading man, he’s fourth-billed in almost everything
Kinnaman definitely seemed like a member of the Jai Courtney class of completely forgettable white guy action stars with the Robocop reboot, but he completely won me over with his Altered Carbon performance, and he’s pretty good in For All Mankind (not overwhelmingly good, but he has actual charisma and presence). Jai Courtney and Sam Worthington have starred in huge movies that I’ve definitely seen, yet when IMDB tells me they’re in those movies I think IMDB must be mistaken, because I remember those movies and yet have no recollection of any of their lines or any of their scenes, they have the permanence in my memory of an etch-a-sketch drawing.
I actively hated his character in the first SS movie. But I’ve seen him do well in other roles, particularly in Hanna on Amazon. I’ll give him a shot.
Which characters in Suicide Squad weren’t actively hateable for one reason or another
I only knew Amanda Waller from the animated Batman shows – a hardass, but not evil – and then this movie version straight-up murders a room full of junior FBI agents in cold blood. That mostly made me hate the writers.
I think Buzzfeed had an article a couple years back titled “A Decade of trying to make Armie Hammer Happen” I guess that’s out.
Womp Womp. Given Hammer’s family’s influence, it’s surprising that it actually took as long as it did for him to actually start to be more of an actual “star”, and then just like that, you start talking about how you want to eat people and suddenly everyone’s against you.
Hammer was never leading man material. He always came off as a little d-baggy. He was fantastic as a supporting actor or villain. (See Man From UNCLE, Sorry to Bother You, and his stint on Reaper)
Still not as good as The Onion’s “Dolph Lundgren Wins Lifelong Battle With Fame”.
Wait, isn’t Jai Courtney in this one as well? Does he just get killed off fast? No mention of him in the review.
The review is similar to the trailer, they show a lot of a few characters and I’m afraid they spoiled all the deaths way too quickly.
SpoilersYes.
He’s really good in THE KILLING and ALTERED CARBON, imo.
He’s really good in The Killing, the tv version of Hanna, For All Mankind and other work. Given a good script and director he can be excelllent. But he’s a team player, who will work within a director’s vision even if the vision is muddled, boring or outright bad. Some actors can always elevate the material — Viola Davis is a good example. But even great actors — DeNiro comes to mind — can be mediocre to awful in the wrong hands. Not suggesting Kinnaman is in the echelon of either actor, but he’s better than Robocop or the first Suicide Squad would lead one to think.
Jai gets a pass because of Spartacus.Honestly I genuinely liked Captain Boomerang in that shitty movie. He’s just a cowardly self serving twat who was so down the totem pole that even Mr “can climb anything” got more respect.
He was good in The Killing, though the first two seasons were bad. The third season was amazing, but gut wrenching.
Wow! I thought that I was the only one baffled by the careers of most of these guys. I actually like Kinnaman in “Altered Carbon,” and the TV version of “Hanna.” But the ongoing blockbuster presence of Worthington in particular confounds me.
‘_’
Let me just….
JAI COURTNEY GETS ALL THE WHITE BOY HOLLYWOOD OPPORTUNITIES HE WANTS BECAUSE HE WAS VARRO IN S1 OF SPARTACUS.
Now that that’s outta the way….I mean, yeah. Not….he was pretty good in Jack Reacher, or possibly Jack Reacher Never Back Down.
And when Harley yells “Boomer!” and he gives her a smile….yeah.
Jai gets the pass.
He died real hard as Varro and he hurt really real and I’ll defend Jai’s right to come back from the dead all the times he manages it.
This also applies to R….Ron Stevenson. Who I think is Titus Pollo in Rome but also might be the guy from Office Space who also should have gotten more opportunities.
He’s a totally passable straight man in this movie (and is generally more charismatic/funny in that role than either Courtney or Worthington proved to be). I agree that Jai Courtney is best when he’s playing slightly deranged.
I would argue that, in the SS movies he’s more of a supporting actor than lead, although, yeah, he’s pretty bland. He’s an awesome foil in The Killing though. He’s a character actor that wants to be a leading man, with less than stellar results (Robocop, Altered Carbon, etc.).
The Kinnaman in this film feels like a Kinnaman that’s watched Kinnaman from Suicide Squad (2016) and decided he wanted to be the better Kinnaman. At one point it it even feels like you’re staring and listening at a Grown up buff and conflicted Morty, voice crack and all.While Kinnaman isn’t a masterclass actor, he does excels in rolls like this when he gets to play around with more than just being an intimidating buff dude. In For All Mankind, he’s pretty great as wel. Specially in this timestamped scene.. Love it
I was trying to convince myself that that must be John Cena with a bad haircut and CGI’d to have a more normal body.
He’s been really great in AppleTV’s “For All Mankind”
It’s a role tailor made for him, basically. He looks and acts the part of a square-jawed, silent man-of-a-certain-era, and by god he plays the hell out of that role.
seconding this; it almost (but not quite) even convinced me to watch the other Suicide Squad movie.
A show I will never watch. House of Cards was the closest to a good performance of his I’ve seen.
He was really good in Altered Carbon, the first season is great.
I didn’t see that show, but I did see The Killing. Kinneman was a standout in that otherwise not great show.
He basically played a man inhabiting another man’s body in a Cyberpunk noir setting, pretty perfect casting imho.
He was good. I was a little disappointed at first that they de-aged the character a bit from the novel, but I got over it.
You mean a dude playing a dude playing another dude?
The weird incest thing they made his sister do, however…I swear they got the metrics for that series off Pornhub.
Yeah, he was a lot of fun in (Fuck You,) The Killing, very necessary to counter Det. Dour Sweater.
Det. Dour Sweater.hahaha
(Fuck You,) The Killing,
Deep cut.
Yeah, he was the best part of The Killing, by a long shot, IMO.
I watched that because my neighbor had a reoccurring role in it. Won’t say who specifically, but the character died and will not come back. Worth the watch.
I wanted to feel that way when I watched it. It’s not baaaaaad but… the first season of that show does everything in its power to seem interesting but it’s just… it’s okay. I lump it in with Westworld Season 2. Good for a rainy day.
Ditto this – I was skeptical on his casting, but by the end of the series he WAS Takeshi Kovacs.
The first one also had Jai Courtney… they just needed Sam Worthington for the “generic white guy” trifecta. Raising the possibility of a charisma vacuum so powerful it could endanger the whole world…
He did pretty well in a small turn on Netflix’s House of Cards, and he was VERY good in Altered Carbon.Also I give most actors a pass for Suicide Squad because that script was fucking horrid. Truly horrid.
No. It was full of good character moments with an awful plot. The one thing Ayer was good at was character relationships but he’s not a juggler like Gunn. Will Smith, Viola Davis, Margot Robbie, Jai Courtenay, Jay Hernandez, and Jared Leto all give good performances in place of a terrible lazy plot that makes no sense. Joel not getting anything out of that shows he’s not an actor that brings anything to the table.
When has Kinneman been a leading man on the Silver Screen?
I just finished “For All Mankind” and I thought he was very good in that.
He’s pretty good in For All Mankind.
I’m starting to mix up Joel Kinnaman and Boyd Holbrook constantly. They’re my new Paxton/Pullman, apparently.
I know I’m the only person who liked Rebootocop, but I thought JK was quite good in it.
I actually kinda like it as well. I still like the original best, but it was pretty good. Much better than the Total Recall remake at least.
I have to rewatch that reboot and see if I like it more or less now that I’ve finally seen the original. For a movie in a similar vein, have you seen Leigh Whanell’s Upgrade, which stars Logan Marshall-Green, aka Poor Man’s Tom Hardy?
Not yet, but it’s on my list. (Another aka for Logan Marshall-Green is “that guy whose name I can never remember”)
I have said many times that if that was a generic scifi movie called “Cop who became a robotman”, it would have done fine. It was pretty good but its sin was calling itself Robocop
That part never really bothered me, mostly because I didn’t see a clear alternative. “The Robocop” would be worse.In any case, I’m not too upset that it didn’t make a big splash. I’m far more annoyed that Dredd doesn’t have at least two sequels already.
I think there was talk of a Dredd show shortly after the movie but it kinda died out relatively quickly. Karl Urban was all for continuing to play the character but despite how good the film was, it didn’t do that good in theaters. It was the same situation with Pacific Rim, though that got a sequel once Chinese investors started hitting up Hollywood for big-budget sequels that replaced the protagonists (by killing them off) and only really kept some members of the supporting cast (Same formula was applied to Independence Day 2).
I didn’t *hate* it, but it does slot into my ‘Hollywood has a real creative problem/stop it with the constant fucking re[make/imagining]s’ argument well…To be honest, I think Verhoeven got away with murder (all puns intended) with the way he used the original to lampoon the ‘present’ and what was the future at the time (which is now that ‘present’ LOL) but in a deflective way that you really had to think about. The remake wasn’t going to get anywhere near that kind of subtlety, and it didn’t…the ED209s being used as quasimilitary hardware on patrols, Keaton’s OCP CEO could be an amalgam of the Bezos/Musk/Branson trinity currently, but 7 years ago, yet in the same ‘turn off your higher brain and just enjoy it’ way you can take in the original, that’s how I came at the remake…I liked the framing device of Samuel L. Jackson’s Foxesque commentator as a quasi-substitute for the ‘news breaks’ in the originals, a cunning way to have him to draw in fans but ultimately isn’t *really* in the movie proper. Kinnaman at least didn’t even try to make his Murphy/Robocop like Weller’s at all (especially with him having even less of his actual body left over versus how Weller’s at least still had one of his own arms), but the charisma gap needed to carry the performance, between them, is like the Pacific. At the time I saw the original, I can say I never thought it would have a sequel, even if it ended with the probability of one, but it did, two more times [shrugs appreciatively], but the remake is best left as an odd curio, but thankfully it will never get a sequel [crosses agnostic self like I’m the fucking Pope LOL]
I know I’m the only person who liked Rebootocop, but I thought JK was quite good in it. I can never look at that film the same way after I watched “Our Robocop Remake” on YouTube, where towards the end, the black shiny JK Robocop is spotted going through the bins in a parking garage and the lead characters yell at him:“Hey you! Get out! Get the fuck out of here!”
“What is it? Is it a bat man? Are you a bat man? … Are you an ex man?”
“Sssst! Sssst! Get!” etc.
(Can’t link because “age restricted” but search YouTube for “Our Robocop Remake” and hit up the 1h:42m mark.)
The only time I’ve really enjoyed Joel Kinnaman was on The Killing. His lead detective character there was excellent… a sort of shambling innocent, a la Jesse Pinkman. Nothing beefy about him in that role—and really funny, too.
He’s literally the reason my wife stopped watching For All Mankind. “The show with the mopey, mumbly, mealy man? I hate him.”
He was good in The Killing on AMC. I’ve only ever seen him in that and in his brief stint on House of Cards. He was good there too.
Performance-wise, House of Cards is what stands out for me as well—even though I liked him well enough in all three shows (The Killing, Altered Carbon, House of Cards) despite having mixed feelings about all three. So maybe the OP is onto something and he’s better in supporting roles despite the conventional lead man good looks.
Kinnaman looks like Nathan Fillion’s bullying but secretly impotent brother.
This was pretty much exactly the plot of a “Tacoma FD” episode, btw. Great show starring a couple guys from Super Troopers, and is on HBO Max.
The fact this movie is still good with wet noodle Joel Kinnaman is a stunning achievement. I didn’t think it was possible to get someone with less charm and personality than Cavill’s Superman but Kinnaman proved that wrong. Sheesh.
Kinnaman was fun in The Killing, and at least has a distinct look from the Horde of Bland Buff Aussies (HoBBA?) like Worthington, Courtney, and the lesser Hemsworths. Sadly, he’s never found a big screen role that was anything but generic, but I can see Gunn getting a good performance out of him.
I dunno. I like him in “The Killing”, “Hanna: The Series” and “Altered Carbon” okay.
You think, in a movie with Will Smith, he was the leading man? Watch him in AMC’s The Killing. I liked him in that. And let’s be honest, the first Suicide Squad had a lot wrong with it, and even Anthony Mackie couldn’t save Altered Carbon. And he is a robot in Robocop, also, not considered a good film, for various other reasons. I’m assuming, those are your frame of references for him.
After three trailers and multiple promo posters I’m still not 100% clear on which one is Kinneman and which on is Nathan Fillion
Echoing the others that he’s been great on “For All Mankind”. From what we’ve seen on the trailers so far, he’s also good in this movie.
I think he was Robocop in that failed Robocop reboot?
Joel Kinnaman is a lot better when he’s allowed to play non-boring ass bland hero guys. He was awesome in “The Killing”.
If you didnt move him off that list after Season 1 of Altered Carbon, I have nothing to say to you.
Having seen the film… he’s off the list. He manages to make Rick Flagg this team dad/ camp councilor vibe, sure he’s Waller’s eyes and ears but he comes across as this really genuine person who wants to do the right thing. Plus he serves as the straight man to the carnage going on around him.In short, I was amazed how much I liked him in this movie and really hope that we’ll soon see more of this Rick Flagg in Peacemaker!
Geez, I had no idea he was Swedish. I’ve only seen him in For All Mankind and Altered Carbon.
He was pretty decent in Altered Carbon, though.
For me personally, he made the first season of Altered Carbon more watchable. I haven’t seen him in anything else though.
You are 100% on point here, but I surprisingly found his character to be, well, an actual character in this movie. He had at least somewhat of a recognizable personality, his character had clear motivations, and he was fairly charming.
Based on his work on The Killing and Altered Carbon id definitely say he doesn’t deserve to be on there
I am swedish and have – along with all us Swedes – watched him being generic and lousy in swedish productions, to being generic and overacting in US productions. THank you for mentioning this.
He isn’t the leading man, Idris Elba is.
He was excellent in “The Killing”, which had 3 seasons on AMC before being cancelled, then picked up by Netflix for a 4th and final season.
People here are selling Kinnaman short on his role in For All Mankind. The show basically started from his character’s POV and despite branching out he’s still the focal point of the show. Could you see the show being build around Michael Dorman’s Sad Man In A Suit character, or around Margo’s annoying ass? Well, I guess without his character they wouldn’t have killed Deke and he would’ve been the lead.
Ooooh, edgy list. That’ll give you and Nixon something to talk about in hell.
I’ve never seen anything with Kinnaman in it, so whenever I see footage from this movie I spend a second wondering whether Kevin Sorbo got his jaw widened. The yellow shirt there doesn’t help.
I liked him in The Killing.
Yea, Joe Kinnaman in a good movie!
When did Hollywood decide that adding or subtracting a “The” was sufficient to distinguish between movies, even if they came out only a few years apart and feature overlap in casts? Anyway, I hope you all buy the debut album from my band, Beatles.
Hahahahahah. Thanks for the laugh.
I’m really looking forward to your next album “The Hard Day’s Night.”
followed by “The Help!”
“The Revolver” is a classic
I’m very confused why any of these actors decided to join up, knowing they’re remaking a movie that’s all of 2 years old.I’m very confused about Margot Robbie who is reprising the same role in the same movie? WTF?
It’s not a remake: it’s a sequel.
A reboo-quel.
It’s not mindless meandering bitching, it’s just a sober answer to the question.
Enjoy your upvote/star and your utter obscurity in the Kinja ecosystem 😛 <3
Remake? Thought this was a sequel…
It’s not a remake, it’s a sequel. It is confusing that the name is so similar, Suicide Squad and “The” Suicide Squad, but it isn’t a remake.
It definitely seems to be the rare case of a studio realizing, “wow, we fucked that up bad, let’s do that one again” though of course without actually coming out and saying it.
It’s a sequel not a remake
If someone paid me millions of dollars to do a job and then offered to pay me millions of dollars to do it again *and* people would like the end product better *and* I’d get to work with a better boss, I’d probably do it.
That’s inexplicable, bud.I mean the “probably” part.
Psssht–sell out.
$$$ If $$$ only $$$ there $$$ were $$$ an $$$ easy $$$ explanation $$$.
“Remake” is just marketing. It’s just a sequel that doesn’t want to acknowledge the original’s existence in the internal logic of the film. Actors sign on to sequels all the damn time, no matter how similar the movies are (aka Fast and the Furious).
It’s pretty confusing, whenever I mention Im excited to see this people are like “isnt that film bad tho?” I’m genuinely curious to see what effect thatll have on the box office.
Okay replying to myself – It is a sequel! I thought I read the whole review but I missed that part. Still confused about why they made a sequel but didn’t include the Joker who was such a bad but important part of the original. It makes more sense now but really, a tag line like Electric Boogaloo would have helped this marketing 1000%.
2Suicide2Squad would also be acceptable.
“…but didn’t include the Joker…”
Because he was trash in it. The joker sucks lol.
Harley’s relationship to the Joker ended in Birds of Prey. This movie isn’t plot connected to either Suicide Squad or Birds of Prey, but the Harley here is demonstrably the same character who was in those two earlier movies (her relationship with Flag and Boomerang, and the breaking off her toxic relationship to The Joker are both present), and her arc as a character here is informed by her arcs in those other two movies.
He truly wasn’t important, though? He might have been important for marketing, but story-wise he absolutely wasn’t. You can cut him out entirely and it doesn’t change a thing, except removing some context for Harley Quinn and a very contrived fake out of her death.As for official reasons, Gunn said he didn’t want the Joker in because he doesn’t really have anything he could bring to the table skill-wise nor would be a reliable squadmember. As for unofficial ones, I imagine they don’t want to be working with famous cunt Jared Leto and his take on the character was generally reviled, even beyond the fact that the final cut of the film did it no favors.
Well, one was softcore DC porn, and this one is an amazing movie.
I’m very confused about your selective internet access that prevents you from reading what I’m guess now is information explained in the *first fucking paragraph* of the wikipedia entry for this film.
Let’s find out!
Don’t worry, I’ll use my version of internet because your version of internet doesn’t have search capabilities or something.
“He (Gunn) drew inspiration from war films and John Ostrander’s 1980s Suicide Squad comics, and decided to explore new characters in a story separate from the first film’s narrative, though some cast members do return from Suicide Squad. Filming began in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 2019, and concluded in Panama in February 2020.”
It was the second paragraph.
The question is….would you have *ever* done the work necessary to call me out if I claimed it was from the first paragraph?
Let me use a convenient social loophole of this moment:
“Work, bitch.”
~Britney Spears, Hero
Because they back up a truck full of money every time they want her to play Harley.
Maybe she like being cast in a movie where it wasn’t all about the short shorts or her wandering around topless?
Who.
… on first.
A The.
was hoping for “The The The”
I used to work on a videogames magazine (back when those were a thing) and readers would email us about their favourite games and one game was misspelled so consistently, that to this day I still think of it as “The If”.
2013 at at the latest.
That’s just German for “Die Suicide Squad”.
no one who speaks german can be an evil man…
No one who speaks german can be an evil man…
That doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about German to dispute it.
So would Matt Johnson’s new band be called “The” or “The The The?”
They could play with the Commitment’s band And&And
Because in this case everyone wants to forget the other movie? It’s a way to hide the crapfest using Google search optimization?
I’ve told a couple people Im planning to see this film and the genuine confusion behind whether this is a new film or the same film being re-released is hilarious.
Let me introduce you to my favorite movies:
Alien and Aliens
2008’s “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” is the first I recall. 1986’s “Aliens” might be patient zero of the original strain.
“Aliens” is a perfect sequel title though – it tells you that there’s higher stakes than in the first movie. But “The Alien” would have been a horrible title for a sequel (even if the sequel only had one alien).
2018’s The Predator hangs its head in shame
James Gunn submitted it as a joke and WB actually liked it.
I’m looking forward more to the next album by Lonius Monk.
Might have been with the sequel to “The Terminator”.
when they are hoping you kind of forget about the first film
1. They decided that was viable when everything connected to everything and someone’s refrigerator is capable of telling you which Suicide Squad film you’re watching based on whatever audio/visual sample it’s capable of digesting.
2. What a *weird-ass old person complaint.*
3. I’m already a weird-ass old person and I’m telling you this complaint is the deepest of cuts of….
4. The fuck do you want The Suicide Squad movie to be called?
5. If there’s an attractive model doing Christian snake charmer moves, you’re watching the shitty one. I remember that it came out in 2016 and I don’t remember if it’s the The one or the not The one and look at me proving my point.
6. This movie is pretty great and maybe you coulda just gone and watched the good movie instead of deciding that anyone interested in the review of the final film would like to hear that you think The is insufficient nomenclature and you would prefer fuckin’ “The Suicide Squad Reboot: The Ripped Starfish.”
7. There. You fuckin’ happy you old coot? Get off the lawn I definitely can’t afford.
Blame Wolverine.
The Wolverine?
my new band? The Pixies
2009 – Fast & Furious.
I really really love the song The Yellow Submarine!
Your point seems misguided, in this case. The title is part of the joke. It’s a sequel… that isn’t really a sequel… that also isn’t a remake…
VULGAR, IMMATURE, GRATUITOUS..
——- Av Club
exposed for the absurd idea that it isThe A.V. Club
It’s cute how you think the MCU balloon just got popped.
Oh plenty of people will be saying that.
I’m in.
James Gunn is the cure to superhero fatigue.
Ryan George references are tight
“weed is tight!”
Yeah yeah yeah.
. . . and super easy, barely an inconvenience!
I don’t know why it took me this long to realize that “Dastmalchian” is close enough to “Dalmatian” to qualify as a cheap pun on Polka-Dot Man. I like it.
Obviously, you haven’t been spending enough time thinking about Polka-Dot Man.
Have any of us really been spending enough time thinking about Polka-Dot Man?
Polka-Dot Man deserves the world.
I thought that at first but that’s the actor’s actual last name, so it’s just kismet that he’s got a DC Comics style pun for a name. The character’s boring human name is Abner Krill, which doesn’t seem to be a pun at all.
I know nothing about the character, but Krill is a shrimp that is puny even by shrimp standards. Does that play?
It’s no ‘Roy G. Bivelo’…
So where is everyone’s favorite member of Suicide Squad: comic book writer Grant Morrison?They died almost immediately of writer’s block…
The funny thing is, I had no idea that was supposed to be a parody of Grant Morrison when I read that at the time, and I’d also been reading Morrison’s Animal Man. What can I say? I was pretty dumb at fourteen.
Bah, Stan and Jack were being threatened by Doctor Doom decades before this. Get a real supervillain to take you down! 😉
and your Ant-Mans*Ants-Man
Since Ant-Man is a title, isn’t it Ant-Mans regardless of how normal rules would apply?
Ants-Men?
Oh my goodness. Everyone knows it’s Ants-Mans.
If you’re following Attorney General Rules, I believe it’s Mans-Ant
This is embarrassing because you were so confident about it, but I’m quite sure it’s Ant-Mens.
It’s Ent-Men.
Mants
*Anttorneys-General
As in “Peter Parker and Miles Morales, the Spiders Man.”
Ant-Menopodes.
Ant-menopause
DC’s take on Spiders Man?
Thants.
Thanos
Thants.
Ants, man.
Antipodes.
King Shark, a.k.a. Prince Nanaue (Sylvester Stallone), a big galoot introduced holding a book upside down and rumbling, “So smart me! Enjoy book so much!” You forgot to mention his theme song…
My favorite King Shark is Ron Funches depiction in the Harley Quinn show. He manages to wrap up the beastly, the idiotic, and the funny sides of the character into one charming package.
Ron Funches is the definitive King Shark for me.
His line reading on “Oh, a _human_ vagina!” just kills me every single time.
Harley Quinn is some of the best DC on screen out there and King Shark is a lot of that
I love that show.
TBF Ron Funches is the best in everything, a delightful little chap, needs more roles.
As a fan of King Shark since his Superboy days, I didn’t expect to love the King Shark in Harley Quinn. Ron Funches? A computer hacker? Impossible!And then I fell in love all over again.
“Cause I do NOT do well around blood.”
That show is such genius.
I read this theme song and heard Baby Shark. FML
It’s the map song from Dora the Explorer, Gail said.
A perennial favorite! Thanks, Laserface.
It’s funny because it’s absolutely nothing like what a shark is like.An anthropomorphic shark should be a guy who moves with incredible grace, somehow keeping up with even the fastest of the other heroes without seeming to make any effort, totally silent and almost trance-like, and then occasionally erupts into a burst of incredibly savage and efficient violence that has everyone screaming, before dropping back into his trance-like state without any comment.He could also cause consternation among other heroes because they’d say “Sharkie, take out that guy on the tower” and he’d look at the tower for three seconds and just shake his head because he’d assessed it as having poor energy-expenditure-vs-chance-of-success. Not sure how you’d communicate that to the audience, but still…
That’s *Bloodsport, I think, unless DC has acquired Valiant.
Or Frank Dux.
Kumite! Kumite!
Had to google that one. Nice pull.
The article mentions both bloodshot and bloodsport, which had me wondering about deadshot. (I do not remember anything about what happened to Will Smith’s character in the first movie)
He was initially recast (Idris Elba), but then they changed Deadshot to Bloodsport to leave an opportunity for Smith to come back.
Hmm, I counted two “Bloodshot”s at the time I posted the comment. Maybe they edited to correct it without realizing the mistake repeated? An understandable mix-up, at any rate.
It can’t be worse that what’s happened to them in the last few years.
Der Bloodsport.
Now that superhero movies have gone from disreputable entertainment for
children to global events ushered in with awed reverence, it was time
for someone to come along and pop the balloon.
Didn’t Deadpool (and to a lesser extent the GotG movies) already do that?
And to a lessor, lessor extent, Kick-Ass
“Superhero movie, but silly” isn’t exactly breaking fresh ground
Don’t forget The Specials!
DC, but actually funny kind of is.
If you count the streaming version of Justice League, this is the third R rated superhero movie that DC has released in the past year. I don’t know when the novelty is supposed to wear off.
I’d agree with OP it has been done. Fox had 3 R rated superhero films that are years old now. 2 Deadpools and Logan. I still love the superhero stuff, but we’ve already had a full rotation of deconstructing the genre and all.
It’s not even deconstructing the genre, it’s just reiterating the genre’s tropes with cursing and gore. The core fantasy of a superhero movie is a morally righteous person using violence to solve an existential problem – it’s very much a product of the World War 2 / postwar era. “Logan” comes the closest to actually deconstructing the genre by suggesting that violence is both necessary and morally degrading, but it runs into the obvious problem that Wolverine is unambiguously awesome.
Super is probably a more devastating takedown. But I guess the characters don’t have actual superpowers so maybe it doesn’t count?
Logan is also where Fox blatantly showed that their X-men franchise ends in tragedy.
I mean, Dark Phoenix kinda doubled down on that and New Mutants tried to be a horror movie but only succeeded in being a subpar waste of good actors who were probably in the same timeline Logan took place in…maybe.
And yet none have had a significant impact on the rest of their DCEU.
2 films ago
I dont know the novelty of generic mediocrity peddled by the mcu does not seem to have worn off yet
Yeah, I was thinking that from the descriptions, this was just trying to outdo Deadpool.
Going by Rife’s review, there is some commentary being made here. More than I can say for Deadpool or GotG
Hey you stole my thoughts exactly!
Yeah, tonally, I feel like we’ve run the gamut from grimdark to traditional action-adventure to family comedy to meta-snarkfest. You don’t have to like all of them, or any of them, but it’s nuts to pretend that Batman vs. Superman, Black Panther, Shazam, and Deadpool were all pitched, executed, and received in the same way.
*ahem*A little thing called Mystery Men?Now that’s a movie that would have benefited from James Gunn’s involvement.
Hell, Blade did it before anyone.
“Gunn punctuates Harley’s big action-hero sequence with bright blooms of CGI flowers that spurt out of the wounds of the men she’s killed. The set piece makes sense as a glimpse into Harley’s demented mindset, but it’s also so bone-crunchingly, mind-numbingly violent that it raises the question of whether this is a workaround to avoid an NC-17 rating”So not exactly Troma, then. Can’t have any real (fake) blood that would bother the censors too much! I dunno, it would not take much to be better than Ayers’ turd but this still looks dopey and Deadpool was vulgar, immature and gratuitous five years ago anyway (and the nasty Assault on Arkham a few years before that). Comics (movies) — not just for kids anymore!
You…sound…uh…Fun?
Vulgar, immature, and gratuitous; I don’t want one without the others.
A reminder that movie ratings are not censorship, and ratings generally exist to pre-empt the public’s inevitable bombardment of both the government and the creators of the art, with shrieking morally-superior complaints and ironic threats of death and violence.
You know fuck-all squat about how ratings are given and earned if you think that censorship isn’t involved. And people still complain about “gay”Teletubbies and shit. That’s a poor argument.
There’s more than enough blood and gore everywhere else in the movie. I think the flowers are an actual stylistic choice and not a workaround.
Having seen the movie: your rant is hilariously wrong, at least the part about bothering censors. The movie is very very very gory. Not sure why the reviewer thought that particular Harley scene made much difference in that regard; I think probably the reason to do the scene that way was just that it was cool.
Assault on Arkham was the Suicide Squad movie we should’ve gotten years ago. One of the best of the Animated DC Universe.
Dude. There are gallons of blood in this. Viscera. Severed heads. Rended flesh. Blown off faces. This is some Grand Guignol shit up in heah. Harley’s happy murder spree is just one part. You got all diatribe -y for no reason.
How is this Grand Guignol? Most of the violence is gun shots or similar conventional wounds. There is nothing shocking in its violence. It’s good, I liked the movie, but Grand Guignol is disingenuous. This is elevated Deadpool, not grisly horror theatre.
They are definitely not shy about showing “meat”. It’s a very gory movie. The scene in question however is one of the highlights of the movie – visually and thematically it works.
Bloodshot or Bloodsport?Idris Elba is not a African-Italian muscle head pulling of 5-dimensional car heists from aliens and gods with a customized Charger and talking about “family”.
As an aside, since Gunn is taking elements of the Ostrander and Yale run of Suicide Squad, I wanna talk about one of the most long term consequences of Suicide Squad: Reintroducing Barbara Gordon as Oracle.You see, it had been two years after the events of the Killing Joke. DC had no real interest in doing anything with the character at the time after Babs was shot and sexually assaulted by the Joker. In fact, when Alan Moore asked EiC Len Wein if he could cripple her in TKJ, Len Wein responded with “Cripple the bitch.” (https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/mar/14/the-killing-joke-at-30-what-is-the-legacy-of-alan-moore-shocking-batman-comic). So Ostrander and Yale decided to take Babs and make her Oracle and proceeded to call out how little agency she was given in TKJ.Later on they would even write up the Batman Chronicles storyline “Oracle: Year One” to further drag home how badly she was mistreated in TKJ.
Thanks Alan Moore, you overly revered pervert lunatic!
To be fair, Moore has gone onto regret how he fridged Barbara Gordon. Though yes he is kind of pervy for unrelated reasons…
“kind of” pervy feels like understatement of the century for the man who wrote Lost Girls and whatever the hell those last few League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books were. The man is a self-minted Grand Wizard of Pervedom.
Yeah, it’s funny how “Barbara Gordon gets crippled” is the thing that “stuck” from Killing Joke, when the story’s ambiguous ending where Batman ambiguously/maybe just straight murders The Joker is always ignored.IMHO, if you’re going to keep Killing Joke in continuity, the answer to “did Batman kill The Joker at the end” has to be YES or the story doesn’t work at all on its own terms. And if you’re saying “well that screws up continuity for the service of one story” well, so does crippling Barbara Gordon for the service of one story.
The Killing Joke has always sucked; but no, Moore is not overly revered. Even with that blot, his career is monumental.(Never a very “warm” writer, though. But there’s a refreshing blast of late-career humanity in his miniseries Smax, which was a spinoff from the wonderful Top Ten. Smax was a comedy. And it was HILARIOUS. Gentle and tough and zany and superbly written. It’s a footnote in his career, but I think it’s the best writing he ever did, and yes I’m not shying away from comparisons with Watchmen or Swamp Thing. Comedy though, so a different set of skills altogether.)(If one wants to give Smax a try, read the two Top Ten trades first. They are necessary set up; and hell, they’re just good.)
To be clear, the Joker stripped and photographed Barbara. He did not otherwise violate her.Not in any way saying that is not a huge violation, but when you use terms like “sexual assault” it has a lot of connotations, and I wanted to clarify.
That’s sexual assault.
I don’t disagree. I was merely clarifying what was meant buy that term in this context.
“by”
I gotta ask, why do you feel the need to “clarify terms” about sexual assault? Specifically referring to you not understanding what sexual assault includes. I’m kind of curious now what you yourself get up to in your personal life and whether you’re trying to normalize a past experience? Perhaps? I’ll stop
lol u think ur so smart I bet Mr. Dictionary over here just clarifying terms before he clocks out for the day lmaooooo. You’re so misguided I don’t even know what to say to you. I’m sure I’ll be ‘wrong’ tho lol.
I cant see half the replies and I know I already posted this previously, but it did not show up. For the benefit of everyone, I never said it was not sexual assault, because it absolutely is.
I’m just kinda flabbergasted you felt the need to drop in and even type out that first reply. Like you thought you were educating and unlearned group of plebeians unwise in the nuances of sexual assault.
Stripping and photographing someone without their consent is sexual assault, though.
A few thoughts. Like Laserface1242 said that is still sexual assaultSecond, while I believe the words on the page are very clear that is what happens, the art and the reaction by the other characters implies a lot more. I suspect DC editorial had a line that Moore was not allowed to cross but I think its heavily implied the Joker did more then just shoot her, undress her and then take pictures.
*sigh*
That’s cripple porn, like the Japanese ‘angels’ which feature nude women in hospital bandaged and bleeding. Of course the real rape was reserved for her dad, James Gordon, who became Joker’s gay submissive plaything and strangely enough has had zero trauma from the experience. If there ever was a comic in which Batman had to kill Joker (or let him die once he got into jeopardy) it was Killing Joke. Instead, it has become the cornerstone for the whole ultrarepulsive Joker cult at DC where each writer is just looking for ways to be even more disgustingly sadistic.
Yo ew seriously it’s 2021 and I’m reading this right now? Wowowowowowow. Are u seriously trying to find the minutia loopholes to a woman being sexually assaulted and think that’s a good look for you?
Wow I really hate this comment.
While it’s been more or less confirmed that Barbara was not raped, if you think being shot, forcefully stripped against your will, and then photographed is not sexual assault then I fear what you define as sexual assault.
That…that’s pretty textbook sexual assault right there.
I tend to just haunt the comments section and not actually comment that often, but I wanted to extend thanks for posting the Ostrander/Yale treatment of Barbara/Oracle (as well as all the other back issue knowledge you drop in the comments routinely). I never read Suicide Squad (more into Marvel than DC growing up) so wasn’t familiar with it, but its a great response and probably wasn’t an easy statement to make given how TKJ and Moore were perceived at the time (and to a large extent, still are, though as you mentioned Moore regrets Barbara’s treatment). This absolutely makes me want to check out their run.
…probably wasn’t an easy statement to make given how TKJ and Moore were perceived at the time…There’s always been a weird emperor-has-no-clothes element to The Killing Joke. As I recall the comics “moment”, everyone was trying to get out these “prestige format” books on the glossy paper etc — elevate the medium from the cheap newsprint — and both Moore and Bolland were hugely respected figures. Bolland had just finished Camelot 3000, and was doing a lot of covers for DC. Of course Moore’s most famous works were just completed. So DC put the two Brit stars together.Moore had a good relationship with Bolland; but he’d also had his inevitable fall-out with DC. He completed the work, but I don’t think he minded shafting them with a story where their most bankable character performs no action and spontaneously has an out-of-character existential realization that none of this means shit.I don’t think it’s a very good Joker story; competent but routine. But it’s a terrible Batman story. Awful.However, TKJ was a beautiful product for its time. An elegant artifact. Great paper, glossy, nicely bound. Brian Bolland’s lovely layouts, terrifically colored. And scripted by the master himself! About whose work we must speak in hushed tones, though it seemed he just tossed it off. There is something about the book that made it a comics publishing milestone, an accomplishment for “editorial” & logistics. There’s a lot to be proud of, for the operational staff who got the book out.Just not the story part of it.
Am I the only one who thinks Barbara’s therapist looks like the Joker a bit, and is that intentional?
“BLOAM”?
Glad I am not the only one that struggled with that.
And just six years ago that completely oblivious Batgirl “tribute” cover of Barbara being brutalized by Joker. I’m not going to dignify it with a link or picture. I hope Leslie Grace has a No Killing Joke clause in her contract.
Well I just googled and saw that and I can’t unsee that now. Thank you for opening my eyes to… that… but yah that image will bother me for the rest of the day okay.
Thank you so much for sharing. Honestly very informative. I did not know the specific origin of Oracle.
DC had no real interest in doing anything with the character at the time after Babs was shot and sexually assaulted by the Joker. In fact, when Alan Moore asked EiC Len Wein if he could cripple her in TKJ, Len Wein responded with “Cripple the bitch.”
Oh I like that last page.
Not saying that the fridging of Barbara wasn’t bad in the first place, but in Moore’s defense, the Killing Joke was originally not necessarily meant to be canonical and the clear implication of the ending was that Batman had decided just to kill the Joker once and for all, which is why he didn’t mind sharing one last laugh.
The decision to incorporate TKJ into canon did have the bad side effect of making his laugh at the Joker sound just callous towards Barbara.
The thing that struck me in the trailers was how smart it was to bring the John Cena character into the group — having a guy who’s over-the-top earnest and straight edge feels like a really fun contrast, as opposed to the first movie’s “We are all dark and sad and grim” vibe.
He fills the same function as Drax in the first GotG. Who had no understanding of sarcasm or hyperbole or absurdisms. He’s also comparably ridiculous.(in a good way)
All superhero movies are gratuitous. They don’t really exist for any reason beyond gratification. Gunn is smart enough not to pretend otherwise.
I know it was claimed Gunn had free rein to kill who he pleased, but does anyone seriously think Harley Quinn was ever on the cards?
Thanks for the review Katie. I’m not a Spandex Movie fan but I am a big Troma and James Gunn fan, and I’m going to catch this.
Between him and Waititi it’s great seeing genuinely good films coming out of this era. Now someone beg the Coen bros to make one.
Well now, Coen brother, apparently.
Sure, you have your Shazam!s and your Ant-Man,
but on the whole, American superhero cinema has become preoccupied with
the somber responsibility of being a demigod in a world full of
helpless victims.
And then there’s Thor: Ragnarok, a movie so funny and fun it made me retroactively like the first Thor movie more. Dark World is still the worst. 🙂
Here, “defending freedom” is exposed for the absurd idea that it is.I know you’re going for jaded millennial ironic detachment here, but there’s nothing necessarily absurd about the idea. It’s the way the idea has been deployed as a jingoistic marketing slogan that’s absurd.
It’s virtually always employed that way in practice. US intervention being sadistic and selfish isn’t the perception of millennials, it’s the unavoidable reality for people on the ground, and has been discussed that way by thoughtful people since this country began.
When Japan attacked and Hitler declared war on the US my parents were defending freedom. Dad joined the Navy the day after he graduated high school in 43. Mom worked in a defense plant making ball bearings. They weren’t being ironic. When Trump declared we had a space force, now that was ironic.
US only joined in because Japan attacked them. FDR had a neutrality pact with Nazi Germany until then.
Attacking first is a mug’s game. Hitler declaring war on the US was a blunder.“Fighting a preventive war because you fear being attacked is like committing suicide because you fear dying.” Otto von Bismarck.
See Also: All US wars since the Civil War.
I know you posted this five days ago, so I’m late in commenting, but the US had no pact with Germany of any kind prior to the war. We were neutral, of course, and it was Japan attacking that brought us in, but there was no formal agreement regarding that, and we were doing a lot just short of armed intervention to help defeat the Axis. The USSR had non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Japan, the former of which was violated by Germany in the spring of ‘41 and the latter was violated by the USSR at the very end of the war so they could grab some quick spoils from a nearly defeated Japan.
Thank you. FDR had a reluctant Congress and reluctant citizenry; describing him as having a neutrality pact with Germany is a really weird way of expressing that.
We were neutral, of course,Neutral, spelled “L E N D L E A S E”.Okay fine that wasn’t until 1941, and as an Aussie I’m 100% not complaining.I also like that the thing before Lend-Lease was called “cash and carry”. The cash in this case being gold, the carry being “hey we sold ‘em US bombs and bullets in the US, not our fault those sneaky Brits put them on their own ships and took them home and used them for war and stuff.”
They were defending the US (for which we are grateful), not freedom. War doesn’t defend freedom, civil action does. War defends borders.
Nah, it’s absurd. /JadedGenXer
LOLhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States“but but but but the one time they were drafted to fight the Nazis after suffering the largest attack by a foreign power in history” doesn’t make up for centuries of essentially going viking on the rest of the world in the name of “freedumb”.The American military does not fight for freedom and no one joins hoping to do so.
The US wasn’t centuries old in 1942. ( Treaty of Paris 1783, 1942-1783=159 , 159<200) The US goal for WWII were the four freedoms.
What a great missed opportunity for meta-casting that they missed by not using Jeffery Dean Morgan for Peacemaker.
Somebody else has a line “Peacemaker…what a joke”. I’m pretty sure that’s there for the reason you imply.
Rick Flagg says that, right before he (maybe) dies.
if you’re white, obese, have a pony tail, and typically smell like dried cum and cheetohs, this is the movie for you
Two out of five, I’m white and fat (fat is manlier than obese in my opinion.) I’ll watch it on tv.
What’s the prior recordholder for increase in quality between an original movie and its own sequel? I have a feeling this is going to blow that away.
There needs to be a ret-conned crossover between the Fast & Furious franchise and the DCEU. Go with the premise of Giselle (Gal Gadot) actually was Diana/Wonder Woman during her time as part of the F&F world and that Toretto’s bro, the Cena character, actually is Peacemaker under cover.The possibilities are endless.
I will have to check this out early enough where my social media feeds don’t spoil stuff.to all the triggery-fingers out there, hey! I get it! People die! Stop posting this like it’s a super-revelation!!
At least it appears Warner let Gunn go wild and he chose to with the killing. One of the many flaws with the other film is for a movie called “Suicide Squad” the team body count was two, one of which showed up without even an intro and was killed within 5 minutes of screen time.
And the other one was a “noble sacrifice” type death, not the kind of “welp, one of our disposable soldiers got done, cross him off the list” death that a movie like this needs. I was genuinely surprised how squeamish the original film was with the killing.
I think that was because it was never about adapting Suicide Squad as a franchise. That film was solely done because Marvel had Guardians and Warner went “quick! assemble some scrappy underdog anti-heroes!” and they took the franchise closest to that in spirit.
Rick Flagg has much better trigger discipline than the other gun people on that poster.
That would be character-appropriate on all counts.
And more than many US police officers, apparently.
The premise of this movie interests me. But I belong to that group for whom extreme violence in media freaks me out and makes me feel physically sick; gives me bad nightmares. I choose not to inject this sort of material into my soul, for the sake of being a happier person. So I will not spend any time with this film.
I might be in the same boat. Some of the comedy violence in Deadpool 2 still pops back into my head again from time to time. This movie sounds fun but I’ll probably find the smallest supported screen to watch it on when it comes to HBO Max
I’d say this is definitely worse than Deadpool (and Deadpool 2), the violence is far more visceral and realistic, a character straight up gets their face blown off in the opening scene and the gaping hole is shown later, alongside the mutilated remains of multiple corpses. And that’s before the opening credits are even over, there’s plenty in the proceeding 2 hours of runtime. I loved the film but if strong violence affects you then I’d steer clear.
you both should stay away if you dont like ultra violence. You are missing literally nothing by not watching this movie. It’s not THAT funny, and most of the humor derives from ultra violence. I mean, I loved it, but my girlfriend did not. THis was literally like watching a high production value version of a Troma film, which was greatfor me, but not for the squeemish
My generation watched murders, suicides, and starving babies on the nightly news. They showed documentary films showing mass executions and mass graves in jr-high school. Fake gore and violence isn’t at the top of my list for entertainment choices but it really doesn’t bother me all that much.
BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY!Remember that? Driver’s Ed?
I’m not as sensitive to it…Deadpool 2’s splatteriness was about the point where I’d go “yeah okay guys, that’s good, you can stop now”, but in general, the way that DC properties go about it (ref. animated Harley Quinn as an example) is just weirdly offputting. And I don’t know why. I mean, I get that Marvel in general pulls its punches just a bit. But it seems like DC’s decided that overcranking the violence is the way to counterpunch, and I’m not there with them. The boardroom scene in Shazam legitimately ruined that movie for me.
Oh ur better than us?
I find a bit of a disconnect between films like this and real life-endangering occurrences. For example this year I got hit by a car and everyone called it a miracle that I didnt have any broken bones. This memory is funny because I can think of a few romantic comedy films where the male lead runs out to the street to profess his love for the female lead, gets hit by a car, and then continues while grunting to profess his love. Specifically the 40-year-old virgin comes to mind.
Let me tell you getting hit by a car is not something that anyone just casually stands up after. I got peeled off the street by an ambulance stretcher despite it being the most minimal damage I could have experienced… What I’m saying is that I firmly believe there is a disconnect between the violence we see on screens like this and the real world consequences of these activities.
You might just have a hyper active imagination.
Have you seen Gunpowder Milkshake? Gory, but kinda cartoonish.
I thought too cartoonish. the bad dialog was distracting the whole thing felt lazy.
…also terrible.
The most irritating thing for me is the way these films tend to have characters who “cannot feel pain” as if that’s all you need to be able to withstand a savage beating. A shattered pelvis is still crippling, even if you can’t feel it. Having your head bashed repeatedly against a cinderblock should still make it impossible to stand up afterwards, even if it doesn’t hurt. Etc.The insta-heal guys are fine, they get function restored right away. It’s the characters like Deadpool’s main opponent in DP1 (whose name I can’t even be bothered looking up) that annoy me.
I remember being taken aback in X-Men 2 when Wolverine got shot in the head. The bullet can’t penetrate his skull and kill him, but the impact still knocks him out. He still felt it. “Instant healing” isn’t the same thing as, say, Superman’s invulnerability.
When I’ve seen recent footage of fatalities from recent Mortal Kombat games, it makes me sick to my stomach.
vulgar, immature, and gratuitousSo, a proper James Gunn movie? I’m in.
I haven’t seen the film, so without spoilers from anyone who has, who’s your pick for who dies?My guesses are: Captain Boomerang, because I think they’ll want to kill off one of the returning Squaddies, and I doubt it’s going to be Harley or Flagg; the Thinker, after he betrays the team in some way; Peter Davidson’s character, because I think Gunn knows that will make a lot of people happy; Michael Rooker’s character, because Gunn has form for that; Polka-Dot Man, who I can imagine the film getting you invested in and his death could actually be a little poignant; the javelin dude (is he just called Javelin?) because that just seems like it’ll be funny; and the weasel creature, because there’s only so much you can do with a character like that so it makes sense to kill him off early.
I assume Fillion dies.
Sadly they’re going to kill off Nathan Fillion it seems. (I know he plays a fucking jobber but still I’d wish they’d stop having Nathan Fillion die in movies starring DC Heroes. (The other one is when he unceremoniously got car bombed in that flick where Superman tells Gandhi to stop murdering child molesters. I legit thought that Fillion was going to come back as the main heel but no Nathan Fillion’s A Bitch.))
that flick where Superman tells Gandhi to stop murdering child molesters. Somehow I missed this insanity. How did Superman talk to Ghandhi at all? Does he go back in time?
Yes, I feel that I may have missed this one.
Pretty good guesses, only 1 of your predictions was wrong.
You’re wrong on one of those but you’ll have to watch the movie to find out which…
Corto Maltese? As comic book references go, that’s a pretty good one. Bravissimo!
Isn’t that also where the nuke was headed during DKR?
I think you’re right. Cordo Maltese has been the “go to” location in a lot of DC properties. It was referenced in The Dark Knight Returns and I’m pretty sure characters went there in the Arrow show.
Wasn’t it also where Vicki Vale had been photographing war atrocities before turning up in Batman ‘89?
Yes, you’re right. I forgot about that one, too. :)https://batmananthology.fandom.com/wiki/Corto_Maltese
What I’m really concerned about is the breakdown of diplomatic relations between Corto Maltese and Val Verde.
Nice. I honestly love it whenever Val Verde pops up in anything.
Yeah, just looked it up, and Frank Miller apparently introduced this location to the DC universe. So he gets the credit, not Gunn. It’s popped up in numerous stories, so it’s a regular thing.
I don’t get the name. Short Maltese? Can an actual speaker of Italian or Spanish help me out here? Little Maltese?
(one trusts Mr Miller was not using the colloquial “Dumb Maltese”)
The subtitle is “a ballad of the salty sea” which is pretty hilarious.
Well it’s Hugo Pratt’s character not Miller’s, and according to Wikipedia, the name is Andalusian slang for ‘quick hands’. I suppose in Italian if you’re giving directions, the shortest way is also the quickest (la strada più corta), but I have no clue about Andalusian. And not much about comics either. I only know about this character because years ago, a cousin left me a box of 70s comics, many of them European (mostly Moebius) and Corto Maltese was among them. There’s a website, if you’re curious : https://cortomaltese.com/en Boy this turned out to be a can of worms! A shout out to Gunn leads to Miller, leads to Pratt, leads to linguistics… 🙂
I think it means “Maltese Court” maybe? As in the royal court? Aaaaand…it’s apparently the character’s name. I got nothing. For what it’s worth though, I lived in Malta for a while, and people there were pretty short.
Gunn punctuates Harley’s big action-hero sequence with bright blooms of
CGI flowers that spurt out of the wounds of the men she’s killed. The set piece makes sense as a glimpse into Harley’s demented mindset…Harley-vision!
…but it’s also so bone-crunchingly, mind-numbingly violent that it raises
the question of whether this is a workaround to avoid an NC-17 rating
Or that. Or it could be that too.
wE’rE a FaMilY11!!!
He-Man doesn’t even get mentioned in this one and I’m pissed off!
Stop already–you had me at ‘prolonged painful deaths played for laughs’!
First movie I saw in a theatre since last year and boy, what a good time! Loved Ratcatcher and Harley, though I really wish *spoiler* didn’t go out like that. But who knows, no one stays gone for too long in the comic world.
I fear the trailer gave away way too much of the game in terms of who lives and who dies but I hope I’m wrong.
The guy in the yellow shirt, I thought Tony Hawk on steroids.
So just watched The Suicide Squad…. Tbh, very disappointing. Disjointed, shit editing, and, most unforgivable, poorly written. Some cool scenes, but basically squandered great actors on underdeveloped characters.Maybe my hopes were too high, but really wasn’t much better than the first go-round.
I thought it was a bit old hat that they killed Sean Bean’s character in the opening credits.
That was Michael Rooker, not Sean Bean.
Do you mean Sean Gunn? Sean Bean isn’t in this, my friend. And watch the post-credits. He ain’t dead, at least not yet.
Just finished watching it via Max and no spoilers, but I concur with Katie: putting Gunn himself on this type of material, rather than shoehorning Ayer’s take into Gunn’s mold, made for a better story.
Yeh, I am sure the Pacific War was about freedom. You can give a post hoc justification of the European theatre as about freedom but about the Pacific….Come on.
Watched this with the boys last night. 18, 17, 13. And me. We were probably their ideal audience. Movie did not disappoint. Well done.
“but it’s also so bone-crunchingly, mind-numbingly violent that it raises the question of whether this is a workaround to avoid an NC-17 rating”
That sequence is nowhere near the level of violence seen in half a dozen sequences per John Wick movie. This was DEFINITELY about being a glimpse into Harley’s mind.
Its pretty amazing how much this movie succeeded in every way the Ayer’s film failed. The plot is an actual mission the Suicide Squad would perform in the comics, Waller is actually competent and her actions make sense( like her team of underlings is implied to have been with her for a while which implies she’s not just shooting them randomly for “not having clearance”), all the characters are fun and interesting, even the Deadshot-stand in is a funny badass and not just Will Smith playing himself.Plus the Ayer-racism is pretty nonexistent, so A+ just for that!
Meanwhile, in Edmonton…
https://exclaim.ca/film/article/edmonton_officially_renames_city_hall_nathan_fillion_civilian_pavilion
Ratcatcher 2 and King Shark spent the movie trying to one-up each other on the horrifying-but-adorable meter, all while being friends.
I think Ratcatcher 2 won. I’d watch a solo movie of her sleeping through chaotic set pieces while her rats did crazy complicated things to protect her.Polka-Dot Man was up there too. Same with what I assume to be the first on screen case of Chekov’s Javelin.
Gunn’s Checkov’s Javelin
I really thought they’d subvert the expectations we all had of the javelin in a movie where the final bad has a giant eye, but nope, it’s that kind of movie! It was beautiful when it finally happened but it had to be the most obvious setup.
The first go at this made me physically angry. It was so poorly conceived and executed in a way I didn’t know was possible for modern, big budget movies to be anymore. It was like Manos levels of incomprehensible.This version is not that. Is it a dumb movie? Yes. But at least it had something to say, made coherent sense, had a sense of humor and had some interesting visuals as well. That monster could have been so dorky but the texture and weird gills and stuff made it genuinely interesting to look at. I found it laugh out loud funny at times, better gore than some horror flicks, and a HIGHLY personable cast with good chemistry. Not perfect obviously. Suffers from the too-fast editing that all modern action movies do, as well as CGI laziness. But the attention to detail is there. Worth it just to hear Stallone doing his best Stallone imitation, tbh. The soundtrack is pretty great also. Mostly recognizable but some stuff I’d never heard, and all fit nicely within the visuals. Gunn is good at that.I’d give this a B+ rating as a movie in general, but a solid A- for within the genre.
DC sucks, always has, always will. And no amount of “dark millennial reimagining” will change this fact.
This movie was bonkers. And it worked! Gotta love when that happens. I’m totally icked out by rats… but I have to say, watching Ratcatcher 2’s little scene with her dad was a gorgeous little flashback. And yeah, this was way, WAY better than the first go. That movie was awful and was awfully boring. To be honest, I really can’t recall a single scene, other than the weird “Here’s the file on all these maniacs” set up. That movie had all the life of a limp noodle.
The main reasons ‘The Suicide Squad’ (2021) works while the ‘Suicide Squad’ (2016) doesn’t are
* we can actually see the movie (instead of all of it being at a barely lit night)* we get to learn about the characters, more or less, organically throughout the movie instead of just being told about them and their backstories (THIS IS KATANA, SHE’S GOT MY BACK….)
* Waller seems actually, for the most part, in control of the situation instead of making stupid decisions that don’t make sense.
* the movie allows the supervillians to be actual villians for once (like killing a bunch of people who didn’t necessarily deserve it for example)
* the movie isn’t afraid of killing off more than half of the “main” cast (instead of singling out the ones it was going to kill and then kills them)
* even though being treated as mostly cannon fodder, they are being sent on a mission that there’s a decent chance of them succeeding at (at least in the objectives Waller is interested in)
* the freaking music fits organically with the scenes they are in and enhances them instead of distracting you from them
* this is subjective, but the humor actually lands most of the time without subtracting from the dramatic moments. (this is a criticisicm I actually have with Thor 3 too, take notes Waititi)
I liked Waller up until she went mad with rage. The Waller from Batman: TAS and Justice League cartoons would never have given into her rage like that. It’s what made her so frightening and believable. Even when she’s frothing mad, she seems cold and calculating. This one was LITERALLY frothing at the mouth before she gets “clunked.”
Daylight, there was actual daylight in the movie, there was sufficient lighting to know what was actually happening. Even the climax of the movie happened in the daytime. This alone makes it one of the best DC movies in a very long time.
Yes, yes, yes!
Yes! No more dark color grades for the sake of “maturity”, please!
You want daylight, go outside.
“sucking on whippits while doing donuts in a grocery-store parking lot”
Or as I call it, “Senior year in high school”.
I love James Gunn. I love this cast. I love a lot of these characters.
That said…while I did enjoy it overall, I came away pretty underwhelmed.
I’ve been a big fan of Gunn since his early days, I’m more than used to his brand of humor and generally appreciate his pitch-black comedy…but I didn’t really find the film funny at all, very few of the jokes worked for me, and it felt a bit more mean-spirited than usual for a James Gunn film (though, considering the circumstances under which he made them film, I can understand where that might have come from).
I expected the film to be vulgar and violent, but even those moments felt weirdly out of place. I know Gunn has said that WB gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted with no restraints, but it really felt to me like the film was largely written and shot aiming for PG-13, with alternate takes done if they decided to go for an R. The film is fairly tame in those regards until it decides to pull something out to shock the audience, but it’s so inconsistent and there’s such long stretches without any cursing or gore that when those things do pop up again they feel like they’re out of a different movie completely.
There was a lot I did love about it, primarily just watching this brilliant cast chew the scenery and how it doesn’t apologize for being weird (though, imo, it’s nowhere near weird enough), and I do hope to see the surviving members again, but I think ultimately it was a swing and a miss.
Though, all that said, it’s easily one of the best DC flicks.
The Suicide Squad is such a colossal improvement over its Oscar-winning predecessor.
You can tell writer-director Gunn loves DC Comics & wants viewers
to too. Title cards & mortality thematically link this to the other
equally superb movie I saw that day, The Green Knight. The movie is a showcase for why culture needs oddballs more than the umpteenth Batman flick.
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/the-suicide-squad-is-to-die-for/
I must agree with what’s been said before: This is the best Marvel movie DC has ever done.
This movie alternates so much between so dumb it’s smart, so dumb it’s dumb, so smart it’s smart, trying to be so smart and self-aware that it’s not as smart as it thinks it is, back to so bad it’s goodness that it all just comes out in the wash for me. Gunn’s a trollish man-baby with a streak of sincerity, and he’s an entertaining-enough director, but this all felt pretty meh. (Slight spoilers) The opening sequence was telegraphed a mile away (didn’t they even use the same name or a similar one for the ill-fated team as they do for the similarly-dispatched ill-fated team in Deadpool 2?). Same for the fate of one of the characters towards the end, who dies in a moment I feel like I’ve seen in 50 other movies. It’s also about 20 minutes too long and by the time we get the reveal of the “final boss” and the self-aware kaiju comment from the nerdy computer dude my main reaction was just “Okay then.” Give me something like “Birds of Prey” any day over this, though I can’t say I wasn’t mostly entertained.
Its also not very good. See>box office.
Will disappear quickly.
Gunn was revealed here. He had a total free hand; and blew it.
As much as I like and respect James Gunn, I thought his magic only went as far as to salvage this IP as opposed to GotG it. There was no chemistry with any of the actors, particularly Cena with anyone else. Cena seemed like he was trying way too hard and came off very one dimensional and forced. Half his lines sounded like he was reading them live for the first time. Elba started strong but came off as almost disinterested towards the middle and end of the movie. Robbie was good, but there’s only so much of her character that plays by itself without a real foil to enhance it, and she didn’t have a lot of support on that end. King Shark and the squirrel where both running for Groot 2.0, but both fell flat. And the scene wipes with the locations spelled out—just didn’t play for me. That in your face cliche just ended up being plain old cliche. It was OK, I suppose, but nothing I’d go out of my way to re-watch or have interest in a sequel or extended universe. The best part was seeing Pete Davidson eat it in the opening action.
Caught up with this finally. The needle drops were a bit hit or miss but I was pretty chuffed he used The Decemberists in introducing an assassin. Lots of the stuff landed, especially making King Shark the Drax softie and actually killing off some main characters you expected to survive. Some of the visuals were very gross and beautiful (inside the eye of starro). Did Pete Davidson also do the body for the Weasel? It looked familiar.Overall pretty gross and fun.
Sean Gunn did the body work for Weasel
makes sense also
This was an enjoyable movie and leagues better than the first one, but I also feel a little underwhelmed by it. Maybe I was just watching it too late at night, but it seemed to benefit a lot from the fact that it was not outright shitty. That being said, a lot of the reviews were so overwhelmingly positive I was expecting an instant classic. And while not an all-time classic, it’s still pretty good. So I went in thinking this movie was going to be amazing, it ended up being pretty good and not as crappy as SS2016, so it seemed like a win. 7/10, enjoyed.
Ok, I might be in the minority here but the more I think about this movie, the more disappointed I am.
This whole film felt like Gunn just wanted to remake the first Suicide Squad with more gore, bright costuming, and a more natural color grade. First off, it’s painful how much he just completely copies Deadshot’s plotline from the first film. Now, they aren’t the same character mind you as Will Smith was infinitely more interesting as Deadshot than Idris Elba as Bloodsport (who seems to be playing himself being forced to be in a ridiculous comic book movie and acting how we all expect Idris would act in that scenario.) The film seems to imply early on that Bloodsport’s character arc will be him not wanting to lead and intentionally avoiding it until he has to step up to save the day, but that’s not what happens. He basically becomes the leader from the moment he lands on the island and has nary a character arc from that point on. You don’t even feel his decision to actively do a good deed at the end because Elba has only played Bloodsport like a bitter asshole and not an actual villain.
In fact, that’s one of the biggest problems with this film vs it’s predecessor: none of the villains feel like actual villains outside of maybe Peacemaker, who only comes across that way because of how Cena plays his views on the world. You look back at David Ayer’s film and each one of the team is firmly established as a legitimate villain, some even fully evil. That’s the whole point of Task Force X; they are villains that will find some redemption. But Gunn’s characters are only villains because they have to be in order to be in Task Force X. We don’t get any backstory setting up the horrible things they’ve done that they have to turn away from to be heroes at the end. In fact, only Bloodsport, Weasel, and Ratcatcher II get any specific reason for why they are in prison at all, with Ratcatcher II’s reason being so incredibly innocuous as to wonder what warranted her being sent to Belle Reve of all places and why the government even bothers to give her back her rat stick when it would be more valuable to keep it and copy its technology. We never get any understanding of what Polka-Dot Man, King Shark, Peacemaker, Savant, Blackguard, TDK, Mongal, and Javelin did to end up in prison. Harley Quinn even suffers from this: this film isn’t a sequel to Suicide Squad for understandable reasons yet how did Harley end up in prison again? She was broken out by The Joker at the end of Suicide Squad, which they decided to ignore, but she’s a free women at the end of Birds of Prey. I mean, how hard would it have been to have Waller or Flagg explain how Harley ended up in prison again so it at least makes a bit of narrative connection to Birds of Prey? This is the problem with DC treating each film as standalone while using the same actor to portray the character every time. Marvel Studios has trained audiences to keep track of these kinds of through lines and DC is just chucking them out the window to do whatever. And what the hell was with Waller stating numerous times that King Shark was the most powerful member of the group and that they needed him, only for him to never do anything important and the hero moment he should have had at the end goes to Harley. He was just there for the jokes, like a seagoing Drax with no redeeming moment or speech.
Then so much of the overall plot of this film is similar to the first one: a group of inprisoned supervillains get recruited for a mission by a shady government group to infiltrate a location, track down a VIP only to realize that they are being duped, then have to destroy an incredibly powerful force that will destroy the world unchecked.
Starro was one of the worst decisions Gunn made. There are so many more interesting stories involving Corto Maltese that he could have gone with. Before they revealed Starro was the big bad guy, I really thought Bane would be the main villain with a group of super-powered mercenaries made up of other c-list villains. That would have been such a better story. Then you get to see the villains all bounce off of each other, the story is a little more grounded, you can still have Peacemaker’s betrayal and have it be meaningful. Gunn just took it too far with a property that was begging for a more grounded approach after the last film.
And honestly, I like that the Snyder/Ayer era of DC was giving us a style of superhero cinema that was different than Marvel. And don’t get me wrong, I loved Shazam and Aquaman, but by turning everything into half-serious, dayglow, punchline contests, DC is taking away from the one thing that was making them different. I knew that Suicide Squad would be bright and jokey while being violent, because of James Gunn, but I also hoped it might bridge between the Aquaman style and Joker style of movie that DC keeps going back and forth with. Maybe I’ll warm to it over the years. For now, I got a film that I’m glad I didn’t buy tickets to watch.
I found it pretty disappointing too. WB gave Gunn carte blanche and he re-made Ayer’s film with more jokes and (needless) gore. Somehow it’s more bland. I don’t feel like it improves on Ayer’s film, it’s just different – visually more striking but still kind of disjointed. Sometimes it was just a little too meta, like trying to be Deadpool and Gaurdians without going all the way. The Bloodsport/daughter re-tread is bizarre and completely unnecessary, as was the gratuitous “we need an action sequence” infiltration of Alice Braga’s camp. Somehow DC has made 2 pretty solid animated Suicide Squad films (and 1 excellent JLU episode) that managed to keep the villains villainous and the stakes still interesting without being world-ending. Neither movie really requires the Suicide Squad, they are using the Dirty Dozen as too literal of a blue print. It would be far more interesting if they told a story about the villains going somewhere the good guys can’t (like up against the heroes, as they did in JLU) rather than trying to make heroes out of villains. Or for that matter, heroes out of Waller’s staff.It wasn’t a fail for me, there’s lots to like (the best use of Harley so far, rats eating the inside of Starro’s eye is pretty unforgettable, making Polka-Dot Man captivating) but I was expecting something much better than Ayer’s film, and it just feels like WB released the Gunn Cut.
Harley specifically says why she went back to prison when she gets on the plane. Capt’n Boomerang asks her flat out. I don’t remember the specific line, but it’s something like “I was robbing an armored truck, inside a bank,” or some such. Sorry you missed it, and sorry that I can’t find the specific line.
this really did feel like a troma movie with a good production budget, and i absolutely mean that as a compliment. definitely exists at that intersection of smart, stupid, and nearly-in-bad-taste-but-is-actually-just-fun.will i watch this again? probably not, but i certainly enjoyed it, which is more than i can say about any other DC movies not involving Christopher Nolan or Wonder Woman in world war 1
I had high expectations from a movie directed by James Gunn, and frankly I found it a bit long-winded and gratuitous. Oh well.
I gotta say i thought this movie kinda sucked for a comic movie. It wasn’t the worse or anything but it wasn’t special. And Harley Quinn is basically playing Margot Robbie in a movie. The character in this film was Harley Quinn in name only. And the protaganist seem just stupid. A dirty rat, a shark man and a dude that shoots polka dots? They seem bad pics.
sad to see Alice Braga devolving to the standard generic Latin American person role
At this point DC is surpassing marvel for me. DC’s most recent movies have a lot of style, their own feel to it, they’re more gritty and have a great way of making unrealistic elements feel grounded in reality. The characters feel more like real people instead of the politically and narratively driven storyboard characters you’ll find in Marvel movies. Most characters from marvel films can easily just be ditched in catagories of what kind of character they are, what kind of decisions they’ll make, the jokes they make.. They’ve been following this formula so tightly that it really makes most of their characters suffer. I felt more for King Shark than i did for any sad backstory Marvel character that got shoehorned into the “make the audience feel something” category.The Suicide Squad is a fantastic film and an amazing superhero movie compared to today’s standards set by Disney and i really can’t wait for more.
I am glad I never read any of the comics for all the movies that come out. So I can like or hate them based on entertainment value only. Hated the first Suicide Squad, but liked this one. It was fun.
You lose the right to get offended about most real life if you think the comedy formula in this is so great. And yet I bet you’re almost all a pack of uptight pearl-clutchers if someone remotely republican or conservative makes a joke.
Username checks out.
Why is everyone just fawning over this movie? It was “OK”…but it wasn’t amazing? It was a standard cliche ridden James Gunn music montage that expressly challenged you to not connect with the characters. They murder a whole village of people and it’s a “gag”? Most of it was lazy writing….? Isn’t James Gunn a hollywood pedophile?
Nah, nobody fell for the alt-right trolling in the end.It’s not like the people uncovering his decade old shitposts had any interest in saving kids. They just wanted a liberal scalp. Luckily for movie fans, their attempt failed miserably.
I kind of hated this. Everything about it just didn’t land with me. I didn’t find it that funny. The story wasn’t interesting. The characters did nothing for me. And the whole vibe just rubbed me the wrong way. The only thing I enjoyed were some of the visuals and the giant starfish.
Streamed it over the weekend and I was pretty “meh” about the whole thing. A few fun moments but overall it’s all been done before. I’m now convinced that Harley Quinn is just Tank Girl with brain damage.
I watched it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was impressed by the pacing as it does seem like a shorter movie than it actually is. Also any movie that uses music from the Jim Carroll band is a plus on my list!
I’m not a huge fan of Gunn, but I have to say that for the most part I really enjoyed the film. I thought the scenes with Harley Quinn were excellent and the rest of the cast did an outstanding job.A lot of the jokes don’t hit, but the ones that do hit hard and made me laugh. I also thought the action scenes were great as well. The biggest surprise for me was the amount of heart the film had, even making me feel bad for the Starfish at the end with one well placed line it has. Nice job by everyone here, very good film.