Suicide Squad Review SPOILERS

Anyone who has been following me for a while knows I'm not a fan of Warner Bros.'s recent DC films, so I naturally had no interest in seeing this one. Call me a Marvel fanboy or whatever other random playground names you need to, but I just don't think WB has done a good film in this cinematic universe thus far. While I had no intent on seeing another one of their 2 hour+, overly caricaturized and angsty pictures spewing high school level political commentary and unnecessarily over the top epic darkness, a handful of my friends wanted to see it and invited me along last Saturday. Luckily, through unbelievable circumstances, we found four free tickets lying around, and through a bunch of weirdness, we somehow ended up seeing the movie for free and ending up with 3 free tickets to any movie until 2018. It's a long story.

I'll give Suicide Squad one thing – they knew how to advertise that movie, even if much of it was totally misguiding and (ironically for WB) sort of a Wile E. Coyote trap set down to lure in viewers. The add series showcased all the characters individually, almost in a “collect them all” sort of fashion, getting people interested in the diverse cast and oddball personalities of each character. The bright, psychedelic motif with the graffiti info cards used in the advertising made the movie look like it was going to be a stylish, wacky fun time. They certainly knew how to set up merchandising with this one.

Well, I guess the best place to start with a movie that banked all of its advertising on the cast is the characters. Boy, they sure introduced a hell of a lot. This movie, with characters, as well as many other places, bit off WAY more than it could chew. Some characters were done pretty good. I thought Will Smith, while not exactly anything like the character from the original source material, did a really good job with his performance. He was emotional when he needed to be, and even funny at times. I liked Deadshot. He was my favorite part, and being that he was pretty much the main character, that's not too shabby. However, there are A LOT of other characters to discuss here, so let me break them down one by one.

RICK FLAG – Despite getting close to no hype during the advertising to this movie, Rick Flag is honestly really the second main character of the film. We get A LOT of screen time with him, the main plot circles around him almost through the entire movie, he's got a heavy connection to the main villain, and the most focused story arc of the film is Deadshot and Flag going from completely hating one another to gaining a certain respect and understanding for the other. The only problem with Flag is, well, he's boring. You have a cast of clowns, alligator-men and fire demons and we're focusing most of our time on a bland soldier with a cookie-cutter personality (might as well been the marine guy from the 2014 Godzilla) and close to no unique abilities or traits. The film even portrays him as a failure as a soldier multiple times who needs saving from the Squad. Why would he be so high in command if a bunch of untrained prisoners and nameless soldiers under his lead perform more efficiently?

HARLEY QUINN – One of two characters who totally hogged the promotion of this film, Harley's that Batman character who just kinda came out of nowhere in the 90s and recently just completely took over the franchise. Go to any con and you'll see at least 10 Harley cosplays within 5 minutes. Originating as a simple 1 time character for the animated series, Harley has somehow exploded into, quite possibly, the most popular comic book character of this decade. I kind of feel Quinn and Deadpool have reigned as the two most popular comic characters for years now. Guys all go gaga over Harley, and girls all want to be Harley. As for me... I kind of never liked her. Her original story was pretty good and all, but I never liked how she not only took over Batman after not being in it for over 50 years, but also that a classic character like the Joker was completely changed forever after that. Now, the biggest part of the Joker everybody features is his relationship with Harley. I also just find it sick how people glorify the domestic abuse and torture that goes on with them. Their story is supposed to be scary and twisted. Joker's supposed to be a horrible guy for doing what he does to her, and she's supposed to be tragic and hopelessly pathetic for clinging to such a piece of trash, but Harley fans, a great deal of them being female themselves, love this “relationship” and glorify the “mad love” bullshit, ultimately idolizing Harley. If you idolize Harley Quinn, you've got fucking issues. I also find her kind of obnoxious.

Any way, enough of my thoughts on the character in general, how was Margot Robbie's performance as Dr. Quinzel? People were raving about her portrayal even before the film came out. Well, it's honestly not too bad. Like I previously stated, I'm not too crazy about the character or her lore/connection to other characters – but I don't HATE her, she's still OK – but Robbie does a pretty good job of pulling off the character. She does the whole obnoxious “I'm a little kid, heehee” act that I never liked, but she also shows the serious and troubled side of Harley pretty well. Her trademark Harley Brooklyn accent, which I didn't think she had in the trailers, comes and goes at complete random. Really, her accent is so inconsistent I'd swear she only made it in the re-shoot scenes. Generally, I'd say Harley was simply OK. Not bad, but her backstory and character building was very scattered and presented in a very random and unorganized fashion, like the rest of this movie. Also, being that she's supposed to live for the Joker, they sure made her get over his supposed death fast. I know she was acting like she wasn't sad to keep up her image, but she should have been so destroyed that she didn't care about her image anymore. Harley should completely lose it if the Joker were to die. It's like even she was saying “oh well, we all know he's not dead. He'll show up again later with no explanation”.

JOKER – I hate this Joker. Seriously. Over-acting up the butt. He talks like he's Jim Carey in Liar Liar with 'the claw”. With every little facial movement and line Leto is just pushing the “I'm so insaaaane” bullshit so hard, it's incredibly cringe-inducing. Whether he's shooting people for seemingly no reason, massaging dude's faces like he's Silva in Skyfall, or, for whatever reason, spending hours setting up 50 knives in a perfect circle around him and then pretending to make a snow angel in the middle of them, he's just being unbearably hammy and embarrassing. I find it funny that people still won't stop poking fun at hammy performances like Dennis Hopper in Super Mario Bros., an movie that knew what it was and was never meant to be taken seriously at all, but then with DC films, which are all gritty as fuck, usually trying to portray social and political commentary, die-hard fans pretend the over-the-top performances of most of their characters are perfectly OK. The Joker really doesn't “joke” at all, and is more or less a California mob boss whose answer to everything is just “shoot everybody” while doing a pitiful, honking “laugh” that's about as scary as Ernie's laugh from Sesame Street. The biggest crime of all with this character, though, is the false advertising used with him. The trailers showed SO MUCH Jared Leto, even a handful of shots that were never even in the movie. They even marketed Harley and he as the main characters while one is more like the third most important, and the other is practically just a cameo. The advertising involving Leto's Joker was a dirty way to just popularize on the character and fill theater seats with asses through lies.

BOOMERANG – Advertised as the “comic relief” character, Boomerang, despite being a classic SS member, is, let's be honest, totally out-classed and worthless on the team. There isn't really too much to his character other than he's a beer-guzzler, he wants out, and there's this really random, un-explored joke that he loves pink unicorns (???). I don't know if this was a “brony” joke or something, but it just felt so unneeded and forced. No other character ever acknowledges this, it never leads to any actual jokes, there's never an explanation for it, and we barely even see enough of it. Somebody really needs to clue the writers in on how to write jokes. It's not a joke if there's no lead in and no punch-line or build up. You can't just throw it in for three quick scenes you could miss by blinking that he keeps a plush pink unicorn in his coat without doing anything with it. Making one of the other characters see it in the bar scene and just be like “what the fuck is that?” could have been hilarious, especially if there was a funny, ridiculous explanation for it given by Boomerang after that, but, nope, never acknowledged, explored, introduced, or explained. “It's funny because it's weird, right?” The character also fights the whole movie for freedom from the Squad, bails out on the team at the bar scene, then, with no explanation at all, is just back the next scene. Again, why explain?

KILLER CROC – Was he in the movie? Really? He was? Yeah, you wouldn't think you could miss or forget a big, mutated crocodile-man, but Suicide Squad finds a way. No explanation as to how he is what he is. Why give a backstory to a gator mutant living in the sewers in a cinematic world that the creators describe as “much more grounded in reality than Marvel”? He's just a mutated croc man. Nuff said, I guess. He has about 5 lines in the film, most of which just amount to “hey guys, I'm black”. Apparently they figured “Let's not bother writing him lines or story, let's just make a couple jokes about his ethnicity and move on”. Aside from Deadshot and Harley Quinn, all the other member's backstory rundowns get shorter, shittier, and more void of any real purpose or explanation. It's more or less “here's more characters to go by Funko POP Vinyls of”. Unless my memory is serving me wrong, I believe we never even get to see Killer Croc take a bite out of anything. What a waste.

DIABLO – Again, a character who could have been good had he been focused on more and fleshed out. When we do get his true backstory later in the film, despite it being a pretty good and tragic story, it's just portrayed in such a caricature-esque way, all hammy and cheesy, that it's hard to take seriously, and when he turned into a flaming, 10ft Odolwa, I kind of felt they needed some MAJOR explanation. You can't just have a character turn into a giant flaming skeleton with a headdress with no explanation at all.

SLIPKNOT – Who? The guy who had no lines, no intro cinematic, no backstory, and the shittiest description of a skill ever. It was insultingly forward of them to introduce this guy the way they did. He was there solely to be killed in two seconds and for no good reason, really. They at least could have waited until the enemies attacked to have him flee and get killed. Nope. He dies as soon as the mission starts. Boomerang tells him they should escape, he smiles like “duh, yeah, me escape, good idea, huh huh” then instantly gets killed to be an example to the others. Lame. He was only in here to up the character count and sell more shit.

KATANA – Shoe-horned in for no reason halfway through the film, she's explained as the one who has to keep an eye on the Squad and make sure they don't run away... which is already the job of Amanda Waller and Flag, as shown earlier with the whole pointless Slipknot scene, making this character EVEN MORE pointless. While I don't think she is a bad character, she had no reason to be in this movie other than more marketing, and she has little to no screen time. There's a brief, 20 second explanation of her husband being killed, then at some point she's crying on her sword and “talking to her husband”, explaining that her sword is Shang Tsung. No other background or explanation. She only speaks Japanese, and even then, barely ever. She really has no interaction with any cast member. Gotta love how even when the katana weapon saves the day, it's in the hands of Harley Fucking Quinn and not Katana herself.

AMANDA WALLER – One of the better portrayals, Viola Davis' depiction of Waller is pretty spot on and intimidating, but her actions are kind of random and illogical at some times. The fact that she put together the Squad in the first place was backed up with pretty bad reasoning, but, luckily for her, it somehow worked out and a disaster caused by 'meta-humans” happened to burst out the next week.

ENCHANTRESS – Talk about false advertising, Enchantress was marketed as a member of the Squad since the film's first ad, yet she becomes the lead villain only minutes into the film. She's pretty void of personality and honestly terribly explored for not only such an interesting concept, but also for the film's main antagonist. We see a rushed, vague intro of her at the beginning, then she quickly becomes the villain, brings back her brother who looks like the Destroyer from Thor, then starts turning the city into Puddy People (she even looks like the new Rita Repulsa). She spends most of her screen time belly dancing in place and talking with horribly rendered voice-overs that sound like an evil version of Rosie from the Jetsons spewing the same “I am the all powerful god who will consume your world with this device” trash we've heard in every super hero movie and Saturday morning cartoon ever. We also get a ridiculous ending where the girl she's embodying (Flag's girlfriend) isn't dead after being impaled on a katana somehow and just peels through the Enchantress skin like she was just cosplaying or something. Super cheesy way to make a happy ending when there really can't be one. I also felt that such a super-natural, major, over-the-top type of enemy isn't what the Suicide Squad should have been fighting. Such a monumental, Earth-saving threat should be saved for Justice League members.

There were other characters on top of all of those, mostly all just being crammed in as an attempt to “build” their cinematic universe, like Batman and Flash, not really getting how to do it properly. Flash shows up for two seconds in Boomerang's quick montage at the beginning with no description or introduction at all. These movies seriously are only being made for people who have extensive comic knowledge. Sure, the Flash is generally recognized, but you haven't introduced him fully yet. That's not how character building works. You can't just show a guy's face a couple times then expect that everybody now knows him once Justice League rolls around. Casual movie goers are going to be so confused when they see this, and even those who know the Flash will just be saying “well that served no purpose”. The characters, by LARGE, are pitifully realized in this movie. Lots of their scenes were clearly chopped up and removed in the re-shoots and edits, and the bulk is only there to sell merchandise and quickly attempt to establish a large count of characters in their universe early on in the cheapest way possible. Despite the film marketing itself as an ensemble cast, it's really just Deadshot, Flag, and Quinn, accompanied by a shit ton of background characters.

So, as for the story, it's just like the character development – chopped up, rushed, and poorly explained. It's the same story that's been done in 1,000 super hero movies – evil person makes a device that opens a portal of evil to try and take over the world. The plot barely even gets discussed until the last 40 minutes, though, as the rest of the film doesn't know what it wants to focus on. We get random flashbacks that are irrelevant to the main plot and don't get explored or shared with other characters, we get qualities in characters that never come into play, and we get characters who never even come into play. The scenes are shot and paced so quickly and randomly. It really just feels like you're watching a series of promotional trailer clips all sloppily glued together for 2 hours. Things are shown without telling the audience what they are out of assumption that they know, like the Flash and Joker Serum, and the cast never really interacts much with each other, making it feel less like a team and rather a bunch of random people who happen to be fighting relatively close to one another. Somehow simple explosives and swords constantly kill spiritual entities and destroy dark magic energy, Flag, for whatever reason, was conveniently carrying a wad of Deadshot's daughter's letters on him just in the rare case that he and Deadshot would reach an emotional understanding, as well as lugging around a “top secret” folder that lists all the organizers' horrible plans like “Flag's boning Enchantress” (still don't really get why that was as big a deal as it was), and Batman's a fucking DICK. Showing up to fight and arrest somebody in front of their 8 year old daughter and then saying “I don't want to do this in front of your daughter” yet still continuing to fight and arrest them is a super dick move.

So, from a pacing, organization, character, and plot standpoint I'd say this movie's pretty terrible. There are some decent things, though. For one, the visuals aren't bad. The shadowy effects with Enchantress look quite badass, and the costumes and makeup were done beautifully. The weird Puddy People looked pretty damn fake, but most of the CG was good. Sadly, despite being marketed as extremely colorful and bright, many scenes still just paint a boring, dark, dreary city with little to no color. More color than previous DC films, but still generally lackluster aside from the cast. I do appreciate the handful of actor-executed stunts, too. So the visuals, I'd say, get a decently good rating, which they should since 90% of this movie is music videos.

Speaking of the music, boy do they try hard to win you over with the soundtrack. Every second the film is playing a wildly popular song from the past, most of which are from the 60s or 70s (likely trying to copy Guardians of the Galaxy, which not only didn't play nearly as many songs and paced them appropriately, but also had a reasoning for them with the Awesome Mix tape). This movie is starting up another pop song every minute, seemingly trying to pretend the movie's more fun and bouncy than it is and sell soundtrack albums. The movie may be a tad more comedy-centric than the other DC films, but it isn't nearly as light and fun as the constant pop songs try to pretend it is. The music mostly feels forced and out of place. But, boy, it tries. Creedence, The Animals, Rick James, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Eminem, Queen... it is constantly dishing out those super-platinum hits you've heard in billions of movies to date. Although it seemed like a cheap attempt to make the movie more fun, it at least had my foot tapping the whole time.

Suicide Squad has A LOT of problems. It's marketing was totally fake and misleading, it's writing was sloppy and inconsistent, half the cast was worthless, and it was clearly two entirely different 2 hour films chopped up and spliced together at the last minute. The idea had a lot of potential, but like with all of DC's cinematic universe films so far, WB's just trying too hard to flesh out dozens of characters too early in their library. This movie begs to follow a solo Batman film focusing on Joker and Harley, and possibly other films. There was way too much to successfully flesh out in 2 hours. The movie's a mess, it's written terrible, and any glimmer of potential it had with some characters and concepts only makes the lack of utilizing said potential even worse for the film. I would strongly suggest avoiding it in theaters. This is the kind of movie you only throw on in the background at parties when nobody's paying too much attention.

And just to let any angry commenters know, no, I don't hate DC. I actually like DC's properties quite a lot, which only makes how much I despise these recent DC films all the more painful. I would love to see a DC film series done well. It doesn't have to be Marvel's formula, I'm totally down for it being its own thing, but let that thing actually have some standards and care put into it. Don't be different just to be different, and don't blindly rip-off Marvel without fully getting why they do what they do. Shameless after credit scenes that say nothing other then "there's a Justice League movie coming" after you already told us about the movie years ago, already told us the teased characters were going to appear in it, and already teased the same characters in the last movie. I don't even want WB to step up their game. I just want their current universe to crash and burn so they can start fresh and a new with new and more practical directors.