Suicide Squad (2016)


Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are the cornerstones of DC, and the major mistakes that Warner Bros. made with the DCCU were writ large on a number of the films featuring those characters, as were the hints of good ideas behind a number of them.  Too many were bloated, mind-numbing failures, full of bad green-screen effects and half-cooked ideas.  Worst of all there were way too many people involved in watering every idea down as executives wanted to play it safe at every turn. 

That is where Suicide Squad stumbled and ultimately revealed and solidified all the problems with the DC Cinematic Universe.  The horrible mess Joss Whedon made out of Justice League may be a grand example because of the hell he put the actors through, but there is no better place to look than David Ayer's attempts to bring one of the more interesting comic book concepts to the big screen, only for he and everyone involved to drop the ball so hard that the foundation under the franchise began to crumble. 

Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) proposes that, in case the next Superman that shows up is not so friendly, that the United States has to help protect the world.  To do this she proposes using the most dangerous criminals they have in custody: Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Slipknot (Adam Beach).  They are fitted with trackers that can allow Waller or their handler Rick Flag (Joel Kinneman) to kill them if they try to escape or get out of hand.  Flag also has a Japanese superhero named Katana (Karen Fukuhara) to help keep them in line.

The problem is the plan goes awry almost immediately.  At the top of the group is to be the Enchantress (Cara Delvingne), a magic user that has possessed the body of archaeologist June Moone, with whom Flag has become involved.  Enchantress is able to free her brother and the two of them form a plan to create a machine that will destroy all of humanity.  With the world in danger the Suicide Squad must activate sooner than expected and, to make matters worse, the Joker (Jared Leto) is seeing their furlough as a chance to get his girlfriend back. 

This should have been a lot of fun.  With Harley Quinn as one of the featured villains this movie, in fact, should have been hilarious.  For proof, there is the second sequel to it, The Suicide Squad, that was everything this movie should have been.  Instead, as with too much of the DCCU, Ayer and everyone involved went for grim and edgy, and it just doesn't work.  They needed bright and campy, with good writing and, above all, an R rating.  Instead, it's PG-13, pretty much neutering any violent content. 

Even worse, the only ones trying to do anything decent in the movie are Magot Robbie and Jay Hernandez.  The latter puts as much into Diablo as possible.  I'm sure much more was lost in editing, but there is a realistic and tragic backstory to him that reveals the dark side of having the powers.  There is also a reveal toward the end about why he is so strong.  He should have been the lead rather than Deadshot, but instead he's shunted off to the side, as is Harley Quinn for the most part.  Her origin, as the Joker's psychiatrist who fell madly in love with him, is touched on but never properly explored either.  Same can be said for the Enchantress.  Other than she's here and she's mad another potential villain with thousands of years of a past is just treated as an end boss and nothing more. 

As for Jared Leto as the Joker, I don't really find him as annoying as I expected.  The trailers for the movie, making him look like a bass player in a rap-rock band, didn't help.  That look is only a small part and, unfortunately, the Joker ended up only being a small part after being pushed as a major character in the movie.  Pretty much no one likes Jared Leto in the first place, considering him a bit of a joke for his silly method acting stunts, and it seemed like including him was just a stunt in itself that the studio ultimately decided not to pursue. 

As for the other members of the squad the same mistakes are made.  We are given a long opening with descriptions of each one by Waller and scenes with each character that tell us pretty much nothing, other than Killer Croc likes water and Deadshot has a daughter.  It's more of an excuse to give us cameos by Batman (Ben Affleck) and the Flash (Ezra Miller), although neither figure into anything else that happens in the movie.  

To make matters worse for Suicide Squad, Deadpool came out the same year.  On much less of a budget it proved that everything this movie didn't do would have worked.  More than any other movie in the franchise this is the one that it didn't come back from as it proved that no one, from the executives at Warner Bros. on down, knew what to do with the characters or the material they had the rights to.  Despite a few decent films here and there the DCCU began to die a slow, agonizing death. 

Suicide Squad (2016)
Time: 123 minutes
Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinneman, Viola Davis, Jay Hernandez, Jared Leto, Cara Delavingne
Director: David Ayer

 

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