Suicide Squad Pictures

May has not been a very good month for the blog, mainly because I have decided that I need to watch Age of Ultron twice before writing a good review for it, a review you all deserve. On top of that, I'm almost done with my post about SHIELD which is pretty long. Hopefully that ends up making sense.

But the worst of it all is the fact that I have a 30 page thesis due at the end of the month and I will most likely be working on that for the majority of the month. 

However, I did want to give you a little bit of something since it is May and I haven't written anything yet. 

Luckily, a few pictures have come out recently for the movie coming after Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad. 

Now I've talked a little bit about Suicide Squad before. 

I've talked about the casting, especially the all star cast this movie has like Jared Leto as the Joker, Margo Robbie as Harley Quinn. Will Smith as Deadshot. Tom Hardy as Rick Flag. 

Well there's been some news since, recasting, pictures, the works, and I thought I'd give an update on the project, and my thoughts on it. 

Well, Tom Hardy has left the project and been replaced by Joel Kinnaman. I don't know anything about Kinnaman so I can't really say this is a good thing or a bad thing. Obviously its a bummer to lose Tom Hardy but I'm not worried quite yet.

And then there's a picture of Will Smith as Deadshot.

Now this picture is from the set, its out of context. Its not even totally confirmed that this is his

costume for the film. And honestly, even if it is. I'm not really bothered by it.

I don't know anything about Deadshot. I don't know if this is true to the character or not but frankly I don't care.

This kind of looks like Will Smith is going to be playing a badass character. If Deadshot goes around in a leather jacket and a cool hat. That's awesome, as long as the character is good. Which I think Will Smith could do for all of us.

So this picture comes out, I don't have much of a problem with it.

Now I'm not totally sure if this image came out before or after the image that I'm going to show you next but for the narrative sake, I'm going to say that it did.

Now for a while, there were hints and teases at what Jared Leto as the Joker may look like in this film. His role in the team was still pretty vague. The only things we saw was the fact that Jared Leto got a haircut. And honestly, I don't write on an actor getting a haircut, the same reason I didn't make an entire post on the picture of Jesse Eisenberg just because he shaved his head and looked a little menacing. That's not telling me anything about the charater or what he's actually going to look like in the movie.

This on the other hand does.

Now there's been a lot of mixed thoughts on this image. Its obviously an homage to a classic Joker picture but is it a good representation of the Joker. 

Well first I would say, its a picture Though its a better representation of the character than Jared Leto showing us that he got his hair cut, we still don't know exactly what Jared Leto is going to exactly look like as the Joker. 

But my initial reaction is, I like it. 

You can tell that this Joker is without a doubt demented. Sure the forehead tattoo damaged is a little bit obvious and there's a really funny scene to imagine as you envision the joker showing up to a tattoo shop saying I want HaHa written multiple times and Damaged written on my forehead. 

There's even a great video giving a funny representation of that. 

But all that aside, I do like it. I don't know exactly how Jared Leto is going to play this Joker, I don't know where its going to rank in the incarnations of the Joker that have come out already, but if there is any indication from this picture and David Ayer's movies in the past, there is a very good chance that this Joker is going to be one sick mother fucker. And that I am looking forward to seeing. 

Again, we don't really know the role that the Joker is going to have in the actual Suicide Squad, is he going to be a member of it? Is he going to have more of a Hannibal Lector role as they use him to hunt down a bigger threat, or is he going to be the threat? Who knows?

So the Joker, for me, looks cool. Yeah its not the best image, but I have faith that its going to turn out really well. So what does that mean for the rest of the film? Why haven't we seen anything of the actual Suicide Squad...

Well shit...

Well... that's something isn't it? 

Here's the thing. I love seeing images from movies. Especially the first images of characters that I've never seen on film before. We've never seen Harley Quinn on screen before, its great to see her. We've never seen Killer Croc actualized. We've never seen the Suicide Squad totally formed before for their own film. (I've heard they're on Arrow but I don't count that)

So why do I feel  nothing when I look at this picture? 

DC has said on record that their movies will set themselves apart from the Marvel films. DC films will be more serious, darker, and have a more gritty tone to them. And I say, more the merrier. (or not merrier) I think that's a great way to distinguish the two. Especially with the tone set in Man of Steel, the characters in the DC universe are being set up more like Greek Gods rather than comic book heroes.

Now I by no means want the Suicide Squad to brighten up a little bit. I think if they're headed for a dark gritty version of them, that's totally fine. 

But think about this for a second. 

Regardless of your thoughts on Man of Steel, no matter how dark and "realistic" that movie tried to

be, at the end of the day, you saw Superman. You saw a guy dressing up in a cape and blue tights fighting bad guys.

No matter how realistic the movie tried, and in my opinion, succeeded at creating a serious film, the fact of the matter is that there still is an element of fiction embedded in Man of Steel. You're still taking about an alien from a different planet.

And that's a good thing. The movie can be serious but at the end of the day, you're still dealing with the property of a comic book. The subject matter is going to be a little goofy. Its all in the execution that says whether or not I'm able to take this goofy image seriously, or if I'm going to think it looks dumb.

I think I may have repeated myself a couple times, but I liked the feeling that Man of Steel gave me that I wasn't watching just a comic book movie, I was watching a serious movie about something unexplainable. Something totally different.

Now I hope that's the case for Suicide Squad. I think David Ayer is going to take a similar route in showing us characters and the unnatural that just happen to resemble comic book characters. But the biggest problem I have with this picture of the Suicide Squad is that I don't feel that slight comic book taste that I felt from Man of Steel.

While Man of Steel is very much a different kind of comic book film, its still very comic book like. I feel as though this image of the Suicide Squad doesn't have enough of that comic book flair I'm looking for. 

The main concern I have is in Harley Quinn. 

Harley is probably the whackiest character of all the characters shown in the picture and her colors

are very muted. She's doesn't look like she's a comic book character, she looks like a groupie in this weird metal rock band.

Don't get me wrong, I think if anybody was going to play Harley Quinn, Margot Robbie is probably the best choice. And the picture to the left is much more of an assurance of how she's going to look than the picture above. Maybe I just had something impossible to put on screen in mind, but there's something about her that doesn't feel like Harley Quinn. It feels more like she's the obligatory female character in a biker gang or worse, she looks like she's the Harley Quinn in a Suicide Squad cosplay group.

And that's the strange part about all the costumes from Suicide Squad. A common complaint I've heard about it all, from this picture to the picture on the Joker is that these costumes look more like costumes made for Cosplayers rather than actual costumes for a Suicide Squad movie.

Now even as I'm writing this, I am thinking back to Man of Steel. The fact that that movie was less of a comic book and more of a science fiction film that had a slight resemblance to Superman was actually part of the reason I liked it. And that might be the feeling throughout the DC universe.

Maybe the DC universe will be one that will feel more like movies rather than comic books. And I'm one hundred percent fine with that, if they are good movies.

And that brings me back to the main point of all of this. These are just pictures. I think studios have

gotten wise in that they are smart enough to show us what these characters look like, get feedback and change certain things that can be changed, if they need to be changed.

And as for the comic book feel, I think there are a few hints towards that, especially with Will Smith in the Deadshot mask. I've heard complaints that he's holding the rifle with his right hand although the cool red deadshot eye is his left eye which doesn't really make sense if he's going to use that eye for being super accurate, but again. Its just a freakin picture.

Its still very early to say whether or not DC is doing the right thing with their more serious, more gritty, more dark road they're taking their movies on. I think its a move that makes sense. And again, as long as these movies are good, I don't care if hold any resemblance to the comics. Its how DC is going to distinguish themselves and if it works, they should keep doing it.

The bottom line though is that I'm cautious of The Suicide Squad.

The concept of the film sounds really interesting. The idea of taking a bunch of criminals, DC villains at that, and putting them into a team with the purpose of sending them on suicide missions in order to lessen jail time, sounds awesome. The idea of the Joker coming back in this new DC universe excites me a lot.

But the costumes for these guys had better translate better on screen and the story had beetter be good. Otherwise, we run the risk of this just being a repeat of David Ayer's Sabotage with bad cosplayers. And I really hated Sabotage.

And that's it. When I grabbed the link for Sabotage I saw this picture from that post.

See a little bit of a resemblance?

Does this not worry anybody else? Comment and Discuss below, let me know what you think. Also follow me on Twitter @cmhaugen24 to get updates on movie news and reviews.

I'll leave you with this. When in doubt, find a loosely related Cracked video. Enjoy!