Suicide Squad (Spoiler review)

It’s really interesting how divisive the DC Cinematic Universe movies have been. Man of Steel is personally one of my favorite superhero films, but a lot of people really don’t like it. Batman v Superman is a little less divisive because even hardcore DC fan boys can see the structural issues with it and while I can appreciate the great elements about Batman v Superman, I know it has its problems. And now, Suicide Squad is either loved or hated by fans. I personally really enjoyed it. I realize it’s not a perfect movie, but I had a lot of fun with it and it points towards a really fun future of DC movies coming out soon.

If you look back at Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe today, you might realize that in comparison with the kinds of movies that Marvel is putting out now, they really fail in comparison. You have to look at those movies with history’s perspective and realize we were living in a time when good superhero movies were very few and far between. Even the for sure bad ones like Iron Man 2 managed to give us a spectacle that we couldn’t get from movies like Batman and Robin. This is phase 1 of the DC Cinematic Universe. We’re still getting to know new characters and the fans want the Justice League. I’m not saying there isn’t some blame to be cast on directors and producers, but let’s cut them some slack in our critique, because Marvel was in the same boat, we just had a different lens on in 2008.

However, since this is a Spoiler review, I can rip into some glaring issues this movie has without worrying about spoiling anything. And there are some issues with this film.

The first thing worth mentioning is to continue the conversation I started about world building. And that can be talked about with the Batman and Flash cameos at the beginning. My thoughts, Batman’s cameo was great, The Flash’s was weird. Like I mentioned before, Suicide Squad made you feel like there was a criminal underworld of Gotham being tapped into with this movie. And when Amanda Waller mentioned she made a call to the vigilante of Gotham, that’s creating relationships between the government and Batman, the police and Batman, and its creating a weird dysfunctional family between Batman and his criminal underworld that we really haven’t seen yet on the silver screen yet, at least not as expansive as I think they want to make this universe. So I really liked that.

The Flash cameo didn’t really work for me since I still have no idea what Ezra Miller’s Flash is going to be like. If this is going to be a huge character later, why would you have this be the first time we see him? Especially for people who don’t follow the trailers and even the comic, all they saw was a guy in red standing there and making a quick quip. A Jpeg was not a good enough introduction to that character, we need more set up. On top of that, it would have made more sense to have Batman taking all these guys down because that sets up a vendetta against the Bat with all the characters. The Flash was a pandering fan boy ploy and it felt forced and didn’t fit.

Cameos aside, I did like the first half hour of this movie where they introduced each member of the squad. While I would have liked a little bit more story with characters like Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang, and especially El Diablo, I think they did a good job doing a streamlined introduction of the squad so they could get right into the action. El Diablo especially because he turned out to be a really cool character, I would have just liked to get to know him a little bit more so when he sacrifices himself at the end, I’m more connected to him.

The unfortunate part is, characters got attention and development based on their profitability for future movies. Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Amanda Waller(/Rick Flag), and Joker all got a lot of attention because you're more than likely going to see these characters again. Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc, and Diablo (probably not Diablo though), its 50/50 on whether or not you will see these three ever again so they got less. And Katana, Enchantress, and Slipknot... yeah you're not gonna see those characters again so who cares about their backstory.

First off, poor Adam Beach. He shows up for a hot minute and then gets his head blown off... I'm sure there's deleted scenes with him but again, profitability, screw those developing scenes. EVERYONE called that Slipknot was going to die. And honestly, with the exception of Diablo... I'm actually kind of surprised nobody else bit it.

But what the hell happened with Katana? I honestly forgot she was in this movie because she left so little of an impact. This is a character who obviously has some kind of backstory with her husband being killed and the man who killed him used a sword that steals the souls of its victims (when Flag said that, I thought he was joking or that he was telling a myth about Katana to make them afraid). That in itself is an interesting movie that I really don't think we're going to see. This isn't a huge issue for me as the other characters were done better, I just don't see why they would introduce such an interesting character just to throw her to the side. And then randomly at the end give her something to make it seem like they gave a crap. At least give her the Slipknot treatment and give her a crazy ass death.

But again, these issues aren't that big when you have good interesting characters. The bigger issue with characters isn’t so much how they were individually, its more how they interacted as a team. The thing that bothered me about El Diablo the most wasn’t that he was underdeveloped, it’s the line at the end when he says, I lost one family already, I’m not going to lose another one, referring to the members of Taskforce X… even though they really only met for the first time that day and barely talked enough to be considered even friends.

The same can be said about Deadshot and his relationship with Harley Quinn. There’s the moment when Harley escapes with the Joker and Amanda Waller tells Deadshot to kill her and he misses on purpose. Now at first I thought the moment was bullshit because Waller offered him his freedom and his daughter and Deadshot would never give that up. However, after more thought, I think this was more Deadshot’s distrust of Amanda Waller than it was his friendship with Harley. However, the movie made it seem like Deadshot suddenly had an issue with shooting Harley because they were good buddies after one day of walking around in a city.

Speaking of Amanda Waller, let’s talk about how much of a badass and an asshole she is. Damn. Like I’ve heard of Amanda Waller’s character and I’ve seen her in Arrow, but Viola Davis really pushed it to a whole new level. Like I knew Amanda Waller was bad but I had no idea how bad she could actually be. She is by no means the main villain in this movie but she is an antagonist of the Squad and she is cold. I think Viola Davis was a phenomenal choice for Amanda Waller and just killed it all around.

And if we’re talking about villains, I thought the Enchantress was a decent choice for a villain. The trailers pointed towards her being the villain in a way but at the same time I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of the way they were going to use that character and I think she was marketed very well. I’m don’t think the Enchantress is going to go down as one of the most memorable villains in a superhero film, but I was intrigued by her character and I liked the direction they went with her.

I suppose my one complaint about the Enchantress, besides he weird belly dancing delivery of dialogue, is that they didn’t necessarily need to go as drastic as they did. All the movies in the DCCU have had villains who want to destroy the world and end humanity as we know it. I think it would have maybe fit the movie better to have a more self-contained story with lower stakes and let us get to know the squad better. That of course would require a whole reworking of the script and I didn’t hate the direction they went, but that was a big complaint a buddy of mine had and the more I think about it, I think that probably would have worked better, especially for the first outing of the Suicide Squad.

I don’t think June Moone is a character as she really only has like 4 lines of dialogue, half of them being her just saying, “Enchantress” but I did like the character. I feel like I want to see more of the Enchantress. I’m not sure how likely that is being that she is pretty much dead at the end of the movie, but who knows, they have brought people back like this before. I thought it was very convenient that June Moone just happened to live at the end but hey, Rick Flag needs his love interest.

Speaking of Rick Flag, I thought they handled him very well. They made him a lot more vulnerable of a character than I thought they were going to and to be honest, I’m kind of surprised that he survived the movie. I definitely thought he was going to bite it half way through the movie and surprisingly he didn’t. He was also more interesting than I thought he was going to be. Like I said, he was vulnerable. While the relationship he developed with June Moone was very forced and felt artificial, it didn’t pull away from him as a character. Thinking about it now, I’m picking up on one of the plot holes of the movie. Why did the Enchantress want to capture Rick Flag. They kind of mention that she’s afraid of him… but why? Because he was in love with June Moone? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense but its one of those plot holes that you can kind of look past if the characters and the story is decent enough and I thought that this one was good enough to look past that plot hole.

Like I said in my non-spoiler review, this is Deadshot and Harley Quinn’s movie and I think they were both phenomenal. I really liked the story of Floyd Lawton and his daughter. And from his opening line, Will Smith just brought on the charm and made him one of my favorite characters of the movie. He is however, the real reason I would call this movie a good video game movie. When he’s action posing on the car just shooting faceless minions of the Enchantress, all I could think of was, I wouldn’t mind playing this video game and playing as Deadshot. I do think that Smith brought a lot of heart to a character, even one that kills people for a living. I thought the relationship between Deadshot and Rick Flag was actually pretty good and it just was made better when Flag hugs him at the end and Deadshot is just like, I don’t do hugs dude!

I’m going to do a full post on The Joker and I think I’ll put an in depth look at Harley Quinn with that too, but it should be really clear that I loved Harley Quinn in this movie.  I think her introduction as Harleen Quinzel and the beginning of her relationship with The Joker was done very well because you see the love between the two of them and how the relationship is toxic. I’ll talk more about that in my Joker rant.

But as an individual character, it should be pointed out that Harley is not a bad guy (or gal) who is only dependent on the Joker. She is a very capable and deadly antagonist on her own and I think the relationship with the Joker only strengthens her character. While I would prefer to see a movie with

both the Joker and Harley Quinn because I do like the possibilities that relationship brings for future films, I could see an entire movie being Batman or another villain against Harley Quinn.  She plays crazy well but not to the level where she’s not a sympathetic character. While Harley is by no means a victim, her story is pretty tragic and I am looking forward to them exploring that in the future. This goes for the entire cast, but Margot Robbie in particular is too good of an actress for this to be a one shot deal for her, you will see more of Harley Quinn in future DC movies, mark my words.

Again, I’m going to do a whole post on The Joker, but that will mainly be on his character, how he was written, and the way that Jared Leto decided to play him. As far as spoiler discussion goes, I think Jared Leto was utilized perfectly as the Joker. Like I said in the non-spoiler review, he’s like the wildcard mini boss you fight in the middle of the game who really doesn’t have anything to do with the main story but he’s an obstacle, and The Joker provided a fantastic obstacle for Taskforce X. In this movie, the Joker is more of a gangster with criminal and monetary thoughts in mind. He’s like if Scarface dressed up like a clown and decided to take meth instead of cocaine, and with that in mind, he does have a lot of assets at his disposal that it doesn’t seem like Heath Ledger’s Joker had. Instead of being an agent of chaos, Jared Leto’s Joker is a crime boss. But at the same time, he is psychotic and toxic, especially with his relationship with Harley Quinn that he does these fantastic stunts and jobs in order to save her from her fate.

I loved the scene where they are getting to the pickup helicopter and it’s actually been hijacked by The Joker. His buddy opens up on the squad with a mini gun and Joker calls Harley to join him.  Regardless of any thoughts I have on the performance or how the Joker was written, where he was written into the script was done really well. I was always very pleased when the Joker showed up and it made me wanting more.

Overall, how does Suicide Squad affect the larger DC cinematic universe and what can we expect to happen in result of this movie? DC gave us our first DC end credit scene and it just showed Bruce Wayne getting The Justice League together. It really wasn’t a great scene and its not really worth talking about. The one thing worth talking about is the possibility that the Justice League will one day go up against the Suicide Squad. There’s a couple of points in the movie that could point towards that crossover and I think that would be a lot of fun, especially how dangerous of an individual Amanda Waller is.

Like I mentioned before, Deadshot and Harley Quinn are the center of attention in this movie. I’m convinced one or both of them is going to get their own standalone film and based on how much I enjoyed those two, I am one hundred percent fine with that. And if they don’t get their own standalone films, like I said, this is not the last time you are going to see these characters. Whether they are in their own standalone film or they reappear in the standalone Batman film.

And that’s going to be the movie effected most by this movie, The future solo Batman film. This movie made me excited to see a solo Batman film because lets face it, Batman has the best villains of any superhero ever. Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Deadshot, these are the B-list Batman villains, so I can only imagine what is going to happen when Ben Affleck finally gets that solo Batman script done and we get Batman going up against this Joker and Harley Quinn, or up against Deadshot. Or if he ends up going against all the other villains that are possibilities in a solo Batman flick that we haven’t seen before. If they can make these B-list characters interesting in Suicide Squad, I can’t imagine what they can do with larger villains being the villains in a solo Batman film.

When I figured out that Batman was coming back into the universe set up by Man of Steel, I wanted him to take a little bit of a back seat because I wanted them to focus on other characters. And don’t get me wrong, I still want more expansive movies on the DC universe, Aquaman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, I want all those movies, but this movie has made me really want a new Batman film.

And that kind of goes into the point I was making about how much exposition is in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman and how Suicide Squad is trying to break that mold. One of my favorite parts of the first 30 minutes of this movie was seeing Batman round up these villains and do his street level crime fighting. That is something we haven’t seen yet and we only saw a little bit of it in Suicide Squad. The DC Cinematic Universe needs to tone back the impending apocalypse that is definitely going to happen and bring it back to the basics. I want to see these heroes doing some regular old crime fighting. Sure they can save the world from impending doom, but that doesn’t always need to be the threat.

On top of that, there doesn’t always need to be these existential crises or questions of humanity. Sometimes you can just have some fun and have the good guys fighting the bad guys. And this fight doesn’t need to have huge political repercussions, sometimes they can just happen because one person is a bad guy and one person is a good guy. I don’t know, maybe that’s too simple of a thought, but Suicide Squad is an example of DC trying to break the mold of overly complex story arcs. These complex story arcs and questions were done well in Man of Steel, overthought in Batman v Superman, and now Suicide Squad still is a slave to them, but wants to break free. Let’s follow Suicide Squad’s example and break free and have some fun with the DCCU. I’m looking at you Justice League and Wonder Woman!

And I think they can do that, especially with one character in particular. And that's the Joker...

But that will wait for another post. Those are my spoiler thoughts on Suicide Squad. What did you think of the film? How does it rank within the DCCU? How does it rank among other superhero films? Comment and Discuss below! I want to know what you liked and what you didn’t like. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I’ll leave you with this. One great thing about this movie is that it showed me that Will Smith can have fun making movies still. Here's his thoughts while making the film. Enjoy!