Friday, February 3, 2017

Staying Positive: Suicide Squad

by Adam Thas
To me, a bad movie with is one with too many holes to plug. At it’s very core it’s flawed and if you had a time machine and could fix just a few things, there still would be no way to fix it. Suicide Squad isn’t one of those movies. I genuinely believe that if you went back and changed a few things, Suicide Squad would work enough to deflect a lot of the hate that is being hurled at it. Don’t get me wrong: it deserves a lot of the hate, but for all the things it’s doing wrong, it is doing some key things right. So let’s talk about what works in Suicide Squad.

First and foremost, it’s got two solid leads. I know the argument is that it’s an ensemble movie and it doesn’t take the time to get to know all of them. I’ve heard multiple times in reviews that “Suicide Squad didn’t need ______ character” and that is a very accurate critique, but my argument is “who cares?” I don’t. Suicide Squad really has two stars: Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Will Smith as Deadshot, and they’re both doing exactly what you hired them to do. Will Smith is his charismatic self and Robbie is sexy and fun, setting the bar rather high for such an iconic character that we’ve never seen played in movies before. They work, and character wise they’re also the focus. I want to watch both of them on screen and Suicide Squad gives them plenty of screen time.
I don’t really buy the “pointless character” bit because it feels that’s a pile-on. Suicide Squad has bigger things to worry about than too many people; it’s like me getting upset with The Hunt for Red October because I didn’t get to know the ship's lead engineer. The engineer plays a part, but all I need to know is that he plays a part. If your leads are working, who cares that Killer Croc didn’t get enough screen time? In fact, I’ll argue that Suicide Squad actually did the opposite by trying to give them any character beats at all. Stick Katana in the back, let her slice up some guys. I don’t need to know about her fiancé.

Suicide Squad also gets the tone right. DC has taken the “dark” road when it comes to their movies. It works, but more times it doesn’t. Superman is not a dark character and those movies fail as a result. However, it works for the Batman movies and it’s spot on for the Suicide Squad. While I do think that a more lighthearted version could be done, the honest truth is that Marvel did it better with Guardians of the Galaxy so going in a different direction seems right. Besides, Harley Quinn and Deadshot need to be in a dark movie. They thrive there in the comics and it feels genuine when it’s on screen. Along these lines, the characters look great -- okay, maybe not Killer Croc, but the design on Harley, Deadshot, El Diablo, and Boomerang work for the mood of the film. El Diablo looks pretty great in Suicide Squad but would feel out of place fighting in the airport with the Avengers. The mood, tone, and design all are working in the same direction.
I’m with the movie for about 75% of it. Yeah, I’ve got issues, but nothing so big I can’t excuse. The stuff in the prison works, the things with the government works, and they set up Enchantress as a viable villain. The stakes seem high enough that when things actually get moving, I was actually awaiting a showdown. I like that Enchantress has minions. I mean, she kind of needs to. Suicide Squad needs something to fight something to prove why they are considered important enough to warrant their own team, so allowing them to flex their muscles on a bunch of nothing characters is fine. I think my only gripe with these minions is that they look stupid. I know they probably didn’t just want some zombies running around, but it doesn’t work. It really feels like they were chained to wanting a PG-13 rating, which is actually a failure in not paying attention rather than execution. I’ve seen World War Z and The Walking Dead is on basic cable, so it’s pretty clear that Suicide Squad could have gotten away with a lot more than dumb looking minions that crumble.

Watching Suicide Squad, I felt that a lot of it paralleled the first X-Men movie. X-Men has a few solid leads with background characters as filler where they attempt to give them some character beats. The way characters were introduced and played out for a majority of the movie is very similar in both movies. Where the two movies separate is the villain. Suicide Squad sets everything up for a great final showdown but overstuffs the end to where it becomes nonsense. With Magneto, I understood him, I understood what he stood for and what he was doing. I have no idea what is happening at the end of Suicide Squad. I don’t know what the machine the Enchantress is making is or what’s going to really happen when she finally completes it. It can be argued that she feels like too much for the Suicide Squad, but Guardians of the Galaxy did the same thing with Ronan and made it work by driving home the theme of “The group is stronger the the individual.” The only other semblance of a villain in the movie is The Joker, who, while I don’t have the same venom for Leto’s interpretation that others do, serves more to create another movie (that I don’t really care to see) than to do anything. I actually would have liked to have seen The Joker used the same way they used Batman in Suicide Squad -- as this side character with enough information given for us to want to see more of it.
I can’t recommend Suicide Squad to anyone. I wouldn’t even put it in the “fine” category because it really falls apart at the end. I do think, though, that it doesn’t deserve a lot of the hate that it’s getting. It’s overstuffed and has some bad guy issues, but these are easy fixes for Suicide Squad because at the very core it’s working and I’m interested enough in its main characters to want to see more. I don’t know if Suicide Squad is one of the worst movies of the year. One of the most disappointing movies? Absolutely.


  1. "It can be argued that [Enchantress] feels like too much for the Suicide Squad, but Guardians of the Galaxy did the same thing with Ronan and made it work."

    Ah, but the Guardians weren't hand-picked by a respected and powerful career clandestine operations leader; they just happened to come together. ;)

    And for those with 35 minutes to spare, an obvious Mirror Universe iteration of Mr. Bromley has devoted an entire video essay to dissecting the movie's terrible editing.

  2. Personally Suicide Squad didn't work for me at all, but I feel the same way you feel about it towards Batman V Superman. I too wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but I think the Batman and Wonder Woman stuff mostly works, the opening is great, and the movie is only boring for the final fight. I've only seen it once, and only ever will see it once, but I think people were a bit harsh on it.

  3. Adam accurately surmises my feelings about Suicide Squad, a movie-- like Batman V. Superman-- that I genuinely enjoy. It's a mess, but a mess I find entertaining in the stretches of running time it manages to make work. As a fan of both DC comics and David Ayer, I found the film to be a fun, junk food interpretation of the comics. (Which-- by the way-- is source material that I've never found to be particularly great and, like the movie, frequently suffers from being overstuffed and hazily plotted.)

    Thanks Adam for making me feel a little less embarrassed about my secret feels for Suicide Squad!