Fans and critics have been split on the newest DC Comics movie, ‘Suicide Squad,’ since its release. Hardcore DC fans have showered the film with praise, going as far as to call it a “masterpiece”, while critics have been almost unanimously down on the movie, being quick to point out its flaws.
After the travesty that was ‘Batman Vs. Superman’ (BvS) DC really needed to rebound and put out a good movie. The main problems with BvS were that none of the characters seemed fully developed, some of the scenes dragged on for what seemed like forever and a lot of the writing was clumsy and awkward. DC really needed to avoid these issues in “Suicide Squad’, which they did, but only for about 30 minutes.
‘Suicide Squad’ actually starts off pretty strong, the introductory portion when all the characters are being introduced was extremely entertaining, it was probably my favorite part of the whole thing. However, when the best part of a two-hour movie comes in the first five minutes, that does not bode well for the rest of the film. The movie quickly fell into BvS territory where characters just stopped developing, the dialogue between the characters started feeling really forced and non-coherent and the last two-thirds of the movie felt like it was all one big, long scene.
When I say that the characters stopped developing, I mean that it felt like the movie just gave viewers the bare minimum in terms of exposition for each character and then expected us to just accept everything that they did without letting us know their motivations. Will Smith, playing Deadshot, basically played the same character he plays in every movie where he’s a deadpan, wise-cracking action hero with the only motivation this time around being wanting to see his daughter. Margot Robbie was good, but Harley Quinn as a character felt lazy. She was basically just there to deliver a punchline once in a while, and a lot of her actions seems illogical, but I guess when the screenwriter describes their character as “insane” they just have her do whatever they want, regardless if it makes sense or not. Diablo (Jay Hernandez) was probably the most developed of the bunch and I actually felt like I knew why he was doing what he was doing most of the time, which was rare for this move. The other members of the Suicide Squad; Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Katana (Karne Fukuhara) had very little screen time and the viewers learned next to nothing about each of them. I did not really understand what the villains were trying to do and the government people who were supposed to be in charge of everything, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), just felt plain incompetent the whole time.
My biggest gripe with this movie is how half way through it started to feel like one big, dragged out scene. It’s hard to explain without seeing the movie, but basically the characters stayed in the same setting, with the same lighting and color pallete, doing basically the same thing pretty much for the last hour or so of screen time. BvS did that too, but I actually think it was a bigger problem in ‘Suicide Squad’. Stuff like that just makes the film uninteresting and viewers really lose focus as to what is happening because everything looks the same and it feels like the characters are not making any progress.
These are the reasons why I, along with a lot of critics, did not like this movie, but now I will try to explain why some fans liked this movie so much. Fans who have read the comics and know the characters already do not care if the movie fully explains the characters, because the comics already did that for them, they do not care if the writing is bad as long as the characters sound like they do in the comics and they do not care if they see the same thing for half the movie because all they want to see is their favorite characters do what they do in the comics.
I think DC fans have been a little jealous of how well recent Marvel movies have done and how people have really only talked about the Marvel superheroes since those movies started coming out. They were probably extremely anxious to see their own favorite characters on the big screen and for people to be talking about the comics that they like, so they do not care if the movie is objectively good or not, just that the movie got made in the first place. And while we care to argue over whether or not ‘Suicide Squad’ was good or bad we should at least all acknowledge that a movie like this has been a long time coming for DC fans and they should be allowed to enjoy it.
That all being said however, I personally believe that ‘Suicide Squad’ was a below average movie that was extremely forgettable. It did not have any memorable jokes or one-liners, the fight scenes and soundtrack were somewhat bland and ultimately I think this is a movie most people will not want to watch more than once.
