Suicide Squad

⭐⭐½ based on 1 review.

tl;dr: A hot mess. Some great characters, some excellent acting, and some decent parts. But also some terrible characters, some terrible acting, and a terrible plot in general.

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DC HeroesDC: Extended Universe

Review

Spoilers Ahead: My reviews are not spoiler-free. You have been warned.

The Good

  • Diablo. There was no reason for this character to be so well portrayed, acted and scripted but holy hell he was easily the best Squad member.
  • In general, spot-on casting throughout. Harley Quinn was perfect in my book, keeping enough of the cartoon character for my inner fan to be satisfied whilst also being human enough to seem believable. Will Smith did his usual thing and it (largely) worked. Heck, even characters like Killer Croc and Capt. Boomerang somehow seemed realistic (ish) and valuable thanks to their actors. Honestly, I actually enjoyed this film, yet that is almost entirely due to the actors making some poor scripts/direction somehow sparkle. Props to everyone!
  • Twenty One Pilots. Inspired soundtrack!

The Bad

  • The plot could have really used some tightening up. I've seen a lot of people say that they liked the amount of Joker/Harley backstory, whereas I feel it should have been in a different film (more below); others enjoyed Temptress as the big villain, but personally I felt it was a bit of a cop-out.
  • Where were the superheroes? Sure, I have yet to watch BvS but we know there are at least a handful of genuine heroes out there. Batman/Flash may be tied to their respective cities right now but Wonder Woman and Cyborg definitely aren't (right?) so where are they?
  • Diablo dies? Why! He was the best freakin' character here! His backstory actually worked, he as acted impeccably and he was the one core character that was genuinely sympathetic. Plus, we just learnt he was some kind of Mayan/Aztec God? Why would an explosive kill that? For that matter, why would an explosive kill Temptress's brother? There was also nowhere near enough payoff for his sacrifice. Harley gets fake killed whilst double-crossing the Squad and everyone becomes all weepy; Diablo actually sacrifices himself to take out the henchman and they barely care!
  • Guardians of the Galaxy had all of these old rock/pop songs and people loved that, so we'll do the same thing, only we won't actually match the tracks to the tempo or visuals and we'll also constantly hit skip after every 30 seconds or so. That way, we can have three times as many tracks! Sigh...

The Ugly

  • Killer Croc's voice. It appears that what DC learned from the mess that was Nolan's Bane was that all of Batman's rogues gallery, aside from the Joker, should be incomprehensible.
  • Pink Unicorn Fetish. Some executive producer somewhere watched Deadpool, totally missed the point and decided this was what Suicide Squad was missing, didn't they. Or maybe it's those damn manatees at it again...
  • Katana in general. She's a cool character and it was nice of them to at least try and balance out the genders, especially with someone less sexualised, but if you're going to include a character (regardless of gender) you need to actually give them some reason for existing. Her entire plotline was summed up in a couple of asides without any logical reasoning. Why were she friends with Flag? If her main purpose was vengeance, why does she care about Temptress? Why doesn't she kill the Squad for being a mass murderer and all? Why would she ever join them in the bar at the end instead of stick with her supposed friend? What does her sword even do? Is she even a meta-human? Seriously, why is she in this film?
  • Minor point, but what happens to the boomerang in the final fight? The Capt. lobs it at Temptress who teleports it, he then looks around in a panicked manner, setting up the clear punch line that at some point later the boomerang re-materialises and hits someone else in the head. Except this never actually occurs. It's one thing telegraphing a gag, it's another thing when you do it and then the gag never freaking happens!
  • Combining the last two, why didn't Harley stab Temptress with a boomerang? Because using Katana's sword somehow validated her existence? Because that would have been way cooler and funny simultaneously, which is a level of fine balancing that this film never managed to pull off? Yeah, okay, whatever...

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