Review of Suicide Squad (2016) by Maga_Man — 19 Nov 2016

Hugely disappointing, especially coming after the magnificent BvS, but looks like that (and MoS) were the exceptions and DC is now going to start cranking out superhero movies as mediocre as Marvel's.

First problem: tries to establish way too many characters, with the result that we wind up not caring about any of them. This has been plaguing the X-men and Avengers movies too (who actually cares about Bucky?), and apparently DC has learned nothing from it. One hero we actually like with a real dramatic arc is way better than 6 we don't care about.

Second problem: Unbelievably bad villains. Magic Tentacle Dude and Shadow Woman are some of the least compelling villains since Loki's army of faceless aliens on hoverbikes. They're not threatening, they're not interesting, they're not even neat to look at. Relatedly, the Joker (who apparently was supposed to be the main antagonist in early versions of the story) is lackluster and given absolutely nothing to do in the plot. Turns out his whole point was just to be in the trailers and tease audiences into seats; we're not coming out to see Captain Boomerang after all.

Third problem: the story's own internal logic doesn't work. This is supposed to be a team of people who could fight "another Superman", yet almost none of them have any real powers, and half of them have already got their butts kicked by Batman? It's not a nitpick, this is a serious story problem, since it undermines the whole premise of the movie for every second of screen time and makes a lot of the characters' actions incoherent.

Fourth problem: Too much Will Smiff.

Fifth problem: The PG-13 rating. If you want to make a funny, edgy movie about badass anti-heroes, you need to go full R, period. Deadpool took that chance and it paid off beautifully (that was really the movie this wanted to be).

I'm bearish on the upcoming Wonder Woman and Justice League movies too; the former has the Grrlbusters problem of trying to turn a fun action movie into a nagging feminist lecture ("you're a secretary? Where I'm from we call that SLAVERY!"), and the latter is probably another overstuffed designed-by-committee fanservice-fest with no cinematic heart or soul (but this time with more Marvel-style snarky quips!). It looks like for the foreseeable future Nolan's Batman and Snyder's Superman movies are going to remain the high-water mark of this genre.