"Suicide Squad" Review - The DC/Marvel Hybrid

So let’s talk “Suicide Squad”. Rotten Tomatoes says it’s a 26% rating, which I full on disagree with. I would say it deserves probably a 45-50% rating. It’s not amazing, but it’s not a bad movie either. It really is the best DC Universe movie of the 3 we got so far.

Pros: Every actor is terrific for their respected role. Will Smith pleasantly surprised me, along with Jay Hernandez and Cara Delevingne. Margot Robbie steals the show by sheer force, as she is the most perfect person to play the crazy and sexy Harley Quinn. Jared Letos’ joker was not my favorite, but he was wonderful as well!

The humor is truly off the wall funny! It’s got lots of great one liners and it really adds a great tone to this crazy film.

Finally, the action is downright amazing! Some of the fight scenes in this were so well choreographed and so well shot I was loving every minute of it. It really helps that Zach Snyder is not involved too. It’s not over color corrected, nor is every punch in slow motion.

Cons: The story is a complete mess. The exposition in the beginning is what really bugged me. David Ayer tries to sum up the Suicide Squad in less than 20 minutes, which falls so flat. These characters are so complex and interesting that they deserve a whole Netflix series. Instead, what we end up getting is, “Okay, here’s your team, this is what they do, now enjoy them kicking ass.” That’s now how movies work WB. I wouldn’t have minded an extra 30-45 minutes to dig deep into what these villains are really about. Along with that, there are lots of “Are you kidding me” moments that are just so cringe worthy. Like, remember in Man of Steel when that tornado in bright daylight and Superman’s dad just said “no son, I’m just going to stand here and die, don’t save me.” Yeah those kind of moments. I won’t say specifically, but I guarantee you there are moments that you’ll laugh at with true anger and wonder why _____ just happened. There’s no true antagonist until the very end, and the focus just keeps shifting on plot points that are not really important. Even though the action kicks ass, it’s almost as if I’m watching a live cirque du soleil show, and not a movie spectacle.

“Suicide Squad” is epic, funny, entertaining, but overall okay. Which worries me a bit. If WB can’t make a good DC movie without Zack Snyder, how do I expect any of the other future DC movies to be good (Snyder is involved with every future DC movie in some way). If Wonder Woman doesn’t knock it out of the ball park, I’m done with DC movies. It’s obvious to me that WB is truly just catering to the die hard comic book fans, which is unfortunate. You can have your superhero movies be dark and still make sense! If WB truly put their time with their stories half as much as Marvel did, they could wipe Marvel’s ass so hard. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens in the future.

Neutral Nebs