So I just saw the latest addition to the controversial DC cinematic universe that was David Ayer's Suicide Squad and damn was it hard to come into this film without hearing someone complaining about or violently defending this film. As DC comic book films go this had the biggest divide between critics and fans, the main difference being that critics were looking for fun, interesting game changer in DC's filmmaking and fans just wanted to see 15 minutes of music videos and Harley Quinn being quirky. Now before people take this review and expect me to bad mouth this film simply because I'm a marvel fanboy who dislikes anything with DC's name on it then I guess I'm also a misogynist for not liking the comedic choices in the Ghostbusters remake. My point is that I treated this film the same way I view any other film, as a work of cinema. Not a product of a giant cinematic universe or a reflection of a brand. It feels like most of the fans of this film were validating their obsession over a product which is not how a film should be treated. And this goes to a level were some fans are so obnoxious that they cant just enjoy a movie and cant handle when people have different opinions to their own. If you don't believe this just check the petition by butt hurt fans who want to shut down rotten tomatoes because they cant deal with professional critics who get paid to watch films for a living, have different opinions to their own. Now of course if you aren't one of these incredibly sensitive crazy people and you still enjoyed this film then I have nothing against that. But I didn't enjoy it. So like most people who saw the news surrounding this film throughout the year, this had a lot of changes regarding its overall tone and setting. Originally, director David Ayer who has done lots of gritty and dreary work in his previous films like Fury and Dark Blue had made this film very serious and dark with only a few jokes here and there. However when the fans saw this they wanted something with more of a dark comedic aspect and this is where the film lost track entirely of what it was going for. Because of this new demand from the fans, the movie had to make a number of reshoots and it definitely shows with a number of sharp cuts and edits in weird areas especially in the first half of the film, which honestly was the worst part of the movie. The use of vibrant colours in the opening credits and posters were laughable since the entire film seemed to be shot on the worst ISO setting where I couldn't see anything, even when there was a fire in a building it was still visibly dark. The first 10 minutes of the movie starts of with not 1, not 2 but around 7 different songs in a row. Now obviously when I first saw this I knew they were trying to emulate the success with Guardians of the Galaxy's soundtrack however where Guardians had an in movie explanation for its choice of songs that connected with the characters, this movie had no connection with its songs other than we need to sell our soundtrack so please buy this song. Not only that but these songs were playing every minute so I didn't have time to enjoy any of them. It felt like this was the pinnacle of a try hard film because it kept trying to shove all these millennial aspects every second in order for you to enjoy them all which I just found off putting.
So in this opening we were introduced to our hero's (or villains) of the story. Now when I first saw the casting choices for this film I was moderately excited, these were all reasonably good actors who I had seen in other great works of cinema and had never portrayed a comic book character before, which would of been great if they had a confident writer who wasn't in his 40's and who was working on the till at Cex. Will Smith's portrayal of Deadshot was reasonably entertaining but when compared to his previous work of Men in Black and Fresh Prince it seems like he undersold it a lot, which can equally be said for most of the characters in this movie who didn't seem like they were enjoying themselves at all, almost as if they phoned it in throughout the whole film. The one exception I found was probably Margot Robbie's performance as Harley Quinn which was pretty much my perfect casting for a live action right hand woman for The Joker. However her performance was also ruined thanks to her being turned from one of DC's greatest female villains to a punchline dispenser and in the cinema that I was in, 9 out of 10 times no one laughed at any of her jokes. As for the criticism around her oversexualised representation I didn't mind simply because I understood that as part of her character which is more than I can say for the villains over sexualisation which made no sense. As for the rest of the Suicide squad, like most DC characters they seemed rushed and had little backstory. Captain Boomerang who was marketed as one of the main members of the team was given only 30 seconds of character development, Killer Croc was introduced as a heartless monster but turned out to be a hooded bouncer you'd find at your local nightclub. Even Katana who had enough well done backstory to warrant her own film was condensed into less than a minute. The movie time was instead given to slow boring scenes in empty streets where nothing happens for minutes on end. So what about the main attraction of DC's list of villains that being Jared Leto's portrayal of the prince of crime, The Joker?. Well people can say whatever they want about how the Joker should be represented but the one thing I know for sure is that the Joker is not an attention seeking millionaire instagramer who drives Lamborghini's. Leto's performance reminded me of Eddie Redmayne's role in Jupiter Ascending as being so ridiculously stupid that it must be seen to be believed, what Leto try's to show as crazy and discomforting feels like an eccentric rich teenager trying to be edgy and cool. Probably the main reason for why this is the worst portrayal of one of the greatest villains of our generation is the fact that the Joker is meant to be scary and I think that Michael Sheens Twilight Villain was more intimidating than him. As for the actual main villain of the story, Enchantress, I felt like she was a character with a great design and loads of potential but ended up being just as silly and goofy as The Joker. Cara Delevingne who plays the Aztec villain spends half of the film dancing in front of an energy beam making snake like motions and I didn't know whether I was meant to take this seriously or not. This along with her weird incestuous relationship on screen made her one of the most awkwardly placed villains of comic book movie history.
So with all of these faults I have to ask where this film went wrong. For me this was meant to be DC's chance to show that they can introduce characters well without resorting to over exaggerated metaphors and pointless symbolism. I would of been ok if the movie took its original plan and made a dark and serious superhero film like Watchmen. However when you take into account the failure of Batman vs Superman, you realise that they put too much effort into making it what the fans want instead of making what the director had intended. And while people will watch this film and it will most likely make more money than its previous DC films, in the long run it will probably just be remembered as the film Jared Leto won a Razzie for, it would look good next to his Oscar. Overall this is not the worst film in the DC's cinematic universe but it wasn't the game changing film I was hoping it could be, and who knows maybe the new Wonder Woman film will fix those problems, 3rd times the charm.
