I honestly don't even know where to begin with this one. Normally I would bury the lead and run through about five paragraphs before giving a score. I'm not even going to waste time here, this movie is a one out of five for me. I've walked out of two movies in my entire life, Ultraviolet and Suicide Squad. Now before you get on my case about reviewing a movie I walked out of, We didn't leave until the last ten minutes and here's why. I'm pretty new to buying tickets online. I know it's the 21st century and what's wrong with me? I just never bothered before. Well now I'm all about it and we bought our tickets through Fandango for the 8:30 show. So about five minutes into the movie I was worried, and by the time the mission started I was ready to leave. However, I'm new to the whole online ticket business so I wasn't sure if I would be able to get my money back (I assumed we could but I'm a stickler for sticking around if I paid my money) so I decided to see it through as much as I could. As soon as the villain was dispatched we were out of there so we really only missed about ten minutes because I'm stubborn and love torture I guess.
My opinions on Man of Steel and Batman V Superman are well documented. I think so far the DC Universe films (DCEU for the remainder of this review) have all ranked from wildly disappointing to terrible and they seem to all suffer from the same problems. The scripts are just awful. Man of Steel and Batman V Superman are both actually well made movies from a directorial stand point, they just have terrible writing. Well Suicide Squad is no different but brings a whole new level of terribleness to the DCEU. This movie is just poorly made. Now there are a lot of behind the scenes stories floating around that make this movie sound like it went through Fantastic Four levels of studio interference. Not of the same variety mind you. Let's start from the beginning. Warner Bros. decides that they want their own movie universe like the one Marvel has created for themselves but they don't want to put in the work. They use Man of Steel as a jumping off point (first mistake) and they announced BVS and Suicide Squad along with some other films. Zack Snyder directed Man of Steel and since that was such a banger success (sarcastic much?) they decide to put him in charge of the universe, serving as executive producer (second mistake). He makes Batman V Superman and sets the tone that he sees the DCEU should embrace. A much darker more serious tone to differentiate from the fun light heartedness of Marvel. Fair enough, the DC comics are in nature darker so let's see how it goes. Well apparently not well. The darkness wasn't exactly my problem with Batman V Superman but I do think that Superman should be a more light hearted film, but that was a Batman movie all the way. Well Warner Bros. is now freaking out because Snyder has executive produced all of these movies into a pit of darkness. Now Suicide Squad is already done filming, Wonder Woman is well on it's way, and Justice League is in pre-production. Warner Bros. makes quick decisions. Add re-shoots and tone changes to Suicide Squad, make Ben Affleck executive producer on Justice League, and make Geoff Johns the new head of the DCEU (a smart decision). My fear however is that the damage was already done and after seeing this movie I believe that I was right.
I had the utmost hope and interest in this film. It was the first non Zack Snyder, David Goyer handeled DC movie. It featured a very popular, and one of my favorite DC characters that fans have been waiting to see on the big screen forever, AND featured an all star cast to boot. Let's not forget the trailers either. Amazing marketing for this film. I want to take a look at the trailers though for a second. Think of the first teaser trailer from Comic-Con. Very serious, very creepy tone. A song treatment similar to the first Age of Ultron trailer. Honestly I was in from that trailer. Yeah it was very serious but it was different. They were going another direction and I was interested to see how it turned out. Then the next two trailers came out and were (and still are) some of the best edited trailers I've ever seen. Taking a very light hearted tone and basically playing like music videos with Bohemian Rhapsody and Ballroom Blitz. I think these trailers really hurt the expectations for this movie because the final product doesn't resemble the trailers at all. What we got instead is a film where the trailer editing company was given the whole movie to edit to try and match the tone and instead the two halves of the movie clash so hard it gives you whiplash. David Ayer is a fine director. He's made some great movies, but he was out there defending the movie he made, yelling "Fuck Marvel!" at the premiere, and claiming the re-shoots weren't a reaction to Batman V Superman or to change the tone of the film. I'm sorry Ayer but this is in no way your movie. I 100% believe that at most this is 50% of the movie Ayer originally made. I think the original cut of the film matched that first trailer and the studio interfered. I would give all of the money in the world to see all of the footage shot for this movie (and a chance to make my own edit) or to see the original cut of the movie. There were reportedly three different cuts for three different test screenings and I want to see it all. There are even scenes in the trailers that aren't in the film like the bar scene where they choose their drinks.
So before I get too deep into my complaining I should mention some things I did like. It will be quick because their aren't many. First and foremost, Will Smith. Will Smith hasn't made a movie that had me this interested in him in a long time. I thought this was his movie and he stole the show. My only complaint on Deadshot is the shoehorned storyline with his daughter which just comes off extremely cliche. Everyone has been praising him and Margot Robbie and honestly I think he did a much better job. A lot of their lines come off cheesy but it's easier to believe Smith in the role. Robbie was at 80% (sorry for so much math) for me. She looked the part, she mostly acted the part, but it was hard to believe the character was the one we all love, especially since she was just turned into walking sex. Some of other characters were great too but just got short changed with the story. Katana seemed great but we get little of her story. Captain Boomerang was fun but could have been given more to do. The same goes for El Diablo who maybe gets the most character developments out of the B roster but the ending of his character just made me groan. Turning into a big CG fire monster to battle another CG monster was just dull and boring. The last thing that I would point out as a positive was the Flash cameo. It was fun but very quick (no pun intended) but did a good job of world building. The inclusion of Ben Affleck Batman was also kind of nice but there's not much to his cameos. He seems to be changed somewhat from BVS, showing some sympathy for Deadshot but he's quickly in and out of the movie.
Alright I've rambled enough. It's time to get into some details. Let's look at the plot of the film. First we get a half hour introduction of all of the characters and how most of them were captured. There are some fun scenes here for sure but it's so haphazardly edited together that it feels like a last minute addition. It's just Viola Davis talking over different musical themes and just jumps from one scene to the next and feels like it goes on forever. The character introductions make the plot seems so convoluted but it ends up not even mattering when it comes to the main mission. A mission that takes about half of the run time to get going and then it's another ten or twenty minutes before the action kicks in. By the time the movie actually kicks into gear I was already almost bored to sleep. My fiance who saw the movie with me was already nodding off but granted, these movies aren't for her. She was excited for Harley Quinn but other than that she was uninterested. Viola Davis was one who I thought nailed her character because Amanda Waller is a giant bitch and Viola Davis felt like a giant bitch in the movie so mission accomplished. I also feel like I liked Joel Kinnaman more than most. I thought his Rick Flag was fine he just wasn't given a lot to work with. His forced love story also just did nothing for the movie. Now before we move on from the characters I have to talk about Jared Leto's Joker. He was by far the worst Joker. His mannerisms and the way he talks is just so off, and the way he talks about this role with great reverence, I just don't know what he was channeling. It definitely feels like a bad Heath Ledger impression, so it's probably a good thing that he gets such little screen time. They also never justified Hot Topic tattooed Joker. It looked dumb on the reveal and looks just as dumb in the movie. The Joker is barely in the movie and when he is he feels forced and some people seem upset about that but for me the less the better.
Now back to the plot. It barely exists. The movie spends half the time introducing Task Force X and then the Enchantress escapes to Midway City with her poorly CGI'd brother and then chaos ensues. A major problem I have with the plot is that we, the viewers, know what's going on because we see what goes down. However Rick Flag brings in Task Force X and just tells them it's a terrorist attack and keeps them in the dark for what seems like no reason. Then it's revealed later as if it's supposed to be a huge shocking surprise and I was just left confused as to why they treated it that way. We also don't really find out what their mission is until they enter the building where the objective is located. The real mission is to rescue Amanda Waller who SURPRISE was in the city when shit when down. It was actually a decent twist that she would be there. I wasn't expecting it when they walked into the control room that we saw Waller in which seemed to be in Washington. The Enchantresses plan is also flimsy at best. She breaks free and decides to build a machine to destroy the worlds armies for . . . reasons. Okay she says she wants to destroy our machine because we worship machines instead of gods so shes going to build a machine. Huh? Either way all it turns into is a giant blue light flying into the sky. I'm pretty sure this movie and the Ghostbusters reboot have the same ending and it's all bad. This movie made Batman V Superman look like Citizen Kane in my eyes. The biggest offense of this movie is that it's boring. It takes so long before we get into some serious action scenes and the first one is the best. Overall the action is pretty forgettable. There are gun fights, the camera obscures most of the action by being too close, and again the first gun fight is where Deadshot shines and is the only memorable action sequence of the film. The rest kind of blur together for me. It doesn't help that there is actually a lot of bad CG in this movie. For such a big tent pole movie you'd think they'd hire a better effects studio or maybe give them more money and time.
I thought this would be the movie to correct the DCEU but I was dead wrong. At this point my assumption is Wonder Woman will also be a dark brooding experience and I can only hope for at least a entertaining film but these films just have Zack Snyder's interpretation all over them. Suicide Squad has some moments, 90% of which come from Will Smith in my eyes, but over all feels like a movie DESTROYED by it's editing and re-shoots and massive tonal shifts between acts. I feel like there's been a lot of cagey comments out there trying to save the movie which still opened to 267 million worldwide because we don't apparently care if movies are good. As a comic fan I will be forever grateful that these movies even exist, but as a fan we deserve better than this and we need to take off our fan boy shades and let our voices be heard. If you're going to make the movies this bad, just don't make them, especially not with a script written in only six weeks. This is a one out of five and I give that one star to the cast that carried me through this disaster. Warner Bros., shame on you.
