Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is a marvel. A work of passion so sincere, so determinate in its desire to achieve masterpiece status, so emblematic of its creator’s desire to make something that will stand eternally, that to watch it fail so spectacularly in almost all of its lofty aspirations is in itself a work of art. Wiseau’s non-existent acting abilities ala his llama like and ill-timed delivery, the films cannon fodder scenes consisting of conversations about Wiseau’s Johnny’s in capabilities as a husband masking themselves as “character building”, and the general confusion with which the supporting cast navigates this mysterious millionaire’s odyssey to become the next Tennesse Williams all come together to create something so stomach churningly awkward, yet fascinatingly absorbing in all of its badness that it remains tattooed in your brain to the point where it turns up in fever dreams. One can never forget the ever increasing intensity with which Wiseau delivers his monotone “I did not hit her, its not true, its bullshit” climaxing with a lower pitched “I did not” before resolving his sexually frustrating tirade with an upper toned “oh hi Mark”, leading to a conversation with his cucking best friend about the comedy of domestic abuse in front of a green screen of a San Francisco skyline.
With that in mind, The Room is a better film than Suicide Squad.
Suicide Squad is designed in such a chaotically, focus-group target seeking, faux-pas “edge-zany” manner the fact that the finished product did not up being a two hour and seven minute screenshot of the aftermath of a paintball tournament in a black loft is in itself a minor miracle. The film appears not to have been crafted by filmmakers seeking to communicate their vision of the classic superhero narrative with their own voice but rather a major motion picture studio scrambling to create a patchwork homunculus containing Deadpool’s snark, The Dark Knight’s lighting, and Guardians of the Galaxy’s soundtrack. What results from this caffeine induced engineering patent is the equivalent of watching a half finished iron statue of a naked discus thrower melting on a July day in Virginia; all the detailed and potentially exciting bits devolving into a thick puddle.
The plot involves uber-utilitarian bureaucrat Amanda Waller bringing forth a team of meta-human criminals in an effort to craft a substantial deterrent against forthcoming omni-menaces such as Superman and Darkseid. One of those lovers of pseudo-socialistic policy initiatives, Waller promises 10-years off of the sentences of 7 mass murdering criminals should they agree to function as her squad of anti-heroic garbage men. “Task Force X” includes Harley Quinn, a former psychiatrist turned killer klown kult member, Floyd Lawton aka Deadshot, a master assassin who complements his ricocheting bullet technique with the love of his daughter and hatred of his wife’s boyfriend, and finally Chato Sanata, aka El Diablo, a Los Angeles based gang member who takes a holy vow of passivity after incinerating his entire family in a fit of rage. There are other members of the titular squad but given how most of them are diluted to either being cringe-worthy racial stereotypes, fodder for poorly executed murder sequences, or straight up non-entities with moments of identity sparser than Frank Ocean albums, they are not worth mentioning.
The concept of “Suicide Squad” alone was enough to make me and many of my fellow web-squatters swell with anticipation for its August 5th, 2016 release date; a film centered on “villains”, entities that are arguably the most entertaining factors in most super-comics, in an era where villains in film leave much to be desired. We finally get to see a live-action cinematic incarnation of Harley Quinn, one of the most complicated Batman characters ever, being played by the tremendously underrated Margot Robbie. Amanda Waller, the aforementioned uber-utilitarian will finally make a proper cinematic appearance played by none other than the legendary Viola Davis, an actress who has the ability to deliver consistently invigorating performances whether the film is good (Doubt) or not (The Help). Even the Joker will get a new live-action reincarnation with a not always dependable but nonetheless talented Jared Leto at the helm, with the potential to come close to matching Heath Ledger’s mythical interpretation of the greatest of villains. The first trailer dropped back in 2015’s Comic-Con and things were looking promising; moody shots of Harley Quinn staring at the camera manically, some expected Will Smith coolness, bits of intriguing set pieces involving gunmen wearing panda and cartoon Batman masks all offset with a haunting rendition the Bee Gee’s I started a Joke and some delicious exposition by Waller whilst having a steak dinner in a yellow lit restaurant on a rainy night.
The interweb dwellers and I should have figured something was wrong when the second trailer was dropped. Gone was the melancholic tone of the first trailer, replaced instead with a wet and cloudy rainbow backdrop meshed in with scenes edited to appear comedic including Harley Quinn debating whether or not she has schizophrenia and Jai Courtney doing his best Tom Hardy impression. The song used for the trailer was a classic, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, yet I somehow felt that it was less cohesive than I started a Joke, with it ultimately coating the trailer (along with some rapidly edited punching and bullet scenes) with a sense of ham-fistedness, as though it was trying desperately to look like a glossy cabaret hosted by Seth Rogen.
When it came to actually sit down and experience what David Ayer and the team at Warner Bros. had meshed together in an attempt to create a fine Chardonnay, a “scene” within the first 10 or so minutes ended up foreshadowing what the rest of the film was going to be like. It was Harley Quinn’s origin story, a narrative involving psychological manipulation, domestic abuse and what it means to relinquish oneself to another, an arc in Suicide Squad that ought have ended up in our collective unconsciousness’ as “the scene” for the film similar to the Joker interrogation in The Dark Knight and Uncle Ben’s death in the 2002 Spider Man.
What we got was an erratically edited, hollow and seizure inducing music-video-esque loaf of slapdash that blasphemously reduces Harley Quinn’s character arc to off-screen exposition. There are no “scenes” in this “origin story”, rather brief clips of Joker offering up Harley as a sex toy for a business associate, a “blink and you miss it” car chase involving Batfleck, and perhaps most infuriatingly, Joker lobotomizing Harley Quinn as communicated through bits of Jared Leto snarling at the camera as he is edited to appear as though he is shaking.
This sense of emotional and thematic cheapening pervades through pretty much the entire movie, coupled with the fact that it absolutely tosses out any sort of compelling narrative once it is revealed that the main obstacles in this ordeal is going to be a clan of faceless Sumerian zombies. Much of the action is reduced to close ups of people shooting guns or cutting zombies with knives with no real showcase of the dynamics between the powers and combat abilities among “Task Force X.” In fact, the characters and action sequences seem almost entirely disconnected wherein characters either shoot, cut or stare at the obstacles regardless of how quirky the actors try to portray them. There is one moment in the film that offers up a glimmer of potential goodness, that being a scene of Deadshot standing on a skyscraper preparing to assassinate a high-end target, whilst subsequently staring at his phone and being befuddled at the fact that he has yet to be paid for his philanthropic services. This scene showcases Deadshot’s uncompromising and easy-going personality in tandem with his mathematically precise killing skills, fooling the audience into thinking that the rest of the film is going to follow a similar path.
Most of the performances are competent enough to offer at least a semblance of structure to the film, though considering how most of the characters either have their arcs haphazardly skimmed over or just straight up ignored, the actors fulfill the same role as a grain-based protein shake; function only. Margot Robbie offers up the necessary unpredictability and bubbly bravado that befit her character, yet I feel as though Robbie’s skills as an actor were wasted when much of her screen time was reduced to moments of unnecessary sexualization which included sensually licking the bars of her jail cell and doing an acrobatic spread eagle as part of her morning routine. Will Smith reminds us why he’s Will Smith, delivering yet another addictively charismatic performance that helps keep his character watchable even when he’s reduced to a walking-talking mini-gun by the film’s end. Viola Davis nails Amanda Waller in every sense of the word, capturing the emotionlessness and borderline sadism that befit her quest for “the greater good by any mean’s necessary” motif. Cara Delevingne is similar to Jesse Eisenberg in Batman v. Superman in that she has no idea what the hell to do with her character, resorting to deep-voiced cadences and awkward belly dances in an attempt to make her “Enchantress” believable. As with Quinn, Enchantress’ arc is replaced with an off-screen exposition about her and Rick Flagg’s romantic relationship that comes across as a commercial for a Toyota Camry, forcing Delevingne to resort to quivering when in her character’s human form instead of any trait that could convey the slightest nugget of humanity.
Jared Leto’s Joker was a glorified cameo squeezed into the film the same way Taco Bell sprinkles Doritos on its Chalupas. He’s really only in the film as an extra layer of marketing as he does absolutely nothing to move the plot along in any substantial way. As such, Leto joins the Eisenberg and Delevingne club of actors given little in terms of characterization and thus turns in a performance filled with gnashed, silver grilled teeth, high-pitched pronunciations of certain words, and desperate attempts not to do an imitation of Heath Ledger yet accomplishing the task nonetheless. Maybe Leto will turn in a less-bare bones performance if his character becomes pivotal in the upcoming Batfleck opus, but as of right now his Joker nowhere near lives up to his marketed hype and method acting preparation via sending dead rats to his co-stars.
Suicide Squad was designed to be a mass-produced, guaranteed to sell-brand new flavor of Krispy Kreme Donut before its script was even properly edited. The film was pushed out to August 5th, 2016 by Warner Bros. in order to fulfill its obligations with numerous global brand deals, utilized a director untested in developing a massive Hollywood spectacle in order for the filmmaking process to be more easily controlled by the studio executives, and ultimately having the film bombarded with numerous studio edits in order to capture the formulas used by other successful branded films. Suicide Squad is not a movie, it is a metallic tasting cheeseburger squeezed out of a toothpaste bottle in order to reduce distribution costs. The film is devoid of any sort of creative vision, (for all its faults, BvS at least had that going for it) it has been mangled beyond comprehension, it’s plot pretty much begins at its dull climax without any sort of thematic or character build-up, and effectively nullifies any sort of prior hope I had for DC’s cinematic universe. I expect the upcoming Justice League and Wonder Woman films to be nothing more than garbage for when the first three film films of your tent pole franchise are across the board disappointments, it is doubtful that all will be redeemed with the fourth, fifth and sixth installments.
