" Suicide Squad" is one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2016, and a film that probably had more pressure to be good than any film in a while. "Suicide Squad" is the third installment in the ever so divisive DC Extended Universe. The first, "Man of Steel" received mix reviews, and the second installment of the series "Batman V Superman" was not received well by critics but was very divisive among the general public. I personally was a very big fan of "Man of Steel", and despite all of it's problems, I thought "Batman V Superman" was a pretty cool movie, so I've been a fan of the DC movies so far, and after one of the best marketing campaigns of all time, I was very excited to see "Suicide Squad". There's been a lot of negative backlash from this movie, receiving worse reviews than even "Batman V Superman", but I didn't want that to deter me. I was a fan of the vision for this universe so far, so I thought I would probably enjoy this movie as well, and now that I've seen it... this movie deserves all the bad reviews it's getting.

There were a few things I liked about this movie. Will Smith and Margot Robbie steal the show as Deadshot and Harley Quinn. Viola Davis is very good herself as Amanda Waller, although I didn't think her character was written very well at all. There are also a couple pretty cool cameos from some familiar characters that I won't spoil, and Jai Courtney is actually pretty good as Boomerang. For the most part, the performances in this movie were all pretty good, but where this film falters is... well basically every other way.

First, I'll put myself on the record as saying that I wholeheartedly believe that this film was structurally changed after it was filmed through editing to have a lighter tone due to the negative backlash from "Batman V Superman" and it's overly grim and dark tone. If you watch the first trailer that premiered at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con, you can see that director David Ayer had a much darker vision for this film. There are a lot of moments in the film that while I was watching, I was thinking, "I can definitely see this scene being much darker with different editing and music". Which brings me to my next point: The editing in this movie is terrible. The whole movie seems like a mismash that was just thrown together with no real purpose. In terms of Jared Leto's highly anticipated first performance as the new Joker, I thought it was fine. Some things I really liked, and some things that left me scratching my head, but the worst thing about the Joker in this movie was his actual role. The trailers for this movie suggest that he's going to be in it a lot, and one trailer heavily implies that he's the main villain, so if you went into it expecting that, I promise you will be sorely disappointed. The character is actually almost entirely irrelevant to the story of the movie. Katana, a less well known member of the "Suicide Squad", suffers from the same deficiency. I kept waiting for a moment in the movie that would justify her presence, and it just never came.

"Suicide Squad" is easily, for me, the most disappointing movie of the year. As a fan of the DC movies so far, and seeing all the great trailers for this movie, I thought it was going to be a slam dunk, surefire hit. While it has performed very well at the box office, it's just not a well put together movie. I do think that there is a good movie hidden in there somewhere, but poor editing and studio interference prevent "Suicide Squad" from being the good movie it could have been.

Final Grade: D+