DC and Warner Brothers announced "Suicide Squad" along with "Batman vs. Superman," "The Flash," "Green Lantern," and some more movies of my favorite superheroes. This movie made me the most excited. A group of supervillains comes together to fight someone scarier? Awesome. I followed the production all the way through. I got excited when the picture of Jared Leto as the Joker was released. I watched the trailer like five times in a row. I was beyond excited for this movie.
Then, the first reviews came out. They were terrible. It got 40 percent on Metacritic and 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes? "Sharknado" did better. I wasn't as excited to see it. Then I read the reviews. Too often the critics compared the movie to prior DC and Marvel movies. They didn't look at it as it's own film. So, that's what I'll do here.
Let's start with why I loved this movie. Also, here's your spoiler warning.
The characters are great. Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn is just as great as expected. She provides a lot of the comedy of the film and is definitely the focus of the movie. Deadshot has some amazing killshots, along with adorable moments with his daughter. I thought Jared Leto's Joker really shined. Captain Boomerang, who sounds like a stupid character, ends up being one of the most fun. El Diablo is an amazing character who I wasn't expecting. He's got the most horrifying backstory and the coolest (er, hottest) powers.
The nods to the comics are great. Captain Boomerang getting apprehended by the Flash was awesome. Harley picking out her costume from the old Batman cartoon made my jaw drop. Ben Affleck's Batman bringing Harley and Deadshot in was amazing. Harley's origin was amazingly close to her comic book origin.
There is no shortage of action in the movie. It's chocked full of Katana slices, Harley Quinn bashing heads in with a baseball bat and Killer Croc ripping goons apart.
The soundtrack is filled with classic rock jams that are synonymous with action movies.
The movie is flawed, however.
The plot is terrible. It's so bad that it's difficult to explain. The villain, Enchantress, is an archaeologist who gets possessed by an ancient witch goddess. She's supposed to be a good guy, but the evil witch takes over. She possesses another guy to be the evil witch's brother and the two create spell that can destroy the world. Along with that the Squad has to save Amanda Waller and the Joker is trying to save Harley. Confusing right? That's coming from a fan, who knows who all these characters are!
They wasted Scott Eastwood and Jared Leto. Scott Eastwood's character was a pretty big secret throughout the production. Fans like me thought he was going to be a big character, like Deathstroke (Think Deadpool, but twice as scary) or Nightwing, a former Robin doing spy work for Batman. Nope, he was just some nobody character who died at the end.
Jared Leto killed as the Joker, but he was only in about 10 minutes worth of the movie. We saw a few great Joker moments, but we could have seen much more. We missed a whole side of the Joker that is terrible and abusive towards Harley. Warner Brothers scrapped that to feed into the Joker and Harley as #RelationshipGoals.
The characters could've been amazing! Captain Boomerang didn't throw that many boomerangs. Katana's sad backstory about her husband dying and his soul being captured in her sword was glossed over. Killer Croc didn't look as cool as he could've. Here's Killer Croc in Suicide Squad:
But here's what Killer Croc could've looked like:
Much scarier, right? It could have been done with CGI and a bigger actor.
The plot was bad. The characters were great, but could've been better. The story seemed rushed. The villain was not scary, but it was a funny, action packed and character driven movie. I can see why critics might have hated it. They aren't all comics fans like those of us who are upset with their bad reviews. I had fun watching, and it was good, but not great. If I was going to give it a star rating, I would give it 3 out of 5 stars.
