Suicide Squad is a movie I’ve been wanting to watch ever since I first heard it was going to come out. I watched it’s first trailer in awe, saw all the other ones, and was so excited I was finally going to get to watch it this summer. I was dying to see Viola Davis, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Cara Delevingne, to name a few, work together in a film that was so hyped I was sure it was going to be fantastic.
Then the movie premiered and the reviews started pouring in and suddenly I didn’t feel the need to watch the movie anymore. The first review I read was from Buzzfeed, talking about the misuse of the movie’s female characters, especially Harley Quinn. That disappointed me, a lot. In a movie where there are so many strong female characters, where I’m almost positive there was ground to explore and give true depth to female villains like has never happened before, the first feedback I come across says it does exactly the opposite. Then I took a look at the comments section of the article, and hardcore ‘Suicide Squad’ fans, who had also read the comics, said the reviewer didn’t have the right amount of knowledge about the movie’s characters to correctly analyze it. I decided to believe that they were right.
But suddenly my Facebook timeline became flooded with reviews which completely discredited the movie. It talked about lack of plot, the very short appearance of Jared Leto’s Joker, which was probably the performance most people were dying to see, poor exploration of characters, an, again, misuse of female characters. And for the first time ever, I was completely discouraged from watching a movie because of it’s reviews. Mind you, I’ve watched my fair share of bad movies, but I read one reviewer say that you should tell the person you hate the most to watch the movie because it’s that bad. I admit I haven’t watched it yet, so I don’t have my own judgement to add to this, but it’s been a pretty unanimous decision that the movie isn’t worth the hype that was created for it.
And I’m disappointed, as I’m sure many people who were looking forward to this movie are. I’m a lover of art, in all of its forms, and to be so strongly persuaded to not watch a movie is disheartening. Just to put it out there, I’m not one who is easily persuaded, so this shocked me. Now, with the flood of superhero movies that is coming in the next years, I just hope that they learn from what Suicide Squad apparently failed to do: explore your female characters and do them justice, honor the story you’re adapting, and don’t hype people up for a character who’ll have 10 mins of screen time. Be a little less about the Hollywood grandeur and a little more about art and the story you’re telling. Promise and deliver. This industry is reliant upon its fans, after all.
