Suicide Squad
For some time now, a lot of comic book fans have been excited to see what DC Comics would do to battle Marvel’s Supremacy in theaters.
You don’t have to be a fan of either to enjoy a good Marvel vs DC online story.
Having followed both for a few years now, I could see somewhat of a pattern among each house. Marvel had the foresight to create a connected cinematic universe starting with the release of Iron Man. Curiously enough there are a lot of folks out there that do not realize that Marvel does not hold the movie rights to X-MEN, The Fantastic Four and Spiderman. Although the Spiderman deal was finally worked out which lead to reshoots in order to have him featured in Captain America: Civil War.
As clever as Marvel’s approach has been DC does not have the luxury to build up their cinematic universe with features which will eventually lead to a team up. They have to strike while the iron is hot, they have to strike fast and hard.
In order to do this, they have bypassed Christopher Nowlan’s Dark Knight Trilogy [a smart move if you ask me]. Plus they breathed some new life into Superman after the bomb that was Superman Returns and the family friendly Smallville TV show.
Enter Zack Snyder, you can look at his filmography and agree on one thing: he is an excellent visual director. My highlights from his reel would have to be the Dawn of the Dead remake, Watchmen and 300.
[Shamefully I have yet to watch Sucker Punch]
Bringing Suicide Squad into the DC cinematic universe reminds me of Marvel’s announcement of Guardians of the Galaxy. Both are interesting teams with a lot of potential, deciding to bring in the ‘Squad also immediately leads into the opportunity to bring in Harley Quinn, thus bringing in The Joker and Batman.
The issue here is that some of them are actually honored by having a character bio intro. The first trailer brought in much excitement, unfortunately like so many movies within the last couple of years you get the [majority] of the movie spoiled for you.
I was extremely surprised to see Will Smith actually take a comic book character role. Don’t get me wrong he’s a great actor, but passing on The Matrix in order to do Wild Wild West is still a nasty stain on his resume. That plus the fact that he has done a Bad Boys sequel but decided not to do Independence Day Resurgence is also a big question mark.
There was a lot of speculation if any characters would die in the movie, this is answered immediately by watching the first trailer and paying attention to which characters get their flashy intro and backstory during the main feature.
The story did have some interesting moments due to some members of the ‘Squad. I’ll just come out and say it: Amanda Waller is the biggest, baddest character I have seen yet in a comic book feature. A stone cold killer.
Harley was excellently cast, the one main thing which seemed to linger throughout the movie were the sudden cuts in editing. Now jump cuts work really well in movies, especially Horror and Action. In ‘Squad the cuts seemed as if they were done in order to “fix” a weak scene.
The movie suffered from trying to do too much in so little time. It’s a fantastic Popcorn Movie, but it’s hard not to notice that there was likely studio interference.
Comparing it to ‘Guardians which dripped James Gunn’s style [hell he made Slither] ‘Squad seemed as if Warner Brothers was too scared to let David Ayer’s freak flag fly. I mean the man wrote Training Day. TRAINING DAY. Plus he’s from Illinois…
Training Day baby, Training Day
Overall the movie had extremely high production value created by the VFX wizards at Buddha Jones, Mammal, Sony Imageworks and MPC.
The style guide featured a nice mixture of graffiti culture and what I assume a rave would look like after taking some LSD.
I don’t like ruining stories but there is an element which resonates Resident Evil 6.
I heard this movie described to me as a trash can fire, I can now disagree, all comic book movies are entertaining. If you’re looking for a good time which will highly entertain you then grab a seat.
I am excited to see the direction in which DC is heading with their properties. For better or worse, we are lucky to be getting nerd culture in popular entertainment.
It’s funny how popular culture had determined decades ago that comic books and video games were not “cool”.
It’s ironic seeing people with a Decepticon and Autobot sticker on their vehicles, especially when they can only name Optimus Prime and Megatron.