Suicide Squad review
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Suicide Squad
Warner Brothers
PG-13. 130 min
When I was a little kid back before the morals of the entertainment world loosen up, you couldn't show a married couple in bed together. Rob and Laura Petry on the Dick Van Dyke Show always had to keep at least one foot on the floor and wear full pajamas.
For the kids comic books could certainly show some big-time fight scenes, which are probably outlawed today in the nanny state, but blood and guts and cuss words were verboten.
Well some things change and some things don't. The folks Marvel and DC still shy away from letting Superman or Spider-Man venture into the stratosphere of the R rating. (As an aside you might remember the short-lived series of Atlas Comics which sprang up as competition for Marvel and DC featuring much rougher and more violent comics. They didn't last very long but these are different times). Today I think they realized there is an entire bunch of older kids who love the F-bomb like a six-year-old loves the word poop and that's why DEADPOOL was such a big hit. Not that it was a great story or filled with wonderful dialogue and great acting but that it was, as the critics pointed out, the first superhero to swear like a sailor on shore leave. This is a whole new market they believe they have tapped into and I think that was the idea at the outset as DCs SUICIDE SQUAD hit the drawing board. Somewhere between the inception and the Silver Screen that idea fell by the wayside.
I guess to fully appreciate or even fully hate SUICIDE SQUAD you need to be more familiar with this group of DC supervillains than I am. Oh I'm familiar with one of them, mainly the Joker. I assume these are some super villains from DC Comics Latter-Day characters.
Aside from the clown prince of crime, Joker, I'm not quite sure who these cats are the arch enemy of, if anyone.
There are a bunch of them but the most important to this particular film include Deadshot (Will Smith), a contract Killer, Harley Quinn (Margate Robbie) a lunatic thrall of the Joker, Diablo (Jay Hernandez) a pyrokinetic who has too close a relationship with the Devil, a guy who looks like a human crocodile and others.
Now there is trouble in Midway City. An ancient witch known as the enchantress has reared her nasty head and is intent on, guess what? Yep ruling the world. Agent Waller (Violet Davis) rounds up this bunch of villains implants explosives into their necks and promises them a reduction in prison sentence if they can get to the bottom of this particular threat to the world.
As with most superhero movies whatever the objective might be will be accomplished through a litany of noisy and violent battles. In SUICIDE SQUAD however, there is a little bit of intrigue as we get to know some of the stories behind the characters. Almost enough to make it fun.
I'm just going to assume that the true aficionados are displeased about the way some of these characters have been handled. Any of you big fans can message me and let me know your own opinions. All I can go by is the portrayal here in this particular film and the mediocre plot.
My biggest problem, I think, was the new vision of the Joker by Jared Leto. I understand the idea is that Harley Quinn is in love with him and I'd have guessed they'd have tried to make a more romantic and sensual character for him like Frank langella as DRACULA.
Quite the opposite; Leto's Joker is flaming, creepy and downright repulsive without a shred of appeal. Whatever romantic link there is supposed to be between him and Quinn, the most and only charismatic member of the cast, falls completely flat.
The others show small flashes of interest but with so many there's not enough time to explore any motivation for the rest, save Deadshot and Diablo.
I'm not sure of the production scheduling but it's possible the producers made a conscious decision to lighten things up and stick with the PG-13 before they'd seen the success of the R-rated DEADPOOL. If that's the case I guess it's just bad luck because I think a more adult-themed humor etc could have easily made this better given the building blocks they had at their disposal.
C+
WSS
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Comics in the silver age had to adhere to the comics code. Therefore they sucked. Today Marvel has the MAX imprint and DC has Vertigo which allows for much more adult comic book stories. Just thought I'd put that out there.
P.S. The joker is not a romantic character. The Joker is a psychotic mass murderer who's supposed to be without a shred of appeal. Why would Harley Quinn be on his nuts? I don't know. Why are reasonably attractive 20 year olds willing to marry elderly Charles Manson.
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Also DC's cinematic universe just doesn't have it. Almost everything is a flop. They take themselves way too seriously, there's not a shred of humor to be found anywhere, outside of Batman their primary heroes just aren't relatable. I mean Superman, really, who can relate to Superman? Marvel's strength is the human aspects of their characters. We can put ourselves in their places for the most part. I'm a bit of a comic book geek from way back and I have a pretty strong knowledge of both universes but I've always felt DC was not as strong as Marvel.
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Comics in the silver age had to adhere to the comics code. Therefore they sucked. Today Marvel has the MAX imprint and DC has Vertigo which allows for much more adult comic book stories. Just thought I'd put that out there.
P.S. The joker is not a romantic character. The Joker is a psychotic mass murderer who's supposed to be without a shred of appeal. Why would Harley Quinn be on his nuts? I don't know. Why are reasonably attractive 20 year olds willing to marry elderly Charles Manson.
I'm aware of what the Joker is and isn't and he has evolved greatly over the last 80 years or so.Comics in the silver age had to adhere to the comics code. Therefore they sucked. Today Marvel has the MAX imprint and DC has Vertigo which allows for much more adult comic book stories. Just thought I'd put that out there.
P.S. The joker is not a romantic character. The Joker is a psychotic mass murderer who's supposed to be without a shred of appeal. Why would Harley Quinn be on his nuts? I don't know. Why are reasonably attractive 20 year olds willing to marry elderly Charles Manson.
Back then bank robberies were a big deal now you have to be a psycho serial killer, and it's hard to get evil enough with a PG-13. And the Joker has changed over the years depending on the director's vision so it's not ridiculous to think this time they were trying to make him Svengali.
In the first place Harley was pretty cute and not nearly as dangerous and loony as she probably should have been to make it work. Second of all no matter how they want to change the Joker it never occurred to me that he was gay.
And yes even little Marvel store almost everything they have from DC they've done a better job at it recently. If it ain't on the page it ain't on the stage.
DC has missed the boat on more than one occasion.
WSS
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I disagree on that last statement. Marvel has built a whole different class of superhero from its inception. Needy teenager Peter parker and outcasts like the xmen were instantly relatable to their audience vs perfect, invulnerable superman, wonder woman, captain marvel etc. I guess most everyone "ripped off" dc because all superheros have their genesis in superman but marvel has always done a better job than dc of connecting their characters to their audience.
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And the earliest incarnation of the joker before the comics code neutered him was also a psychotic killer
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And that really the movie is not my cup of tea. As really wanting to root that of villains. Come on not my movie. Sorry if I offend any fans.
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And that really the movie is not my cup of tea. As really wanting to root that of villains. Come on not my movie. Sorry if I offend any fans.
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Im not sure if I'm stroking out or he is but that statement was all kinds of messed up.
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