DC you did it again. You took an original concept, mottled it with too many characters, too many “jokes”, and not enough plot. The Suicide Squad is fun but is nothing to write home about given its potential.
The Suicide Squad takes place in the DC movie universe and teams up some of that world’s most memorable villains. Amanda Waller forces together this team of the clinically insane to fight for the government should another threat arise. This team quickly becomes reluctant heroes after bombs are injected into their neck and they are forced to follow Waller’s orders under threat of death.
The plot definitely sounds dark enough for the DCU but unfortunately for this movie and its director (David Ayre) it is clear that this film was touched by almost everyone at Warner Brothers before being released. This movie feels like three or four movies jammed into one and just like Batman v. Superman it gets frustrating to connect the dots. Instead of expanding on the rich world set up by BVS it seems to try and recreate it using secondary characters and expensive music tracks. This is what my fears for Guardians of the Galaxy looks like, and it is not pretty.
To avoid an overly negative review I do want to point out some of the positive things I liked in the movie. Jared Ledo’s Joker was a big departure from what we may have been used to, but I think that in this film it worked and got me excited to see him interact with his ultimate foil Batman. I thought the use of Batman was also very good. It was only a couple of scenes but having him to tie the movie together was one of the strongest anchor points to the DCU. Lastly Margot Robbie and Will Smith truly carried this movie on their backs. They are the leads of this film and it wouldn’t have been nearly as successful without these acting powerhouses pushing unbelievable scenes through to the other side.
This movie was a mess, I liked parts of it but it felt like a long way away from the original pitch and it felt like another miss for DC movies. The DCU has started really slowly and although they are making a lot of money the studio can’t be happy with the critical smack down they are receiving. They are trying to do too much too fast and with this film they got burned.
My Rating: 2 Batman Cameos out of 5