I love movies. I promise, I do! When I was a freshman in college, and still a bit naïve as to the size of the Earth, I made a vow to watch every movie ever made. Now, I was not 100% serious about the declaration but, in my mind, I believed that it was an endeavor that a person could, technically, do. In my small corner of the world, growing up, we had one movie theater about an hour away. And to a kid, it only makes sense that the movie theater was where every movie that was made was shown. And by my math, considering each movie played in theaters for about 2 months, with 8 screens, that meant that around 50 movies were made every year. And movies had only been made since the 1930s or something (and they made less each year the older back you got) so, by that logic, it was possible for a person to get caught up on every movie from the past in a matter of a few years, and then see every new film that came out going forward for the rest of my life. I was, of course, going to be rich and have ample time on my hands, after all.
Retarded 19-year-old aside, the point is, I really do love movies. And it’s not lost on me how en vogue “hating” movies is today. I have eyes and ears and I realize there’s an industry for it. I consume of that industry, and it’s wise to step back, at times, to decide whether or not you’re expressing your dislike of something for the sport of it, or if you’re being an honest agent. I’m not the only one to feel this way. This fear of simply being a “hater” can also have a dishonest effect in the other direction too. Worn out from all the hating, many current era movies are given so much slack that the ghosts of movie past would have a look at us today and assume we are all much dumber than they thought we were and that they worked way too hard for our approval. I fear that The Suicide Squad will be one of those movies.
The Suicide Squad is not the worst thing in the world. In another era(as is said so many times) it would be viewed, merely, as an over-the-top travesty in story-telling that wasn’t worth a ticket, but maybe a rent if nothing else was going on. Today, it will make many folks top-10 for the year. We are so starved for movies that do not preach to us and treat us like infants, that any movie that goes for ‘light suggestion’ and treats us like 12 year olds, instead, looks good by comparison. Enter, James Gunn.
I must admit, my only knowledge of James Gunn was The Guardians of The Galaxy. And I loved the 1st one. I credit that movie with elevating the MCU from a world of Iron Man and a couple of generic milquetoast sidekick movies, to a legit universe of individual characters and legit world-building(see Guardians of the Galaxy Review). But by Guardians 2, the shtick was already wearing a bit thin for me and, now, with The Suicide Squad, I keep thinking that there’s certainly a such thing as being “too James Gunn.”
The Suicide Squad is a movie about villains that are released from prison to do a job for the United States government. And one of the nice things about the beginning of the film, is that they spent just as much time as it took you to read that last sentence as they did to tell you that in the movie. We get the premise, they know we get the premise, lets get it over with and start the story. I did like that. However, as I often do when these little convenience devices show up in movies, I couldn’t help but put my guard up a little. So often, they go from enjoyable to massive issues later in movies. I wouldn’t say that it became too much of an issue, pacing-wise, but certainly was a precursor to the nihilistic bent that the movie was, and that I’m exhausted with.
Much like Guardians of The Galaxy, The Suicide Squad uses a gallery of lesser known comic book characters and it allows the creators a large amount of freedom. I always viewed this as a screen writers dream. You have a world that’s already established and an endless blueprint of stories with which to draw from. Viewers are already bought in (more than you sometimes) when they sit down. But you’re not bound by the sacrosanct shadow that follows all the big names around. A little bit of flavor can go a long way with the audience.
With a generic plot that the audience is ok with, and pre-packaged characters to work with, the only thing left for James Gunn to do is to make it James Gunn. And he does. The Guardians-esque comedy was over-done and fell flat almost the entire time for me, and the effort at a classic old-school soundtrack was a bit of a miss, although not tragically so. The hard R rating did this movie no favors. If the question was “what would a rated R James Gunn super-hero movie be like?” the answer would be: Obnoxious.
I understand that, for some movie goers, the creative gore, callused killings, and random male nudity is entertaining(as mentioned before: 12 year olds). Heck, even I can get on board if the right tone is set, and it is pulled off somewhat gracefully. But in this movie, it just came off as obnoxious. We get gore for gore’s sake, a random pecker, and then a whole team of soulless characters that he, then, tries to get us invested in to tell his story. And that’s where the movie actually lost me. I have always looked past the pointless gore and could shut my brain off through so-so action sequences. But when a creator goes through all the effort to establish that their character has no redeeming qualities; goes out of their way to impress you with just how big of a piece-of-shit they are, and then tries to get you to buy their humanity so that you have some type of investment in them, I get majorly turned off.
And I get it. Not only is the anti-hero the only hero we get anymore, it’s the only character we get in ANYTHING period. Everything; movies, television, cartoons, games. It’s like the principal at Hollywood High School read the definition of this new word called “nuance” and put out a memo to all the faculty to kill every single project that doesn’t have an anti-hero in it. Problem is, 1. Some of your faculty is going to be more attuned to teaching this curriculum than others and 2. The anti-hero only succeeds so long as there’s a healthy dose of traditional heroes in the ether. We have neither the requisite amount of capable writers, nor the adequate presence of traditional heroes to support the current number of anti-heroes on the market.
The movies lack of soul aside, many may get toward the end of this movie and be under the impression that “it had action and wasn’t really that woke, so I like it.” And there’s a scene at the end that made me chuckle a bit in this respect. Predictably, most of the straight white men are stupid and/or killed off by the end of this movie except for one; Polka Dot Man. After completing some major super-heroing in one of the final scenes he looks to Idris Elba in triumph, having dealt a major blow to the threat, giving the team a chance to emerge victorious. Then, all of a sudden, a giant starfish leg falls on him and kills him. The thing that made me laugh was not the weak comedy of it(this type of thing happens throughout the movie), but having just done a white-guy head count in my head, leading up to this moment, it was as if the movie said to me “oh, you think a straight white guy is gonna make it through this? BOOM! Wrong!” That was funny to me. Save for one dumb Beta back at Black Ops headquarters, there is no white man alive at the end of this movie. AND, no human female protagonist dies. And I get it; ‘Who watches a movie and counts demographics like that? But they did this. It’s stupid and a waste of time, but Hollywood makes us view films like this, cuz that’s how they do.
And Harley Quinn? Oh My Lanta, Harley Quinn. Did you ever have big family Christmases or reunions when you get together with all your cousins and play while the adults drink and lie to each other? You may be playing a game of basketball, or video games with your cousins. You all get enthralled in heated competition only to have your mother yell at you and say “let your little cousin have a turn!” So then, you and all your cousins bring the competition to a screeching halt while you let your little cousin shoot a ball off the side of the backboard or take a turn at the video game and die in 20 seconds? Those are the Harley Quinn scenes in this movie. Just as a viewer may start to get a little investment and the movie finds a hint of momentum, everything is put on hold while they give Harley Quinn a chance for a scene, where she, metaphorically, shoots a ball off the side of a backboard. It takes you out of the little immersion you may have had and kept me viewing the movie from the outside rather than being in it. I never bought her character(a common theme), and I don’t know that it’s Margo’s fault. But removing Harley would be addition by subtraction.
In the end, all of the bad guys are good guys, Harley Quinn saves the day and America is awful but no one can do anything about it. BUT, in 2021, this movie did have 2 major plot twists that I never saw coming. 1- The strong black female leader of the Black Ops unit turns out to be bad(sorta)! I mean, she was representing American interests, so it clearly wasn’t her fault, but still. She was taken out by one of the morally conscience agents(a woman no less). And 2- The rat lady had…wait for it…a good dad! That’s right. The rat lady’s dad was the rat man, and he was good to her. He instilled values of empathy and she loved him. Knock me over with a feather! Not sure how this snuck by the writers, but however it did, it made for quite the surprise reveal at the end of the film. If only I had bought the characters humanity throughout, it may have had an even stronger impact.
All the belly-aching aside, and as I said in the beginning, The Suicide Squad is not the worst thing in the world. The acting is good, and the CGI is quite good. If you’re having a party and want a mindless pew-pew on in the background, you could find worse shows. But damn you, James Gunn, for making me feel like an old crotchety fuddy duddy! I refuse to believe it!
AgingMillenial 