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#305 - Suicide Squad
David Ayer, 2016
A government agent assembles a team of highly dangerous criminals in order to prevent an impending supernatural apocalypse.
Trying to approach a movie like Suicide Squad on its own terms is a difficult thing to do. Many well-publicised issues have plagued it from its very inception, with everything from controversial on-set occurrences to skepticism-inducing trailers pointing towards the increasingly likely possibility that the final product was going to be a veritable fiasco. This would only add to the rather unfortunate narrative that currently surrounds DC Comics' plan to craft their own extended cinematic universe with 2013's Man of Steel and this year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Considering the success and goodwill that the brand had earned off the basis of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, it made sense that DC would choose to emphasise their movies being made by distinctive filmmakers rather than the all-encompassing house style favoured by Marvel. Of course, this arguably backfired when the filmmaker that DC settled on ended up being Zack Snyder, whose approach to reinventing Superman in Man of Steel had issues that were only exacerbated in Batman v Superman. Though Suicide Squad boasted a much more flexible cast of characters and a new filmmaker in David Ayer, there would be no telling if this would signal any improvement for DC's fortunes. At this point, it's not so much about whether you should invoke "death of the author" so much as it is about whether you can.
As with any film that opts to get by on the basis of outlandish characters and colourful spectacle, the underlying narrative is a simplistic one. The film begins in the aftermath of Batman v Superman with coolly Machiavellian government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) outlining a proposal for the military to form a special task force comprised of known "meta-humans" whose supernatural abilities could prove useful. It turns out that most of them have been incarcerated within a top-secret prison with no hope of getting out. After introducing all the prospective members of the squad-to-be in an extended montage, the plot kicks in when one such meta-human (Cara Delevigne), a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure who alternates between being a timid archaeologist and an ancient demon known as the Enchantress, orchestrates a plan to break away from her handlers and wreak havoc on the world. Waller then proceeds to forcibly recruit meta-humans for her task force by injecting explosive devices into their necks (why does that sound familiar...) and sending them into the city that's being plagued by the Enchantress's magical rampage. Of course, what with the Squad being comprised mainly of dishonourable criminals, things never get out of hand so much as never get into hand in the first place. It's a thin plot and one that is prone to many a familiar development if one has watched enough superhero movies (or movies in general), but it's also basic enough to avoid distracting from the film's main draw - the characters.
Now, this is where things do get complicated. Getting the right balance for an ensemble cast of weird characters is always a challenge and I don't think that Suicide Squad pulls off such a feat because of weaknesses with the individuals involved. Things got to the point where my interest in a particular character tended to be inversely proportional to the amount of screen-time that they got. In this regard, the only character that truly achieves the right balance is El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a heavily tattooed gang member whose ability to conjure fire is matched only by his reluctance to use it when faced with danger. Davis proves a consummate professional as the righteous but callous Waller to the point where she is the one most under-served by the material. Though Jai Courtney has earned an unfortunate reputation due to being cast in generic action hero roles, his turn as deranged super-crook Captain Boomerang at least allows him to show some range. Even characters like Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Katana (Karen Fukuhara) get hints at being potentially interesting characters (especially the latter), but that's skimmed over in favour of making them into flat, problematic characters. As for Slipknot (Adam Beach), well, I'd say "the less you know, the better" but I don't think that's possible. Their relative thinness speaks to the movie's generally cluttered approach that tries to do too much with a very loaded cast and ends up doing too little.
However, as much as I wish those side-characters might deserve a bit more time in the limelight, I can't help but wonder if the added focus would hinder them as much as it does with the main players. The closest the film gets to having a standard protagonist is Will Smith as Deadshot, a hyper-competent killer who gets some sympathetic back-story that's supposed to help flesh out an otherwise typically sardonic Smith performance. Margot Robbie is definitely primed to be a stand-out character as the homicidally chipper Harley Quinn; however, her turn as an impish wise-cracker with a tragic inner life tends to feel more irritating than charming as she relentlessly quips and giggles her way through almost every scene. Even though Harley's got a considerably dark back-story underneath her colourful exterior, one can definitely question whether it's competently executed within the context of this movie (especially when it involves a psychologically abusive partner in the form of Jared Leto's Joker). If there's one especially large millstone hanging around this movie's already-strained neck, it's Leto. For all his notorious Method antics, they don't amount to much as he fails to stand out in any remotely positive way during his mercifully brief time on-screen (his delivery of the line "this bird is baked" is a masterclass in the bad kind of horrible acting). To make matters worse, his relevance to the film at large is minimal and he only serves to epitomise the film's extremely bloated and haphazard execution.
Without a strong and well-balanced ensemble of characters around which to build, Suicide Squad flounders severely. Though it technically follows a three-act narrative, it is very much a film of two markedly different halves. The first half, which sees the Squad and other relevant players be introduced, seems willing to embrace the lighter side of the film's premise as it powers through introduction after introduction, each of which is packed with whizz-bang editing and raucous soundtrack choices. Even before the movie settles into a more consistently grim tone with its mission-based second half, its attempts to establish a sense of levity come across as overwhelmingly mercenary. Much of this is down to the soundtrack, which almost feels subversive in its use of overplayed hits (mostly in the classic rock genre) to accompany proceedings. Choice of music can make or break a scene; regardless of how I felt about the songs by themselves, their usage in Suicide Squad almost entirely leans towards "break" as their pointed relevance to any given scene comes across as uninspired. This is without even mentioning Steven Price's thoroughly forgettable original score, which does suffer for having to compete against a near-constant barrage of licensed tracks. This focus on musical shortcomings may come across as trivial, but considering how invested Suicide Squad is in projecting a strong sense of personality, the fact that it settles for some of the blandest song choices possible in order to accompany its larger-than-life characters is a major red flag.
It's pretty much a given at this point that any film involving superheroes or the universes that they inhabit needs to make the most of its fantastic potential. While this potential can be demonstrated in terms of both thematic substance and visual spectacle, Suicide Squad struggles when it comes to providing either. It's understandable that the movie would want to emphasise character over plot, but that becomes a problem when the characters get nothing of note to do. The villains have barely any personality to supplant their vague but obviously evil plan, whereas their minions are nondescript abominations that prove easy fodder for the Squad to obliterate without bloodshed or moral quandary. As a result, action scenes become chores to sit through; the members of the Squad are defined as having all sorts of unique abilities that make them relatively valuable assets, yet they are almost never utilised in engaging ways. This is only exacerbated by the movie's generally grim aesthetic and shoddy editing that can kill a sequence's momentum by interfering with pacing or simply focusing on the wrong elements. The lack of visual competence is reflected in the flimsy attempts to explore concepts of love, redemption, and anti-authoritarianism through these extremely damaged but fundamentally flat characters. I'd like there to be some meaning to these eyelid-dropping proceedings, but trying to hash it out doesn't do the movie any favours.
I think that a funhouse mirror is an apt metaphor for Suicide Squad (and possibly the DCEU in general), but I don't think it's an inherently positive one. While the mirror's deliberate distortion of the familiar is supposed to amuse an observer, I'd make the case that it is also capable of exaggerating imperfections to the point of becoming grotesque. Suicide Squad plays out like a funhouse mirror for the entire superhero sub-genre in manners that seem both deliberate and accidental, but never to the benefit of the movie (or even the universe) proper. This is especially true of its plot to have a group of villains become unlikely anti-heroes, which can't help but reflect poorly on the ineffectual heroics of actual DCEU do-gooders like Batman and Superman. Even when you disregard the ties to a greater continuity and take the movie as a stand-alone feature, it is still incredibly dependent on replicating many aspects of stock-standard superhero movies (even its final scene feels like a cruel subversion of a certain other superhero movie's nominally triumphant conclusion). Even the performers themselves, who should at least be the film's saving grace, are more likely to be wasted or overused or just plain awful. As a result, Suicide Squad ends up being quite the catastrophe as it doesn't come anywhere close to making the most of its potential and turns what could have been a darkly amusing romp into a choppy endurance test.
David Ayer, 2016
A government agent assembles a team of highly dangerous criminals in order to prevent an impending supernatural apocalypse.
Trying to approach a movie like Suicide Squad on its own terms is a difficult thing to do. Many well-publicised issues have plagued it from its very inception, with everything from controversial on-set occurrences to skepticism-inducing trailers pointing towards the increasingly likely possibility that the final product was going to be a veritable fiasco. This would only add to the rather unfortunate narrative that currently surrounds DC Comics' plan to craft their own extended cinematic universe with 2013's Man of Steel and this year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Considering the success and goodwill that the brand had earned off the basis of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, it made sense that DC would choose to emphasise their movies being made by distinctive filmmakers rather than the all-encompassing house style favoured by Marvel. Of course, this arguably backfired when the filmmaker that DC settled on ended up being Zack Snyder, whose approach to reinventing Superman in Man of Steel had issues that were only exacerbated in Batman v Superman. Though Suicide Squad boasted a much more flexible cast of characters and a new filmmaker in David Ayer, there would be no telling if this would signal any improvement for DC's fortunes. At this point, it's not so much about whether you should invoke "death of the author" so much as it is about whether you can.
As with any film that opts to get by on the basis of outlandish characters and colourful spectacle, the underlying narrative is a simplistic one. The film begins in the aftermath of Batman v Superman with coolly Machiavellian government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) outlining a proposal for the military to form a special task force comprised of known "meta-humans" whose supernatural abilities could prove useful. It turns out that most of them have been incarcerated within a top-secret prison with no hope of getting out. After introducing all the prospective members of the squad-to-be in an extended montage, the plot kicks in when one such meta-human (Cara Delevigne), a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure who alternates between being a timid archaeologist and an ancient demon known as the Enchantress, orchestrates a plan to break away from her handlers and wreak havoc on the world. Waller then proceeds to forcibly recruit meta-humans for her task force by injecting explosive devices into their necks (why does that sound familiar...) and sending them into the city that's being plagued by the Enchantress's magical rampage. Of course, what with the Squad being comprised mainly of dishonourable criminals, things never get out of hand so much as never get into hand in the first place. It's a thin plot and one that is prone to many a familiar development if one has watched enough superhero movies (or movies in general), but it's also basic enough to avoid distracting from the film's main draw - the characters.
Now, this is where things do get complicated. Getting the right balance for an ensemble cast of weird characters is always a challenge and I don't think that Suicide Squad pulls off such a feat because of weaknesses with the individuals involved. Things got to the point where my interest in a particular character tended to be inversely proportional to the amount of screen-time that they got. In this regard, the only character that truly achieves the right balance is El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a heavily tattooed gang member whose ability to conjure fire is matched only by his reluctance to use it when faced with danger. Davis proves a consummate professional as the righteous but callous Waller to the point where she is the one most under-served by the material. Though Jai Courtney has earned an unfortunate reputation due to being cast in generic action hero roles, his turn as deranged super-crook Captain Boomerang at least allows him to show some range. Even characters like Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Katana (Karen Fukuhara) get hints at being potentially interesting characters (especially the latter), but that's skimmed over in favour of making them into flat, problematic characters. As for Slipknot (Adam Beach), well, I'd say "the less you know, the better" but I don't think that's possible. Their relative thinness speaks to the movie's generally cluttered approach that tries to do too much with a very loaded cast and ends up doing too little.
However, as much as I wish those side-characters might deserve a bit more time in the limelight, I can't help but wonder if the added focus would hinder them as much as it does with the main players. The closest the film gets to having a standard protagonist is Will Smith as Deadshot, a hyper-competent killer who gets some sympathetic back-story that's supposed to help flesh out an otherwise typically sardonic Smith performance. Margot Robbie is definitely primed to be a stand-out character as the homicidally chipper Harley Quinn; however, her turn as an impish wise-cracker with a tragic inner life tends to feel more irritating than charming as she relentlessly quips and giggles her way through almost every scene. Even though Harley's got a considerably dark back-story underneath her colourful exterior, one can definitely question whether it's competently executed within the context of this movie (especially when it involves a psychologically abusive partner in the form of Jared Leto's Joker). If there's one especially large millstone hanging around this movie's already-strained neck, it's Leto. For all his notorious Method antics, they don't amount to much as he fails to stand out in any remotely positive way during his mercifully brief time on-screen (his delivery of the line "this bird is baked" is a masterclass in the bad kind of horrible acting). To make matters worse, his relevance to the film at large is minimal and he only serves to epitomise the film's extremely bloated and haphazard execution.
Without a strong and well-balanced ensemble of characters around which to build, Suicide Squad flounders severely. Though it technically follows a three-act narrative, it is very much a film of two markedly different halves. The first half, which sees the Squad and other relevant players be introduced, seems willing to embrace the lighter side of the film's premise as it powers through introduction after introduction, each of which is packed with whizz-bang editing and raucous soundtrack choices. Even before the movie settles into a more consistently grim tone with its mission-based second half, its attempts to establish a sense of levity come across as overwhelmingly mercenary. Much of this is down to the soundtrack, which almost feels subversive in its use of overplayed hits (mostly in the classic rock genre) to accompany proceedings. Choice of music can make or break a scene; regardless of how I felt about the songs by themselves, their usage in Suicide Squad almost entirely leans towards "break" as their pointed relevance to any given scene comes across as uninspired. This is without even mentioning Steven Price's thoroughly forgettable original score, which does suffer for having to compete against a near-constant barrage of licensed tracks. This focus on musical shortcomings may come across as trivial, but considering how invested Suicide Squad is in projecting a strong sense of personality, the fact that it settles for some of the blandest song choices possible in order to accompany its larger-than-life characters is a major red flag.
It's pretty much a given at this point that any film involving superheroes or the universes that they inhabit needs to make the most of its fantastic potential. While this potential can be demonstrated in terms of both thematic substance and visual spectacle, Suicide Squad struggles when it comes to providing either. It's understandable that the movie would want to emphasise character over plot, but that becomes a problem when the characters get nothing of note to do. The villains have barely any personality to supplant their vague but obviously evil plan, whereas their minions are nondescript abominations that prove easy fodder for the Squad to obliterate without bloodshed or moral quandary. As a result, action scenes become chores to sit through; the members of the Squad are defined as having all sorts of unique abilities that make them relatively valuable assets, yet they are almost never utilised in engaging ways. This is only exacerbated by the movie's generally grim aesthetic and shoddy editing that can kill a sequence's momentum by interfering with pacing or simply focusing on the wrong elements. The lack of visual competence is reflected in the flimsy attempts to explore concepts of love, redemption, and anti-authoritarianism through these extremely damaged but fundamentally flat characters. I'd like there to be some meaning to these eyelid-dropping proceedings, but trying to hash it out doesn't do the movie any favours.
I think that a funhouse mirror is an apt metaphor for Suicide Squad (and possibly the DCEU in general), but I don't think it's an inherently positive one. While the mirror's deliberate distortion of the familiar is supposed to amuse an observer, I'd make the case that it is also capable of exaggerating imperfections to the point of becoming grotesque. Suicide Squad plays out like a funhouse mirror for the entire superhero sub-genre in manners that seem both deliberate and accidental, but never to the benefit of the movie (or even the universe) proper. This is especially true of its plot to have a group of villains become unlikely anti-heroes, which can't help but reflect poorly on the ineffectual heroics of actual DCEU do-gooders like Batman and Superman. Even when you disregard the ties to a greater continuity and take the movie as a stand-alone feature, it is still incredibly dependent on replicating many aspects of stock-standard superhero movies (even its final scene feels like a cruel subversion of a certain other superhero movie's nominally triumphant conclusion). Even the performers themselves, who should at least be the film's saving grace, are more likely to be wasted or overused or just plain awful. As a result, Suicide Squad ends up being quite the catastrophe as it doesn't come anywhere close to making the most of its potential and turns what could have been a darkly amusing romp into a choppy endurance test.