Just saw Suicide Squad, so these are my thoughts.
The first 30 minutes were grueling, to the point where I considered walking out of the theater. It was just boooring. The introduction of all the characters is incredibly sloppy, it’s just Amanda Waller giving exposition to some military assholes at a fancy restaurant. It’s akin to not having Man of Steel, and opening Batman v Superman with someone telling another character his story. “Clark Kent was born on a farm…”
The only saving grace of the first 30 minutes was the music. They opened the movie up with House of the Rising Sun, which I quite enjoyed. I will say the movie has an amazing soundtrack with songs like Sympathy for the Devil, Seven Nation Army, and Super Freak.
The editing was very strange, and very hard to describe. It’s very fast and jumpy, and I wasn’t a fan of it.
The performances were a mixed bag. Jai Courtney was surprisingly good, he played a very funny character, a far cry from his bland performance in Die Hard. Will Smith was absolutely great and likeable, as always, almost unbelievably so for a hitman. El Diablo was amazing, a very sympathetic but believable character. I’m definitely in the minority on this, but I wasn’t a fan of Harley Quinn, I think her performance felt very forced and like she was trying too hard. Rick Flag had the charisma of a wet brick and his southern accent sounded fake as hell, and the plot really hinges around him and his relationship to someone else, so it just didn’t work. Enchantress was straight up awful. Her performance was incredibly exaggerated, she was walking around with her hips gyrating (fuck you Ayer, no matter now attractive you make her it doesn’t make her performance good), moving her arms and head all around like some cartoon character. I’m not one to be offended on other peoples’ behalf, but at points I was embarrassed by Killer Croc. I felt that his character was vaguely racist. He only has a few lines in the movie, but they’re all barely understandable and in ebonics. There’s one point where he says “I’s wasn’t aksin’ you, bruh.” and I actually groaned.
6/10
I’ve had some new thoughts since I wrote this, so I’m gonna add on to it.
I think that the movie suffered a lot from tone issues. It’s like the writers didn’t know whether they wanted the movie to be serious or lighthearted, so they went for both and it came out a jumbled mess. Amanda Waller seemed like she was taking herself way too seriously every time she was on screen, but at other times there were attempts at Deadpool style humor. I saw a ton of different opportunities for jokes to be made if the movie was a lighthearted jokey movie. And most of the jokes that were made didn’t land with me, but that’s probably just my sense of humor since most of the audience was laughing.
After looking at some pictures of the cast all lined up, I think that Killer Croc was cast poorly. The actor who played him, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, just wasn’t imposing enough. He’s only 6’2, I’m the same height as him. I think they should’ve cast someone bigger, like Shaq or something. Look how short he is!
The character design of the villains was absolutely awful. One of the villains was such obvious CGI that it ruined my immersion every time I saw him.
The magical Enchantress shit felt very out of place compared to the rest of the world. I’m worried about Doctor Strange for this same reason. I can only suspend my disbelief so far, I’ll buy aliens and alternate dimensions, but once you throw in black magic hocus pocus bullshit, you lose me.
Still a 6/10