Suicide Squad One-Year Anniversary Review

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Suicide Squad is a movie directed and written by David Ayer and is the third installment of the DC Extended Universe.

In the aftermath of Superman’s death, government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a task force consisting of super villains like Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), and is led by U.S. colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) to fight against any superhuman threats.

When one of the task force members, The Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), escapes and threatens the world, it’s up to this Suicide Squad to save the day.

It’s been a year since Suicide Squad first released in the U.S. For some DC fans it’s worth celebrating, for others not so much. For me, it’s a great time to take a second look at this controversial DC film. There’s been an interesting progression from its first announcement to today, in both the anticipation and the reception. When it was first announced, people were excited. Then some concept arts of the characters were released and people grew a bit concerned. The trailers were released and people got excited again.

Then people became outraged because the rotten tomatoes score for the film was too low, and some people even threatened to shut down the site. But as time passed, both the rotten tomatoes and IMDb scores dropped. Suicide Squad was losing its defenders. By 2017, people were outraged again, but this time it was because Suicide Squad had won an oscar.

So what went wrong? What made a film that was so hyped-up become so divisive?

Let’s start with the positives. The style of this movie is great. The posters and logos were creative as well as some of the character designs. Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney and Jay Hernandez all did a great job with their characters. The flashbacks were really good, especially because of the Batman and Flash cameos.

That being said, there were many problems. The first one is the plot. I could make an entire article about the plot holes of this movie. The Enchantress has god-like powers, so she’s the only one Amanda needs. Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is determined to be a pacifist, yet all it took was Deadshot touching him for him to use his powers again. Captain Boomerang runs when Rick Flag tells them they can go, but in the next scene he’s working with the Suicide Squad again with no explanation.

The other issue is that the movie is unfocused. It’s loaded with flashbacks that should have been movies of their own, and as a result, the main plot is just the Suicide Squad walking towards the big final boss, fighting faceless goons every now and then, and spewing dialogue that goes from decent to badly-written.

Characters get little to no development, like Killer Croc, Katana, and Slipknot who is just thrown into the middle of the movie with no introduction like the other characters, making it clear that he’s going to be the first one to die.

Some performances like Joel Kinnaman and Cara Delevingne were bland, but the worst was Jared Leto as Joker. The Joker doesn’t have to be comic-accurate, as we’ve seen in The Dark Knight. However, the Joker is someone who intimidates me and makes me laugh at the same time. I felt none of those things with Jared Leto’s performance. In the end, it just came out awkward.

And last but not least, this could have been an unique comic book movie: a dark comedy that shows a team of super-individuals who instead of saving the world, take care of minor threats and more often than not exist to clean the government’s mess. They could have been a team who does good because they’re forced to with team members that try to betray each other every time they have the chance. Instead, we get a by-the-numbers superhero movie plot with many cliches.

So what do I think of this movie? It’s not completely bad, and it has some entertaining scenes and performances. But overall, the movie is incoherent and unfocused. It had so much potential gone to waste. Fortunately, it seems DC and Warner Bros have learned their mistakes with Wonder Woman. Let’s hope they can keep it up with their future installments.

Written by: Miguel Coelho