I wasn’t aware that saying that someone’s look seemed more deserving of a smack than fear was “Internet Tough Guy” but, ummm… sure? I guess? I always assumed that Internet Tough Guys tried to intimidate real people over the net but I guess if fictional characters are scared of me now, that’s kinda cool.
Look, the get-up just sucks. It’s not menacing in any sort of way. It’s not campy, it’s not intimidating, it’s just bad and looks stupid. Sorry. That’s not from any deep fanboy feeling or anything – I don’t really care about Batman or comics in general. But I know when something is supposed to be intimidating and fails and that image saying how he’s going to hurt someone just ain’t it. It just looks kind of silly and stupid. I guess that makes me a “Tough Guy” (who knew?) but I’m okay with that.
Put simpler: I’m not tough. I’m not scary. That’s kind of the whole point: Joker looks lame enough that even non-tough, non-scary me isn’t the least bit intimidated by him. Non-tough me figures he could take that Joker in a fight. That’s not a measure of my toughness, it’s a measure of him lameness. You know, sometimes you see a character in a movie and think “He’s pretty bad-ass”? Yeah… not this time.
Speaking for myself, I’m getting deathly tired of the need to make every single damn thing dark and gritty. Everyone in the trailer just looks physically dirty and grimy, and with the exception of Harley Quinn, about 85% similar.
Grittiness is its own enemy in a comic-book premise. We more-or-less accept that the more popular bad guys will return - that they’re never permanently killed off, permanently incarcerated or judiciously executed - there simply isn’t any plausible way that a mass-murderer like the Joker manages to stay alive and/or active in the kind of corrupt society portrayed in, say, Gotham. As soon as he gets arrested after one of his killing sprees, a bunch of corrupt cops are going to beat him to death in a back room with five-cell flashlights and then all cover for each other. We’ve already seen numerous murders along those lines on much less deserving targets. In that setting, Batman for all his alleged scariness starts to look like something of a pansy with his “no kill” rule.
Heh, I always felt that there’s no way the cops wouldn’t have rough-handled Ledger’s Joker when he was arrested and wiped that grease paint off his face. If he resisted or complained, they would have blasted him with a fire hose until he near drowned. “We were just cleaning him for a positive ID!”
Strangely, Leto looks to be in his mid-20s in the clip and stills when he’s actually a couple years older than me. Maybe that’s why I don’t take it seriously. Also, between the makeup, expressions and that weird grill on his teeth he comes across more as a tweaked up meth-head than a psychotic criminal mastermind. Granted I wouldn’t want to be trapped in an elevator with either but one is more intimidating on the big screen.
I seem to recall a passing comment that in their attempts to identify the Ledger-Joker, they’d checked his clothing for labels and he’d removed them all. I’m not sure how they could do that without stripping him and if they did, why they’d give him his clothes back instead of a department-of-corrections orange jumpsuit.
Without washing the fugging makeup off his face! They were like they printed him and were doing all this stuff to get an ID, yet didn’t wash his face to get a mugshot to send out?!
The wonderful thing about the Joker is that he’s trying way too hard, but he does it in a way that people don’t think he is. He’s a villain that premiered in 1940 wearing a purple fucking zoot suit. ISTM that a purple zoot suit is basically the 1930s version of being a punk-ass who’s trying too hard.
I thought from early previews at least one Supes villain was there(Metallo?) but if they changed that and it is all Arkham guests that at least makes it feel less odd.
I like John & Kim’s run, but John did noticeably go for a high casualty count for its own sake a few times. Early on, the Doom Patrol / Suicide Squad crossover seemed egregious.
I haven’t read the ones after Kim Yale died. I think Mrs Waller and the team should have been allowed to retire after #66 and the end of the series, instead of being dredged up to use as heavies by lesser writers. Yeah, I just called Rucka lesser than the Ostrander/Yale team. OK, maybe even, but worse at writing Waller.
I’m not sure what it is with DC writers and Waller. I think Giffen & DeMatteis did OK with Waller in the JLI comics–when her own book was still going–but she’s been badly handled by DC for a long time.
Heck, I don’t think John writes the Wall that well without Kim.
Personally, I really liked the trailer and I’m very much looking forward to the film, it’s one of my most anticipated films of 2016. I do have some concerns about the film, though; I’m optimistic that those concerns will be addressed, but I can understand why others would be more upset about it.
Obviously, the Joker is most people’s biggest concern. He’s the most iconic villain in comics, period. Personally, I loved the laugh in the trailer, but certainly the visual aspect is going to raise concerns. In my view, considering the source material and the tone of MoS and the BvS trailer, I’m very much expecting a more sadistic and psychopathic version of the trailer, rather than a whimsical Nicholson or anarchic Ledger joker. But I’m unsure if the appearance really fits with that. I definitely do not get any Juggalo references; as others said, I think anyone saying that has no idea what a Juggalo is. Given the aesthetic of Joker and Harley, they strike me more as a sort of demented clubbing type. That said, people were livid when Ledger was cast and also upset when they saw the visuals for him too, and now many (most?) people consider him THE definitive Joker and probably the single greatest performance in a comic book film. I think Leto is a good fit for the role, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Harley, my concerns with Harley are rather minimal, but I know others have big concerns. She’s a fan favorite and people have been dying to see a live action version of her. I think Margot Robbie is a fantastic casting, but some of the clips they’ve shown of her seem a little TOO spot on crazy, not too unlike Joker’s Damaged tattoo. However, those scenes are out of context, so I’m loathe to pass too much judgment on them. She does make a couple bad jokes in the trailer too, which fell flat, but then again, maybe that’s part of the point, that her and Joker THINK there’s hilarity in what they’re doing, and there just isn’t. The one big concern I have, and it’s mostly just because we have no evidence either way, is how her chemistry with Leto will be; that’s absolutely integral to her character working.
Will Smith. What I’ve seen with him so far in the film seems okay, but he still comes across as Will Smith and not Dead Shot, particularly with both the titular line and the “save the world” line, which just seem a little over the top. I’m a little concerned either he’ll be too big to fit into the proper-sized role in an ensemble cast, or that, because he’s Will Smith, they expanded the role too much for him and it throws off the balance.
Who are these other villains? Sure, I know who they are, but how many of the general audience really do? These characters are going to require some exposition for the audience to get, and with several characters, that could be a lot. Or maybe WB is concerned they’re not a big enough draw on their own and they made the roles of more recognizable characters, like Joker and Batman, and it detracts from where the focus of the film should be.
They’re villains. This is my biggest concern. We’ve seen several villain centered films in recent years, but the formula tends to be that they’re either villains at the start and become good guys by the end, or they’re just misunderstood. If they do that with Suicide Squad, it utterly destroys the entire concept. They need to be villains and they need to stay villains. Also, considering how early this is in the cinematic universe, as the third film, with many of their heroic counterparts likely only just introduced in BvS, we may still have trouble caring. I think the rumor is they were all captured by Batman, but since many of them are traditionally part of other heroes’ rogues galleries, I’m unsure how that really works out. I also really hope that this isn’t just setting up these villains to be fodder later for other films. In short, I just see a lot of tempting opportunities to take the narrative in what I would consider to be likely bad directions. Maybe they’ll avoid it, or maybe they can go in one of those directions and it will work well, but it’s still a concern.
Again, I’m still personally looking forward to it a lot, and since BvS is my most anticipated film of, well, pretty much ever, this gets a boost and some benefit of the doubt based on that, and if BvS is actually good, this film’s stock will go up even more. In fact, considering I expect at least some Joker set up in BvS, given the notes to Batman and the Robin outfit in that trailer, I imagine that will also help to alleviate some people’s concerns, or possibly strengthen them if it doesn’t work.
It’s the SUICIDE Squad. People should get killed, but you know the Joker will never never never die (or if he does it won’t stick).
2)Putting Joker on the team kind of overshadows everyone else since he’s the only really well-known one (it’s like having a community theater invite Meryl Streep to act with them. She’s gonna blow them all away.), and if you’re building a supervillain team, why choose a guy who is the opposite of a team player?
