I do think it’s funny that of all the reviews, from positive to middling to negative, I’ve seen tons of praise for Robbie, Smith, and Davis, and some praise of Courtney and Hernandez, but I’ve seen zero positive things about Leto and his performance.
After what I saw they did with the Joker character and how Harley Quinn got changed from a professional to schoolgirl slut I’m just not holding out hope that they know what they’re doing.
My version of this:
The movie came very close to sucking. Is it great? No. is it terrible? Pretty much. It is the best DC movie since 1978 that did not feature Batman which just shows how much suck there’s been projected onto screens in DC’s name.
I don’t know how accurate the Hollywood Reporter is but this is quite possibly the worst edited big budget movie I’ve ever seen. So many times I wondered if they’d accidentally cut a third of a scene or put takes out of order, or just forgot what they’d already done. Then during the end battle I can only assume that they accidentally left in the gag real of the villain being menacing by doing her impression of a wind tube that was meant for the wrap party.
Robbie was really good. And, despite a couple fan service shots of her ass, won out via a strong performance. Unfortunately, a little Harley Quinn goes a long way so she couldn’t carry the film and a Harley Quinn centered film would probably be terrible through no fault of her own.
Smith was good but his character got saddled with some sappy scenes with his daughter so we’d know that he wasn’t really such a bad guy. One of them was somewhat amusing, the rest made me cringe with how bad they were. Not really Smith’s fault – no one could have made them less glurgey.
Hernandez was probably in third. He wasn’t given much to work with but did well with what he had. Courtney was… okay? I mean, he wasn’t bad but he wasn’t stealing scenes either. My impression of Davis was that she was only missing a mustache to twirl and prove how evil she was. My wife, who is familiar with the DC comic universe, was impressed with how well she nailed it but, as a non-comics person, she was practically a cartoon.
I’m not surprised that some people liked it or thought it wasn’t so bad – someone needs to make up that 25-33% who gave it positive reviews.
… to an almost meta-human extent?
If the high point of the movie is that it introduced Amanda Waller, I think DC may be in trouble here.
I’ll pass for now, but with luck, we might see a genuinely good Director’s Cut down the line. It may not make Let’s Joker worthwhile, but it could certainly fix many of the problems from the sound of it.
If it were a B movie I’d say “wow, that was a pretty good B movie; hope they make a sequel!”
Is there going to be a “seen it” thread with open spoilers or is this it now?
Considering how good the marketing campaign has been for this movie (they seem to have taken a pretty bad movie and managed to build up a lot of good buzz) you have to wonder who dropped the ball on the poster. Seriously, that is one of the worst movie posters I’ve seen in decades.
Wow, it looks like they gave some random nobody a copy of photoshop and said “go nuts.”
“Mr Leto, Good news & Bad news. The bad news is DC might not use you in the next film. But the Good news is that I’ve got PEZ Candy on the other line and they want your Head on a Dispenser…!”
I haven’t seen it yet, but I will, despite being almost deterred by scathing reviews from Wired, New York Times and others. Curiously, John Ontrander loved it really liked it and kind of slaps down the naysayers, which gives me some hope.
I note the thumping of Zack Snyder in this thread and agree (he should never been given the reins on another movie after “Suckerpunch”), but I think that particular net also catches Geoff Johns, who is Chief Creative Officer at DC. Johns seemed to be involved in the movie in some way at the beginning perhaps. Johns’ editorial guidance and writing is entangled, immature and insular, and from what I am reading of this movie it sounds like his ethos has pervaded the scripting.
I got the chance to see it with my wife. We both had fun; it was an entertaining, bubble-gum sort of flick. It was very literally comic-booky. Everyone seemed to talk in comic book word balloons, except Will Smith, which was why I felt his portrayal really didn’t fit well with the others. He was funny and fun to watch, but I never bought him as a cold-blooded hitman for one second. The other big problem I had was the sountrack. It was all over the place and didn’t seem to have any sort of theme, and it drowned out the dialogue at times. I liked it, but I can see why it got bad reviews. It’s definitely not for everyone. It reminds me of another superhero movie I liked that got bad reviews: Mystery Men. It has the same sort of unreal, surreal vibe to it visually and thematically, though this movie is much, much darker.
I think I’d give it about a 6 out of 10.
Especially because they apparently couldn’t even do that right. Angry Joe gave the movie a good review, but one of his complaints was a scene in which
Amanda Waller kills a bunch of police that were helping her because they knew too much. She’s much more interesting as someone who exploits supervillains than as an equal-opportunity villain.
This is the poster I’ve mostly been seeing, which I think is much better.
I also kinda like the character solo posters, which I think almost have a SHAG kind of a feel to them.
Example
Example
Example
I wanted to like this movie and really didn’t.
At least with Batman vs Superman I expected it to be terrible so I was able to at least enjoy the elements that were actually well done …considering.
I’d say that this film puts DC releases permanently on my “Wait until the second-run $2 discount theater picks it up” list except that the next release will be Wonder Woman and I’d like to contribute to Patty Jenkins’ opening weekend box office for fear that Studio bosses will use a weak opening as “proof” that a woman can’t be entrusted with a megabudget film.
One complaint I haven’t seen…
If this were a stand alone film with no connection to any other narrative, the whole anti-hero thing might be a good way to go but this is supposed to be connected to the wider DC Universe and these are supposed to be the DC villains. Would any of these characters, as presented in this film, make a decent villain for any of the other DC films? No way! They’re all just “lonely and misunderstood”. Blech!
On a different topic, I’d be interested to hear if I’m the only person who thought Enchantress and June Moone were being played by two different actresses. I was genuinely surprised when I found out it was the same actress for both. Not that it was an amazing performance, but I was under the impression that Cara Delevingne was one of those “Famous for Being Famous” personalities. So, I’m actually somewhat impressed with how she pulled it off.
(I didn’t know who I was watching while watching the film, didn’t find out it was her until afterward)
I think that’s what upsets me. I had high expectations for this movie and I really wanted it to be good. But with DC’s track record, I knew there was a chance it would fail so I wanted to hear the early reviews before going to see it. I’ll probably still go see it but now I’ll wait until it hits the discount theater.
Delevingne is an English model who’s been working on getting into acting. Her biggest role was in last year’s Paper Towns, which was a big stretch away from Suicide Squad. It was a young adult romantic comedy.
I haven’t seen the movie but I wasn’t that impressed by the trailer or clips. Delevingne’s acting seemed a little lifeless and she seemed to have difficulties with the accent.
Yeah, like I said, it wasn’t an amazing performance but I did spend the whole film thinking the two parts were played by two different actresses. So, I gotta give her extra credit for achieving that.
Count me in the meh brigade.
I wanted to like it, I had high hopes, and while I was moderately entertained, it wasn’t great. The personal clincher for me, when I know I haven’t bought into a movie, is when I start to notice where ‘Rule of cool’ trumps any sort of realism.
The biggest issue for me though, was some of the poor movie making craft on display, the editing was abysmal, the pace and plotting were bad. The number of action sequences which coupled the normal ‘actiony’ choppy edits with a really underlit scene that meant I couldn’t tell what was going on.
As an aside, I’m presuming that in comics law, Deadshot is strictly non-meta? As presented in the movie he has to be powered to do what he does on the rifle range.
Why? I’ve seen people shoot that well IRL. They’re RARE, but they certainly exist.
Corrected links, for those who care:
Ostrander: John Ostrander Gives Extended Review Of Suicide Squad
Johns: SUICIDE SQUAD: Geoff Johns & David Ayer Hint At The Movie's Plot
TYphoonSignal8, your links both start “http://http://”
He placed every round from the assault rifle literally through the same holes in each target, including when firing the rifle in automatic/burst fire. The natural variation in the flight of the rounds make that impossible IMO.
If every round had hit the head of the target fine, I would happily have said ‘he’s good’, but sending every round through the same bullet sized hole is impossible. Again IMO, bit I’ll never believe otherwise without video evidence.