#StokerScore 4/10
The DC Extended Universe of movies deserves a break, doesn't it? No matter what it does at the moment, be it appealing to fan-boys by placing classic scenes onto the screen, or trying to listen to criticism and changing out stuff to appeal to the masses, they just don't seem to be getting a rub of the green.
But is it audiences or critics who don't like their movies? Personally speaking, I place myself in the former category, I just so happen to love movies and I also like to write about them.
I have to confess, I enjoyed Man of Steel. I thought that even though we were treated to yet another telling of Clark's origin story, and apart from the phallic prison tubes that Zod and his cronies were forced into on Krypton, I enjoyed it. But Batman vs Superman came across as confused (here) and this latest effort is just a glorious, glorious mess.
David Ayer, the director, is responsible for writing 2001's Training Day and directing 2012's End of Watch. Both movies had black humour and grit in equal measures. Does he then try to transfer that over to Suicide Squad? Well I think you can see where he tried to but where the other two movies were grounded in reality Suicide Squad's basic premise and characters are ripped from the pages of a comic and therefore don't get to consider the realities of the world. This is especially so when one of the squad's number has a soul-storing sword. Kind of takes away the whole reality thing.
Because of this, the characters who came across best for me were the absurd and weird. Diablo who can channel fire and Killer Croc (yes, you heard me) felt more comfortable in the movie than Rick Flagg or Will Smith's Deadshot. In my opinion, Harley Quinn isn't a lead character for me, she's way too one dimensional which in a comic is fine but here starts to fade into the background misway through. In fact the stand-out character for me was Amanda Waller, the head honcho at the CIA, who came up with Task Force X, she manages to combine the real with the fantastic and yet still retain a believable level of menace
For me, the attempts to shoe-horn in other DC characters was unnecessary, The Joker should have been saved for his own movie, and this would have freed up more time to tell a better story or even scale it down to a leaner running time.
I think that by now everyone in the world is aware of superheroes and supervillains but the problem here is that the backstories weren't fleshed out enough for us to care who lives and dies. At least I didn't. This is in part due to superhero universes having access to 'McGuffins' with which they can miraculously bring people back to life (see you later, Supes)
As a bit of summer movie hokum it's ok. Go and be bombarded by the images and the silliness and when Gozo eventually takes.....oh wait, that's Ghostbusters......Look, just watch it and make up your own mind, but for the time being don't expect to see a DCU movie as layered and fulfilling as a Marvel superhero movie....See you in November, Doctor Strange...
