Suicide Squad

[Shiuzu]

I was listening to a podcast today that kind of talked about the Guardians, SS comparison as far as the, "Well they both look silly and are straying away from well known characters. The big takeaway from it was when one of them mentioned the differences being, the Guardians trailers showed us the characters and why we should care about them. The Suicide Squad trailer just showed us the characters.

 

[BLADE]

It's a comic book movie. And you have to admit, Guardians of the Galaxy looked very stupid as well. Just making a point.

Forgive me but you are making a comparison and not a very trenchant one at that. What does Guardians of the Galaxy have in common with this movie narratively? Thematically? In composition? In ambition? Even idemographically? You could easily make the same argument about... oh The Goonies (a team of misfits goes on a quest.) You see perhaps my point? It glistens like the flopsweat on this movie's forehead.

But watching the trailer something struck me: yes, this movie is self-evidently a cynical exercise in reaching into and groping the adrenal glands of a certain moiety of the population (VIZ FECKIN' NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERDS) But it's actually in engaged in something else called recuperating. This term describes the gestalt processes(es) by which ideas previously considered radical or aberrant are recycled back into society. Stay with me for a second.

Recuperating is at the heart of why this movie is pretty much destined to suck. Because it's the latest apogee of a self-contained assembly line of slopping out the most conventional narrative possible (heroes solve conflict) seasoned with a certain ersatz sensibility --grittiness and realism (which isn't to say authenticity because these people don't respect you, and because this source material doesn't respect you and because the system doesn't respect you maaaaan)-- and then feeding it in a trough called the box office. Millions and millions of dollars and some sticky high-fructose corn product (I assume nachos) later and the audience sits down and really digests it.

You'll see pitches on booboise e-zines like oh Vox about how Margot Robbie's performance is exploitative and demeaning and also subversive and slide-shows on HuffPo showing revealing photos of the cast (mostly Ms. Robbie) with a thin premise connecting the firing of those leptons. You'll hear the screeching of a thousand pewter-painted geeks didimauing to their respective encampments, tribe against tribe to gnash and bite and write shitty twitter posts about this movie sucked or why it was awesome and wait why are there no black people in this movie --Will Smith counts you racist (but was his performance problematic?)

A thousand thousand monkeys typing on the internets machine and the closest they'll hit Shakespeare with all those terabytes of data will be engraving a crude drawing of the Battle of Agincourt (and perhaps dicks or cats or dick'd cats; this is the internet after all) in their own cyber-shit.

And then we'll do it all over again. Batman vs Superman v The Justice League (Brown v. Board of Education): Electric Boogaloo. Radical ideas --that a person should be unselfish and stand up for what is right, that women can have agency, that our government is ruled by sociopaths who kill people with murderbots and who are a lab accident and some purple jorts away from being full on supervillains, that violence is a complex phenomena which can be regressive or progressive, etc. will be clothed in capes and saccharine scenes where Deadshot (who will never die and probably never kill any named characters we like because he's played by Will Smith) shows off his softer side by hugging his daughter/son/niece/nephew/puppy.

Which brings me back to the trailer. Mulluns surprisingly got at the point rather well. This movie doesn't look like a comic book movie. That's because it doesn't look like much of anything. After all, it's a process in recuperating in which the cultural cloaca burst. And rather than sepsis or the smell setting in, all it can do is point the great Jared Leto, the sublime and transcendent actor in a cheap getup to mime lame lines at the camera.

I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it. This is culture after all, not the commanding heights of the economy or human rights or anything you should necessarily get your skull split open for (or maybe you should: this movie is criminally stupid.) But it's fascinating to me that in the metatextual processes here, the trailer itself outs the movie as the poor party guest, as the fraud, the mountebank, the dookie in the pool.

All I can say to it is that baby don't kill my brain. Just hurt me. Real bad.

P. S. It still looks stupid from where I'm sitting.

 

[Shiuzu]

-clip-

Yeah.

 

[Loco]

I always learn something from your posts. Usually it's a new word.

 

[vamp]

I'm absolutely displeased with the new Joker look.

 

[Johnnysaurus Rex]

I'm absolutely displeased with the new Joker look.

If it was a new Joker within the movie's universe or some sort of Joker lieutenant, I'd be cool with the look. As THE Joker I appreciate they were trying to do something new, but I think this was a bad route.

 

[Ser Gregor]

Fan theory floating around that Leto's Joker is a horribly beaten and mentally scarred Jason Todd.

And there is still nothing about this movie that remotely interests me.

 

[Korvo]

Forgive me

...fer wat?

but you are making a comparison

I most certainly am.

and not a very trenchant one at that.

I can't do anything about your perspective.

What does Guardians of the Galaxy have in common with this movie narratively?

They're both stories about a makeshift team of individuals in a comic book universe that take on bad guys

Thematically?

They're both comic book films, both team based, both teams have had trouble with the law, and both teams are forced together by circumstances

In composition?

Action adventure film with a fair-sized main cast of human and inhuman characters intertwined with fantastic or otherwise otherworldly elements

In ambition?

To make money

Even demographically?

Comic book movie fans, along with the general audience.

You could easily make the same argument about... oh The Goonies (a team of misfits goes on a quest.)

More power to you. There's probably 100,000 other movies you could fit into that mold as well

You see perhaps my point? It glistens like the flopsweat on this movie's forehead.

Somewhat, but be that as it may, I most certainly do not agree with it.

As for the rest of your post, I'm very impressed you given this the amount of thought that you had, but I'm more simple-minded than you, I suppose. I'm not searching for archtypes or deep fulfillment in my entertainment, I just want to be entertained well, and for me, there are many ways to do it. Marvel's way has done the trick for me with films like Iron Man, the Avengers and The Winter Soldier, and DC's themes have also done it for me, like with Man of Steel, The Dark Knight, and with hope, Suicide Squad and Batman V Superman.

 

[CaptainWolfgang]

Suicide Squad looks like DC realizing too late that DC Villains, Batman, and darker themes are the only things they have that can even give them the vaguest definition of an edge against Marvel (who by the way is doing so well that they can make an Ant-Man movie without worrying about the character's appeal.)

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were great movies, and I kinda think the DC Cinematic Universe became impossible the second Heath Ledger died. Not because of the casting, but because his death made The Dark Knight Rises the way it was. Maybe if The Dark Knight Rises hadn't been exclusively written to close a trilogy, they could have found a way to connect the darker Nolan-verse to these Justice League movies. Instead they had to try and reboot the entire DC universe because there was no way you'd be able to do a DC Universe without Batman. Somehow Arrow and Flash are still on the air, but I can't bring myself to enjoy them. Gotham is only marginally better. It feels like every movie DC makes is a poor echo of Marvel's business plan. Maybe it could have worked if they had started at the same time, but it doesn't feel like there's any goal for the DCU aside from "Do what Marvel is doing and make $$$$$"

Hell, Daredevil was probably one of the best shows I've seen in awhile. If Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage's shows are as gritty as Daredevil, then DC will lose any "dark" edge they have.

I really want the DCU to be good. Maybe I just want a Martian Manhunter movie. I don't even know anymore.

 

[The Derp of Hooves]

Why don't they just do a Smallville reboot or something similar? In all honesty I think DC should stick with TV shows because the DCverse has more of tv-esque theme to their live action heroes than Marvel does.

 

[Johnnysaurus Rex]

Fan theory floating around that Leto's Joker is a horribly beaten and mentally scarred Jason Todd.

And there is still nothing about this movie that remotely interests me.

Which I said would be cool a page back, but I'd prefer if it was Dick Grayson.

 

[Calixis]

Suicide Squad looks like DC realizing too late that DC Villains, Batman, and darker themes are the only things they have that can even give them the vaguest definition of an edge against Marvel (who by the way is doing so well that they can make an Ant-Man movie without worrying about the character's appeal.)

And yet, still no The Punisher since War Zone.

I guess there's Daredevil.

 

[Johnnysaurus Rex]

And yet, still no The Punisher since War Zone.

I guess there's Daredevil.

I'm kind of glad we haven't gotten one since Thomas Jane's. Punisher has never really been a huge character for me (I understand other people enjoy him), but I think he'll work better in a limited fashion as a sort of antagonist (presumably) to Daredevil.

 

[Cainhurst Crow]

DC movies lately remind me of a resurgance of the 90's edgelord mentality. That making something dark, and edgy, and cynical, with lots of color filters and shots of people looking sad, or mad, or dull, was what made stuff great.