MY MIXED FEELINGS ON “THE SUICIDE SQUAD.”

I’ve been a big admirer of director James Gunn ever since I saw his horror film Slither. Gunn established himself as a master of sharp tone shifts, and of subverting genre expectations with that film, and even though his next film, Super, was not critically admired, I thought it was even better, and a challenging film that needed to find the right audience to be appreciated. I thought Gunn did a great job translating his sensibilities to the mainstream in Guardians of the Galaxy, and its sequel. With Suicide Squad, an R rated comic book movie for Warner Brothers, I expected a mix of the old Gunn, violent horror and savage black comedy, and the new Gunn, quirky character relationships and visual spectacle.

To be honest, there were things I liked about this film, and it has been well received by both critics and audiences, so coming to terms with why it didn’t work for me was something I had to think about a lot. It is certainly better than the 2016 film, Suicide Squad, which was an incoherent mess due to studio meddling. As far as DC universe movies go, it is probably the third or fourth best film DC has made since Man of Steel, which isn’t saying much, but I certainly enjoyed it more than the overlong and bloated Aquaman movie. So, why was I so disappointed? Some of it has to do with high expectations, but I have some very specific points. Spoilers follow.

THE OPENING

The Suicide Squad opens with a bait and switch opening, which from the marketing materials and trailers I kind of expected. A team is deployed to the fictional island nation of Corto Maltese, and then things go wrong quickly. My expectation was that the opening mission would be a failure, and this would be used to create tension throughout the rest of the movie, when a new team is assembled either to complete the first mission, or for a new mission.

However, what happens really seems pointless, ineffective as a storytelling device, and illogical. One of the team, Weasel (Sean Gunn), immediately drowns because nobody bothered to find out if he can swim. This scene is neither clever, nor funny, and it is pointless, since a scene at the end of the movie reveals that Weasel is actually alive. Whether he was faking or not, is not established, but since he coughs up water, you have to assume that the character Savant (Michael Rooker)actually thought he was dead when he wasn’t. Anyway, it’s not amusing in the least, and seems to be a joke on fans who might expect Weasel to be this movie’s Rocket Racoon.

The next thing that happens is that the character of Blackguard (Pete Davidson), is revealed to have betrayed the team, but is shot in the face. This leads to the entire team, except for Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) being slaughtered. It is revealed that Waller has a second team in place for just this kind of contingency.

Not only in the entire sequence pointless, it really makes no sense. Other than the killing of Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), one of the few characters who appeared in the previous film to return, we know nothing about these characters. In order for the subversion to work, we had to have some stake with these characters. Brian De Palma pulled a similar stunt with Mission: Impossible in 1996, and while that isn’t a great movie, it executes the bait and switch so much more masterfully than this film does.

The scene doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons.

1. How did Blackguard betray the team when he was housed in a maximum security prison? Waller wasn’t monitoring these super criminals access to phone and emails?
2. Why does Blackguard think he can double cross Waller when he has a bomb in his head? At least if Waller had blown his head up, that would have been logical, but instead he is shot in the face.
3. Why does the first team have a government agent, Rick Flag, but the second team does not? Flag’s role in both films was to supervise the Suicide Squad, and Katana (Karen Fukuhara) was also present, but apparently he is unnecessary, which makes one wonder why he is in the movie.
4. Waller kills Savant for fleeing from a situation where he had no hope of surviving or avoiding capture. This scene exists just so we can see Waller blow up a head like she does early in the first film, but the movie forgets about the bombs until the end anyway. It is never used to create any suspense, even in scenes where characters should be thinking about the bomb.

There are some interesting ways Gunn could have went instead. What if Waller deployed the first team as a decoy, and knew they were all going to die going in? This would have set up some tension early on, and established Waller as the “real villain,” something Gunn does in the third act anyway.

Characters Arcs and Themes

Say what you will about the first film, but at least there was some tension between the different character’s personalities in that film. There wasn’t much, but this film makes that film seem competent by comparison.

The film’s main character is Bloodsport (Idris Elba), and his backstory seems to be lifted from Deadshot (Will Smith) from the first film. I’m actually convinced that an early draft of this film included Deadshot, but when Smith passed on returning, they simply recast the role and then mildly rewrote the character. There is nothing in Bloodsport’s backstory that couldn’t have been included if his character was Deadshot.

That said, the character has no arc. He is under Waller’s control at the beginning of the film, and he gets out of her control by the end. That’s it. Elba is a talented actor, and his performance goes a long way to sell the character, but he has a series of traits, “fear of rats”, and a rivalry with Peacemaker (John Cena) that puts him at odds with his teammates. None of the characters have proper arcs, which explains why I was bored throughout most of the film.

Harley Quinn and Margo Robbie, could also be said to be a highlight of the film, but her “arc” consists of leftover threads from her two previous appearances. Robbie plays the hell out of what she is given, but what she is given is mostly a series of clichés, and a few funny lines here and there.

When elements are introduced as conflicts early on, they usually have no payoff, or attempt to subvert expectations in a way that isn’t very effective. (See the next section about tone.) One good example is the early scene where King Shark (Sylvester Stallone)tries to eat Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior) while she is asleep. This is one of the better scenes in the movie, but it is resolved in sentimentality, and leads to very little. King Shark has a few good moments, but his character is like if Guardians of the Galaxy had Groot without Rocket.

When the film became interesting to me was in the third act. The introduction of Starro the Conqueror was fun because he is such a weird comics character, and Gunn took him in a gruesome horror direction. This also led to a shift in the film from Waller being the real villain, and a seeming criticism of US imperialism.

However, this is botched in a number of key ways. It is Flag who decides to reveal the truth to the world, and this leads to him being killed by Peacemaker. This is a good reversal for Peacemaker, but makes no sense for Flag. He’s a military man, and there is nothing about his character in this movie, or the previous that suggests he would go against Waller. It also deludes the antiimperialist message to have this character have an inexplicable conscious, considering his career path.

This twist does lead to a payoff between Bloodsport and Peacemaker, but the entire thing was contrived, and rushed. We had the rivalry between these two characters established comically earlier in the film, but this could have provided something much more complex than we got. This film might have been better without Flag’s character in it at all, or if he was killed off in the beginning, and only Harley survived.

The worst thing about the film is how the climax, and conflict with Waller is handled. The squad decides to disobey Waller. She wants to blow up their heads, but her staff stops her, by one of her assistants bashing her in the head and knocking her out. This was established earlier, with how uneasy they all were with Waller’s amorality, but it is a lazy way to resolve this.

In the previous film, Waller killed a room full of FBI agents simply because it was convenient, though many people point out how this makes no real sense in that film. In this film however, Waller is knocked out, and is blackmailed by Bloodsport, but she just takes it. That is completely out of character for her. It is just a stupid and insulting way for the film to get a happy ending. It really doesn’t fit at all with the darkly comic tone of most of the film.

TONE

Tone is a big problem for this film. It feels nihilistic until the third act, and then it gets soppy and confused. The movie feels tonally off many times, starting with the Weasel drowning scene in the beginning. This is surprising to me, because I always have admired Gunn’s mastery of tone shifts.

However, many scenes simply don’t work for me. One early example is the scene where the squad goes to rescue Flag. The scene with Bloodsport and Peacemaker competing trick shots is one of the best scenes in the movie. The punchline, that they were killing freedom fighters who were their own allies, is ugly and tone deaf. It’s not funny, and a good example of how the film doesn’t commit to it’s antiimperialist politics.

The Harley Quinn subplot is another example. Her decision to murder her new “boyfriend” was surprising, but it wasn’t much more than that. Harley is portrayed as being as crazy as she needs to be from scene to scene, which is another example of the film’s lazy writing.

While the film kills off many characters, no death in the film has any emotional impact. This is most apparent with the Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian). The character’s new origin is interesting, and sets up a good running gag, though his backstory makes no sense with the greater DCEU as it has already been established. The character gets a big moment, and then is killed cruelly and without any emotion other than smugness. Look at how Gunn handled a similar late movie death in Super. Boltie was an outright sociopath, but her death still was one of the most emotional moments in the film.

Gunn is much more committed to being cute than sincere throughout the film. His decision to create twee “title cards” throughout the film with CGI and using the physical backgrounds of the scene is the kind of thing one would expect to see in a Wes Anderson movie, but Anderson knows that balancing the sincere and the ironic is the key to his films, something Gunn seems to have forgotten.