Suicide Squad

[Mattemeo]

Quick reminder: this is not a trailer. This is a showreel, intended for a small audience, that WB has decided to make public because of the shitty phone-cam uploads. It shouldn't be judged as being anything close to the final film, nor as a commercial vehicle for the final film. It's some footage cobbled together to get a crowd at SDCC going. Judge it for what it is all you like, though.

It could still be awful, it could still be good; I still think this will be better than Superman vs Batman (which looks way more Sucker Punch than Suicide Squad does, imo) but my expectations for both are about as low as they can be. I've never seen anything by David Ayer so he's a complete unknown to me. I don't like a lot of things about the basic design choices of the characters but I guess they're going for a different aesthetic than I'm used to. But I'm genuinely more interested after seeing the showreel than I was before, to a given degree. I hope I get pleasantly surprised, since no one wins when a movie turns out shitty.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Quick reminder: this is not a trailer. This is a showreel, intended for a small audience, that WB has decided to make public because of the shitty phone-cam uploads. It shouldn't be judged as being anything close to the final film, nor as a commercial vehicle for the final film.

Let's be honest, how many times does it happen that these previews aren't incredibly indicative of the full movie?

[DraconianOne]

I particularly like the disclaimer that went with it:

"Warner Bros. Pictures and our anti-piracy team have worked tirelessly over the last 48 hours to contain the Suicide Squad footage that was pirated from Hall H on Saturday. We have been unable to achieve that goal. Today we will release the same footage that has been illegally circulating on the web, in the form it was created and high quality with which it was intended to be enjoyed. We regret this decision as it was our intention to keep the footage as a unique experience for the Comic Con crowd, but we cannot continue to allow the film to be represented by the poor quality of the pirated footage stolen from our presentation."
- Sue Kroll, President Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures

Because someone, somewhere honestly thought that a comic-con trailer wouldn't get leaked.

 

[tazelbain]

Warner Bros: Completely Out of Touch with the Digital Age! is their new slogan.

[HaemishM]

I do not fucking understand this attitude. We have the Internet now. Even if you don't want it out there, any footage shown to any group of people will get filmed and leaked within hours unless you confiscate everyone's cell phones and verify the confiscation with a goddamn body search. So go ahead and show the footage at the Con, then immediately after it's over, release it on the Internet to much fanfare or ridicule. If it isn't ready for public consumption, don't show it to the fucking public, even a specially-vetted group of said public. There's just no reason not to take advantage of Internet hype.

[Riggswolfe]

I liked this trailer better than the Batman vs Superman one. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the Joker and Harley. I'm still not sold on Will Smith as uhh...deadshot? I never can remember his actual name. Anyway, I never read many DC comics so don't have a huge attachment to these properties and that probably helps. In fact, the only thing in this trailer that made me cringe was Will Smith's lines. It just was....Will Smith in pretty much every action movie he's done ever. There was nothing special about it. The rest I kind of dug to be honest.

[Khaldun]

Will Smith is Deadshot. Pretty much looks like he does not have a lot in common with the Floyd Lawton version in the comics, and that's not just a comment on race. But we'll see.

I recognized Killer Croc easily enough. I sort of recognized Captain Boomerang later. There's another guy where I had no idea at all who he was while watching. Slipknot or El Diablo, I guess. Not like either of those guys really has a highly iconic look or presence, Slipknot was cannon fodder in the comic too. Katana also I recognized right away.

[Mattemeo]

I do not fucking understand this attitude. We have the Internet now. Even if you don't want it out there, any footage shown to any group of people will get filmed and leaked within hours unless you confiscate everyone's cell phones and verify the confiscation with a goddamn body search. So go ahead and show the footage at the Con, then immediately after it's over, release it on the Internet to much fanfare or ridicule. If it isn't ready for public consumption, don't show it to the fucking public, even a specially-vetted group of said public. There's just no reason not to take advantage of Internet hype.

Pretty much this. Although I argued that the showreel should be scrutinized as a showreel and not a trailer, I still think it's clown-shoes to assume anything shown at something like SDCC (or E3 or any number of industry cons) won't make it onto the internet within minutes of being shown. If they hadn't been so po-faced about 'oh woe is us the evil cam-pirates have sullied the sanctity of our presentation', WB actually did the right thing with the footage by putting it out there. Unlike Fox who now seem to be scrambling to get their house in order over the Deadpool footage leak - 3 weeks before they're ready to make it public? Yeah, ok, Fox. That's not worrying shades of Wolverine: Origins all over again, no sir.

[Khaldun]

I have always assumed that this is pretence--e.g., "oh, that was an exclusive, it wasn't ready for viewing" so that you have plausible deniability if the reaction is negative. "It's not ready really! We didn't mean it for full release!"

[Mattemeo]

It's a half-truth that holds about as much water as a sieve. If you don't want people viewing something because it's not ready, don't put it out into the public. At all. Unfortunately, we live in the hype-age.

[Fabricated]

I enjoy Joker and Harley's over self-referential tattoos. I'm sure he has "KILLER JOKE MAN", "I AM THE JOKER", "I DO NOT LIKE BATMAN" tattooed elsewhere.

[HaemishM]

I enjoy Joker and Harley's over self-referential tattoos. I'm sure he has "I DO NOT LIKE BATMAN" tattooed elsewhere.

That's his tramp stamp. 

[shiznitz]

Do tramp stamps for men go in the same place? The world wants to know.

[Lantyssa]

I'm pretty sure the Joker loves Batman and his tramp stamp would be something to that effect.

[Khaldun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCyXZYfCmJw

[Draegan]

I've never heard of Suicide Squad. I do enjoy neckbeards crying about it though.

[Bunk]

DC Comics meets the Dirty Dozen. All you need to know.

[tazelbain]

Something off about it all. Ensemble cast of characters who I have no idea who they are except two don't seem anything like characters as I know them. Maybe if these guys were in previous movies, I might give a shit. And that it's "this is so edgy" style is grating because they didn't show anything edgy. SvB looks like it could be at least a hot mess. This looks like a boring kludge.

[HaemishM]

It's funny, I liked Suicide Squad the comics, but really the whole thing kind of falls apart if you don't know who the villains are or what they've done. Just throwing random super villains together without establishing any baseline history for them seems stupid at best. This is like a phase 2 level movie, and DC is still in Phase 0.9.

[01101010]

It's funny, I liked Suicide Squad the comics, but really the whole thing kind of falls apart if you don't know who the villains are or what they've done. Just throwing random super villains together without establishing any baseline history for them seems stupid at best. This is like a phase 2 level movie, and DC is still in Phase 0.9.

Exactly which is why they are going to push the batman/joker angle. If you don't know the bit players already from the comics, then you probably won't give a shit about this movie aside from those 2. I don't know any of the players in this and have zero interest in this other than a mild curiosity in Leto's joker (which looks like a fucking mess, but that is part of my curiosity).

[jgsugden]

It's funny, I liked Suicide Squad the comics, but really the whole thing kind of falls apart if you don't know who the villains are or what they've done. Just throwing random super villains together without establishing any baseline history for them seems stupid at best. This is like a phase 2 level movie, and DC is still in Phase 0.9.

I still don't know what would possess them to do this movie early in the release schedule.  You need to establish the majority of the villains and then do Suicide Squad... not introduce them in the squad.

HaemishM and jgsugden in agreement?  3rd sign of the Apocalypse.

[angry.bob]

I liked the old Suicide Squad and the old Harley. I haven't glanced through a DC book ince the New 52 thing. Their whole universe seems to be every bit as convoluted a mess as it was before, it's just full of people with names I know but the people with them are no one I know or care about. THis version of Harley might be dead on for her new iteration, but to me it just looks like a half ass combination of Hannibal Lector and Natural Born Killers. There's nothing there to like.

When they rebooted they should have just went with whatever the DCAU had going on, that stuff is entertaining, comparatively well known, as near as I can tell has a pretty tight continuity. It's a shame that the best DC movies have all been animated ones.

[Evildrider]

Well they are sort of rebooting DC again with this whole Convergence thing I believe.

[Margalis]

I don't even know who half these characters are, and frankly I can't recognize ANY of them from their appearance in this movie except Joker. Killer Croc looks like a zombie wearing a hoodie.

Isn't the point of SS that they are C-tier guys who die frequently? And also that it's fun to take C-tier guys who have appeared in other comics and put them in their own book?

Maybe DC is hoping this will be like Guardians, except this cast is twice as large and the costuming and such makes them look samey.

[Threash]

Looks better than the justice league or deadpool movies, not like that's a high bar though.  Any movie with Margot Robbie doing air gymnastics is a must watch though.

[Evildrider]

Deadpool was the best thing to come out of Comic-Con.  Followed by X-Men AoA.

[HaemishM]

HaemishM and jgsugden in agreement?  3rd sign of the Apocalypse.

Broke clock tells time twice a day.

[Khaldun]

New trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmRih_VtVAs

I'm starting to warm up to this. It kind of looks like they might be having more fun than over at the grimdark stuff about "heroes" in the Justice League end of things.

[sickrubik]

This still... looks terrible.

[Evildrider]

I liked the trailer better.. but the music, I don't think it fit.

[Velorath]

Take away the baggage of the Suicide Squad name and being part of DC's movie Universe, and this looks like a perfectly entertaining movie.

[Trippy]

None of the characters in that trailer are interesting or have any personality other than Harley. They should've just made a Harley Quinn movie.

[Margalis]

It looks fine, visually, but the visuals and set pieces have never been the problem with any Snyder led movies.

[Ironwood]

This still... looks terrible.

[Merusk]

It's funny to see the total opposite reaction to things here sometimes. Makes me realize how much older we are than popular culture. 

Reaction has been positive elsewhere and hype is building.  While I think most of the positive feeling is from the song and the way the clips were montaged and choreographed so well, I can see the appeal to younger crowds.

It seems like people are calling this DCs Guardians and I'm sure that's what they're going for. If nothing else it's being marketed a hell of a lot better than batman vs superman at this point.