Suicide Squad

[Evildrider]

I am actually hoping this is good.  I mean it's about as likely as Allison Brie showing up at my house and sitting on my face though.

[Khaldun]

That would be good though.

[Velorath]

Like I've said before, I generally like David Ayer's stuff. Also the cast seemed to have a good time making this and I've never gotten the impression that it ties in too heavily with the Justice League so I wouldn't be surprised if Snyder wasn't too heavily involved in this. Also it's not Superman and Batman. There's not going to be any outrage if they don't get Killer Croc or Boomerang quite right.

[Ard]

Affleck Batman is in it so I wouldn't be too sure of all that, although it's probably just a cameo at the beginning.

[Velorath]

I'm expecting that the few seconds we see of him in the trailers probably accounts for half his screen time.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Affleck Batman is in it so I wouldn't be too sure of all that, although it's probably just a cameo at the beginning.

Of the things wrong with BvS, Batfleck was surprisingly not one of them.

[01101010]

I'm expecting that the few seconds we see of him in the trailers probably accounts for half his screen time.

Read something that stated Batman was only in 10 minutes of the film.

[Merusk]

10 mins of runtime, maybe. 10 mins of screentime is a significant portion of the film, to the point he overshadows the core group and you should just call it a Batman movie.

Screen times of famous characters:
Vader - 12min, The Wicked Witch of the West - 12min, Cinderella - 18min, Beetlejuice - 17min, Elizabeth I (Shakeseare in Love) - 8min, Hannibal Lecter - 16min, Joker (TDK) - 33 min of a 2h 32 min movie.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Of batman's 10min I expect a long portion to be an action sequence.

[Khaldun]

Almost certainly a flashback as well? Or so I'm guessing from the footage briefly shown.

[Ard]

All I was really saying there is that it's the same Batman, and he's integrated into this movie already, so assuming that they aren't going to dredge up the same stupid from the last movie is not a safe assumption.

[Khaldun]

Reviews are starting to appear and they're pretty hostile so far. Common thread in most of them is that the film is disjointed, overbusy, and has a third act that makes almost no sense.

[schild]

That's because is a DC movie trying to be a Marvel movie. Shouldn't come as a shock.

[Khaldun]

I have a sneaking suspicion it made more sense in Ayer's first cut but that it was just grim and self-serious and DC execs said NO NO WE WANTED GUARDIANS OF THE SUICIDE SQUAD, so disjoined and atonal it is!

[Rendakor]

Didn't they also rewrite it after Deadpool to be funnier?

[Khaldun]

Yes. Judging from the early reviews, they failed. Or more precisely, they succeeded in grafting a bit of humor on in ways that every critic I've read so far says is brutally apparent as a graft--e.g., as something added later, not in the original shoot.

[Venkman]

A shame. The trailers have been great. I am still excited to see this.

[Khaldun]

Morituri te salutant.

[Abagadro]

The common adjective seems to be that it is "a mess" with Robbe being about the only good part except they don't really know how use her.

[Khaldun]

A few reviewers say that Smith is pretty decent too. But that the rest is just kind a mix of inert and muddled. Apparently Leto's Joker is only in a few small bits, almost not enough to get a really strong feel for his take.

[01101010]

Didn't we already sorta know this is how it was going to play out?

[HaemishM]

I'm still excited, but I'm not really expecting much out of it and haven't since the beginning. I am sure that the reshoots to add more levity certainly made it a more muddled film as it was pretty clear they were going for dark action until BVS came out and doured all over everybody.

[Samwise]

they were going for dark action until BVS came out and doured all over everybody.

I think the bigger game-changer was Deadpool coming out and making a lot of money by being a fun movie.

[Paelos]

I think the bigger game-changer was Deadpool coming out and making a lot of money by being a fun movie.

It shouldn't be a shock. We're moving out of the dark and brooding shit as the demographic ages, and the generation coming up isn't anywhere near as interested in that viewpoint, imo.

[01101010]

they were going for dark action until BVS came out and doured all over everybody.

I think the bigger game-changer was Deadpool coming out and making a lot of money by being a fun movie.

True... But they had the 'fun' to work with since, well, it is Deadpool. People are going to fuck up and try to shoehorn everything into that model now even if it doesn't fit at all just to chase that dragon. SSquad will be the first and WB will just say it was the original cut of the film that held them back from making money hats, and if they would have just went with a fun comic theme it would have done better - instead of admitting they put a bunch of garbage pail stickers on a dumpster to liven it up and are now wondering why people aren't entertained. Deadpool showed that you have to have the caring behind the movie for it to work... not specific themes or jokes or characters.

[Threash]

And it wasn't just Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy did it first.  Hell, all Marvel movies have "fun" baked into them.

[satael]

I'd say that if they wanted to take something from Deadpool then it's that a R-rated comic book movie is possible instead of toning it down to PG-13 to cover as big as possible demographic. Suicide Squad would have been a good choice for that.
(I haven't seen SSquad yet so it might be good but somehow I doubt it)

[Merusk]

I think the bigger game-changer was Deadpool coming out and making a lot of money by being a fun movie.

It shouldn't be a shock. We're moving out of the dark and brooding shit as the demographic ages, and the generation coming up isn't anywhere near as interested in that viewpoint, imo.

I'm fucking glad of it. The last 30 years of grimdark pessimism have been pretty shit overall with only a few gems.

[HaemishM]

I blame Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Or more specifically, them for creating such insanely good books that a generation of comics artists and writers tried to imitate them without understanding a goddamn thing about why those works were the way they were.

[Lakov_Sanite]

What funny is that with just how huge the marvel movies are, good movies that deconstruct the genre could be insanely popular.  Deadpool while still being a traditional superhero movie still had enough self awareness to tap into that. SS could have really taken the ball and run with it and be a true anti-hero movie but it looks like they just played it safe.

[Khaldun]

Look, we forget that Miller and Moore (who had very different interesting ideas about comic-book heroes) were reacting to a previous two decades of highly constrained storytelling where most of the weird implicit properties of superheroes were off-limits: you couldn't ask why they don't go one step further and kill enemies or take political power; you couldn't ask what it meant that they all went around as close to nude as possible; you couldn't wonder about the impulses that would make dressing up like a bat or a circus strongman make sense. Marvel had taken teeny-tiny steps in that direction by having characters motivated by guilt (Spider-Man), failure (Dr. Strange), family antagonisms (FF), disability (Iron Man) but that was about as far as it had gone up to things getting 'darker'. The dark only works as a story element as a contrast to something else , though--meaning if your first take on Batman and Superman is grimdarkery, then it's just nostalgia for that point in time, it's just being an 18-year old man-child getting over the pimples in 1983 and being able to stick to comics because they weren't purely child-like any longer.

At this point, you either have to build up a more innocent four-color world *and* then introduce a dark corner of it, or you have to skip recapitulating the history of comic-books and have a relatively fresh take on the core elements of the characters. That's the MCU in a nutshell--the stripping away and building up. DC just seems to flail around and constantly revisit that 'turn' in comics history. Not just the movies--that's Jim Lee and Geoff Johns, too, that was the "New (now old) 52" in a nutshell, just constantly going back to when men had pouches and women had spinal problems and you could have characters cough up blood and lose limbs and it was all ADULTTTTTT. Nobody wants that now, thankfully.

[IainC]

I saw this last night in 3D. I give it a resounding meh out of ten. It wasn't terrible but it didn't do much either. Harley and Mr J were the best bits of the movie by a long chalk but even their backstory felt ham-fisted and rushed. The movie was 2 hours long and my edit would have left half an hour of that out. There were a lot of characters that we didn't give a shit about and that the story gave us no reason to give a shit about. The first half is the Harley and Joker show, while the second half is Harley and Deadshot. Nobody else matters. Who the fuck is the Australian dude or the Chinese girl?

The direction is just bad. There are a series of 'twists' that are telegraphed from fucking miles away and several shocking reveals that really aren't at all. The Joker survived the helicopter crash? You don't say! The dialogue is mostly ok with a few misses when they try and force a bunch of pathos on you, but I was significantly underwhelmed by the whole experience. The best part of the film was being given complimentary cocktails on the way in because the opening was sponsored by some local liquor company.

DC still can't do decent movies.

[HaemishM]

The DC movies have a significant number of problems but the basic one that it boils down to is Warner Bros. execs have no creative skin in the game. They are clearly just trend-humping and comics happen to be money makers right now so HUMP IT UNTIL IT'S DEAD. You could see that the minute you heard they were retooling SS because of the grimdark criticism of BVS. They didn't do it because they thought that was the right approach - they did it because BVS didn't make enough money and Deadpool was funny and R-Rated and the SS trailers were getting good buzz despite not really reflecting the tone of the movie - so just CHANGE THE TONE. Why? Because these other things made money and BVS didn't. No introspection as to WHY the BVS tone was so wrong or why it contributed to lower box office, just copy what they did and MONEY HATS. Box office numbers are dictating narrative elements and that always goes very very bad.

[IainC]

The DC movies have a significant number of problems but the basic one that it boils down to is Warner Bros. execs have no creative skin in the game. They are clearly just trend-humping and comics happen to be money makers right now so HUMP IT UNTIL IT'S DEAD. You could see that the minute you heard they were retooling SS because of the grimdark criticism of BVS. They didn't do it because they thought that was the right approach - they did it because BVS didn't make enough money and Deadpool was funny and R-Rated and the SS trailers were getting good buzz despite not really reflecting the tone of the movie - so just CHANGE THE TONE. Why? Because these other things made money and BVS didn't. No introspection as to WHY the BVS tone was so wrong or why it contributed to lower box office, just copy what they did and MONEY HATS. Box office numbers are dictating narrative elements and that always goes very very bad.

Except BvS made crazy bank at the box office. It was a shit film and everyone hated it - fans and critics alike - but it was the 46th highest grossing film of all time according to Wikipedia. If WB learned anything from BvS, it was to always pre-load your launch hype so you make moneyhats on the opening weekend and can ignore everything that happens after.

[HaemishM]

Sure it made a shitton of money - but it didn't make as much money as they wanted (i.e. as much or more than the Marvel movies).