Genre: Superhero
Premise: The infamous Suicide Squad are dropped off on a Cuba-like island where they’ve been tasked to overthrow the authoritarian government.
About: 2016’s Suicide Squad was supposed to be DC’s secret weapon and depending on what metric you used, it either succeeded (it made 750 million at the global box office) or failed (nobody liked it). The fan reaction was so steeped in apathy, in fact, that a second movie was up in the air. Then, as if by some miracle, the sequel got someone, in James Gunn, who would normally never stoop to making a Suicide Squad film. And, all of a sudden, they had a hot juicy project on their hands. During the last year, The Suicide Squad was the most buzzed about upcoming superhero movie of them all. Well, it finally came out this weekend and, unfortunately, it looks like the pandemic once again reared its ugly head, eating into the film’s box office, as it only took in 27 million. For reference, Black Widow, released a month ago, made 80 million. There is a caveat to this. The Suicide Squad could be seen for free on HBO Max at home. I’m sure that ate into the numbers a bit because if you look at the reviews, both critically and fanwise (92% and 85% respectively), everyone seems to have liked the film. Which makes it very hard to tell where the Suicide Squad franchise goes from here.
Writer: James Gunn
Details: 132 minutes
I think everyone here knows the first question I’m going to ask.
Is Suicide Squad better than Jungle Cruise?
Such a great question. But the real question we should be asking is, is any movie better than Jungle Cruise?
Okay okay. I’ll stop the trolling.
The Suicide Squad is definitely a better movie than Jungle Cruise.
Let’s try to find a better comp, though.
Is Suicide Squad better than Army of the Dead? In both films you’ve got a team of bad people going into a dicey area where they’ve been tasked with achieving a singular goal.
I’m happy to report that The Suicide Squad is better than Army of the Dead. It’s actually not even close.
But now let’s make things interesting.
Is Suicide Squad better than Black Widow?
Now you’re moving into a dicier discussion because there were a couple of things I thought that Black Widow did better than The Suicide Squad. I thought that its depiction of a broken family hit harder emotionally than anything The Suicide Squad did. And I thought that both Black Widow’s sister and her father were funnier than any of the characters in The Suicide Squad. So I had a little more fun with the Widows than I did the Squad.
With that said, The Suicide Squad took a lot more chances than Black Widow and, as a result, was the more interesting film. I know that one thing James Gunn made a priority was that no one should be safe here. Marvel has become a joke in that respect because you know that nobody’s going to die in their movies. And, even if they do – *cough, Black Widow, cough* – they get their own movie a year later. So the fact that nobody was safe here ensured that the film was unpredictable. You guys know how much I love that.
But The Suicide Squad is a tough movie to assess. It has sky-high aspirations. It wants to be the team version of Deadpool. Yet it fails just as much as it succeeds in trying to live up to that expectation. I’m still trying to figure out why that is. There’s something gloomy about the proceedings that undermines their effectiveness. King Shark comes to mind. This character should’ve been the next Groot. But he just isn’t. He’s actually kinda boring.
For those who haven’t seen the film, the government sends a Suicide Squad group of supervillains to a Cuba-like island where they quickly realize they’re sacrificial lambs (one of the best moments in the movie is when Pete Davidson is blown to bits by the island’s army). Their job, it turns out, was to create a distraction for THE REAL SUICIDE SQUAD to sneak in, set up camp, and then come up with a plan to take out the island’s dictator.
The real Suicide Squad consists of their vanilla leader, Rick Flag, gun aficionado Bloodsport, angry killer Peacemaker, deeply psychologically troubled Polka Dot Man, sleepy girl who controls rats, Ratcatcher 2, always hungry King Shark, and, of course, what Suicide Squad team wouldn’t be complete without Harley Quinn? For those who don’t know the rules of The Suicide Squad, everyone on the team is outfitted with bombs in their heads and if they don’t follow orders, the bombs are remotely activated.
Once off the beach, the squad – which is already complicated by Mano a Mano d$@% measuring between Bloodsport and Peacemaker – makes their way through the jungle to the city. Along the way, they learn about this special Starfish creature that was found in space that is secretly being used by the dictator to control his people. That starfish (named Starro) is growing exponentially. It also has the ability to spit out little miniature starfish that attach themselves to people’s faces where those people now become a physical extension of the starfish.
The team breaks into the facility where Starro is being kept. Once inside, they quickly get split up. Because these are bad supervillains, remember, they don’t exactly follow the rules. If someone doesn’t like someone else, they kill them, as is the case with Peacemaker killing Boring Rick Flag. It starts to look like the group is such a mess that they won’t be able to come together to save the day. But once Starro, who’s become 500 feet tall by the way, escapes his confines, they have no choice but to get the job done.
The thing I like about the Suicide Squad movies – and something all screenwriters can learn from – is that they contain a perfect structural setup for a screenplay. A group of people come together to achieve a clear high-stakes goal. When you have that, the movie pretty much writes itself because we all know what the characters are trying to achieve and we’re excited to see if they can do it.
The conflict, in the movie, comes from within the group itself. What The Suicide Squad is SUPPOSED to offer that movies like Fast and Furious and Star Wars, and even Avengers, cannot, is that the conflict within their group is NUCLEAR. These aren’t just normal people coming together to get the job done. They’re evil people. They’re bad people. They’re people with no moral code. This is supposed to create such intense conflict that the group’s attempts to do even the simplest things become impossible.
The Suicide Squad tries to do this but James Gunn has a blind spot when it comes to letting his villains “villain.” Sure, he kills off the ones he never liked in the first place. But he loves the ones he loves so much that he doesn’t want to create too much conflict between them. As a result, we get these neutered “sorta conflict” scenes that feel like they’re missing a gear. Take the scene where Bloodsport and Peacemaker are trying to one-up each other with fancy kills in the jungle. It feels more like theater than that these two are actually trying to outdo each other. As a result, the scene is decent instead of iconic.
Then there are times where this works in Gunn’s favor. The man loves his characters so much that he’ll prioritize their development over any and all action. Take Polka Dot Man, for example. This could’ve been a joke character. The guy shoots polka dots, for God’s sake. But Gunn gets into his past and how awful a person his mother was while he was growing up. Gunn conveys this by occasionally showing Polka Dot Man’s point-of-view, where he sees everyone as his mother. Even when they’re fighting Starro, we see Polka Dot Man does not see a 500 foot tall starfish, but rather his 500 foot tall mother.
You can tell that it’s the biggest misfits Gunn connects to the most. We see this with his second favorite character, Ratcatcher 2. Ratcatcher 2 was not as effective as Polka Dot Man. But she has some great moments, including her contentious interactions with Bloodsport and that last second call-out to the rats in the city to save the day. It says a lot that Gunn didn’t use the obvious alpha character to save the day, but rather the team’s biggest underdog.
The one character he didn’t seem to know what to do with was Harley Quinn. And I don’t blame him. I still don’t get this character. We’ve proved she’s a failure as a character with the disastrous Birds of Prey. Why does WB keep pushing her?
What is she even doing in this movie? Why do they need her? At the end when she’s running around with a javelin, I’m thinking to myself, “What are you going to do?” Is she even trained with weapons? I made this same critique about Black Widow but at least Black Widow spent the first 15 years of her life being trained as an assassin. Has anyone ever taught Harley Quinn how to do anything besides not shut up? I will contend til the day I die that the only thing Harley Quinn has going for her is her look. But when it comes to personality and superheroing? She kinda sucks.
Whenever you finish a superhero movie, one of the criteria you use to judge whether the movie was successful or not is breakout characters. Did any characters break out here? I would say no. Polka Dot Man was interesting. Ratcatcher 2 was too, to an extent. But nobody here’s going to stay with me the way Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon, Jax, and Groot stuck with me.
The Suicide Squad is swinging for the fences. Usually, when you do that, you either strike out or hit it out of the park. The Suicide Squad is that rare “swinging for the fences” hit that dribbles into right field for a single. You got on base. You’re fast so you have the potential to steal second. But it’s definitely not what it’s trying to be, which is a classic. And that’s unfortunate because I thought it had the potential to be.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Look for creative ways to convey backstory. Polka Dot Man had a psychologically abusive mother. However, we never do a flashback to his mother being psychologically abusive to him. Instead, we see other people through his eyes and those people take the shape of his mother. This was one of the most effective ways of conveying traumatic character backstory that I’ve seen in a long time.
