Suicide Squad Review

I’m going to just say straight away, there will be spoilers ahead…and swears.

So if theres two things I really love, its the acting of Viola Davis and Harley Quinn. Suicide Squad had both of these things, suffice to say it was the movie I was most excited to see this year after Deadpool.

I didn’t get to see it till this Sunday past, two days after the wide release, so I’d heard some things, bad things, but none the less I went into the cinema with only the slightest bit of trepidation, as long as Harley Quinn was good I didn’t care how the movie turned out. With hindsight, I realise now that the difficulty to find two seats together when we arrived was a sign, we should have listened.

I’ve slept through plenty of movies in the cinema before, cough*BvS*cough, I’ve been disappointed by plenty, I found Age of Ultron disappointing. Never before have I seen a film so disappointing that I wanted to curl up in the corner of the cinema and scream.

Because I know this review will inevitably evolve into a rant about certain things, I’m going to start with the less upsetting elements.

First of all, whilst the marketing team for this movie deserve awards in their own rights, the editing team for the trailer deserves an oscar, because the trailers for this movie were spectacular and made me almost as excited for this as I was for Deadpool.

In that spirit, I don’t know why they had someone different to edit the movie together because the difference in quality is both astounding and horrific, the editing in the trailer amazed me, the editing in the movie made me cringe. It was appalling. Everything seemed to just slightly miss the mark on timing, where the trailer perfectly co-ordinated the scenes to the musical chords of the trailers backing track, the movie didn’t even try doing this.

Casting, to be honest I’m inclined to say this was a win for WB/DC, Viola Davis was fantastic as always, Will Smith was great, to be honest I would happily watch a stand alone Deadshot movie after that because he was really the highlight of the film for me, Jai Courtney was good, this was a role he was made for in my opinion. I liked most of the casting in this movie, which is rather rare for me. Whats really causing me trouble is 3 cast members, and that’s because I can’t figure out if the problem with their characters was bad casting, bad writing or bad directing, all I know is Jared Leto’s Joker, something I was excited to see when it was announced was a horrific disappointment, turning one of the best psychopaths in cinema into a twisted thug. Cara Delevingne, to be honest I’m inclined to say this is a result of both bad casting and a bad choice for a main villain, I’m sure she would have been fine as Enchantress if she was one of the team as she is in the original comics, but as a villain she was kind of shit, and a lot of her performance made me cringe, even when she was just playing June Moone which is what inclines me towards saying it was a bad story choice and a bad casting choice. As for Margot Robbie, well. Well, well, well. There will be a rant about this later so all I’ll say for now is, although her accent made me cringe on several occasions, I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that the mistakes made with this character are less a fault of casting and more so poor writing and directing.

The directing was okay, I’ve seen worse, I’ve definitely seen better. Personally I’m inclined to base a lot of the mistakes in this movie on a bad screen play because for me personally, bad dialogue is what stuck out the most as making this movie bad. Not entirely sure if some of the worse elements of the Joker/Harley/Enchantresses performances were down to bad direction or just a lack of acting chops to begin with. I’m inclined to blame directing when it comes to Margot Robbie, having seen her in other movies, however having heard so much about Jared Leto’s ‘method acting’ I wouldn’t be so quick to blame David Ayer for that. I’m tempted to give David Ayer a pass on account of the fact that the screenplay seems to have been genuinely bad, and a lot of the action sequences – namely Deadshot’s – are pretty badass. Unfortunately he also wrote this shitfest, so no pass for him.

Onto what I personally believe to be the biggest problem with this movie, the screenplay. Between a weak story line, cheesy dialogue and poor or wasted characterisation, I’m not entirely convinced he actually read many of the comics before he wrote the script, and he certainly didn’t know the characters as well as a good screen writer should. Between Harley, the Joker and Enchantress most of the movies dialogue had me cringing from beginning to end, the few rare exceptions to this being Amanda Waller and Deadshot, although I’m sure the actors charm and talent had more to do with that than the screen play. The characters themselves struggled to remain loyal to their comic book counter parts, personally I don’t like the fact that Enchantress captures Amanda Waller, because to me she is a big brother like character who controls the situation without ever being any where near the risk zone. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a badass mother who could totally take down an army with one look, but she doesn’t need to do it when she’s can make less important people do it for her. The Joker is an absolute joke. And not in any way he would appreciate, the psychotic agent of chaos is now a thuggish wannabe king pin. The real joker would chew up Leto’s feeble attempt and pick his teeth with the bones. I didn’t really want the Joker to be in the movie to begin with, its about the suicide squad, he doesn’t belong in it – but I understood that obviously to set up Harley he was bound to make an appearance – but if they’re going to have the Joker in this movie the least they could have done was a decent portrayal. Now before I get onto my problem with Harley I’m gonna address the cheesy dialogue, I am aware that after the poor response to the tone of BvS WB ordered re-shoots for Suicide Squad to lighten the tone. This has resulted in two things, cheesy dialogue that ruins entire scenes and a constantly shifting tone that prevents you from really becoming enraptured in the movie itself. Its a movie about complex villains and anti heroes being forced to be heroes for the government, either go action-comedy or go dark, do not alternate between the two. I think its safe to say  the last minute re-shoots are probably as much to blame for this as they are for the messy editing, but as much as I loved the trailer, there was a part of it that makes me doubt the re-shoots are entirely responsible for the cheesy dialogue, and that the last line of the trailer, in which Harley steals a handbag from a shop window and proclaims “we’re bad guys, its what we do”. It made me cringe in the trailer and it made me grimace in the movie. All the things that ended up on the cutting room floor and that line got to stay?

That moment of doubt from the trailer brings me over perfectly to my next point. Harley. Harley, Harley, Harley. I had such high hopes, that trailer really should have been a warning sign. But I didn’t listen. Margot Robbie made a good Harley Quinn, she was just given a shitty script to do it with. She had cheesy line after cheesy line, and they very clearly didn’t understand the tragedy of the character. I feel like the Joker/ Harley story line in this was written by one of those idiotic girls on facebook who post pictures of Harley and her Puddin under the heading #relationshipgoals. Harley and the Joker have a very complicated, very abusive and unfortunately, very realistic relationship. What Harley goes through with the Joker in the comics and the TV show is something that thousands of women from all over the world suffer through everyday, it shouldn’t be idolised by naive tweens of Facebook and it shouldn’t have been simplified and twisted by this movie. One thing that really struck me about this movie is that the Joker made more attempts to get his Harley back in this movie than he has in the last 24 years of her existence. One of my favourite comic book runs at the moment is the Injustice series, based on the video game, and a lot of tragic events happen in this series but one of the most tragic for me is an exchange between Black Canary and Harley, during which we learn that Harley was once pregnant and fled to her sisters to have and hide the child because she knew that if the Joker found out he would have killed the baby, and that when she returned after a year he hadn’t even noticed her absence.

Harley Quinn is a tragic figure, doomed to love a man who only loves her back when it is convenient for him. And the movie did nothing to show this. It just created another group of people who are going to glorify abusive relationships by posting pictures of Harley Quinn and Mr J alongside #relationshipgoals and such tags. Not only does the movie not do the character justice, it misses an opportunity to draw attention to a serious issue that many people struggle with everyday and glorifying it to a certain extent.

So to conclude my rant, I don’t blame Margot Robbie for Harley Quinn, I blame the writers for not knowing these characters well enough before writing a script about them and for writing crappy dialogue. Which is to be honest the biggest problem with the movie, it was written and directed by someone who clearly doesn’t know how to handle an ensemble cast, morally complex characters or to be honest humour. The action was good, great at part but the screenplay really let the movie down. And considering the screenplay is the foundation of a movie, having a bad one doomed it to inevitable failure.

The Killing Joke Review

Following a few cinematic disappointments this year I’ve decided to add a few reviews to my long forgotten blog (took me like 20 minutes to figure out which password I used for this thing 😳).

Although this is not the first cinematic disappointment from the comic book universe this year (lookin at you Batman vs. Superman), I haven’t really had a chance to formulate an opinion on BvS, as I’ve only seen it once – at the cinema and I fell asleep, likewise I haven’t formulated an opinion of X-Men Apocalypse, as crappy reviews stopped me wasting money on it in the cinema and I haven’t really bothered to pursue any other means of watching it.

So I’m going to start with The Killing Joke on account of it being one of the two biggest disappointments for me personally this year.

Fair warning:

Bit of set up first (bit more I should say), I was really excited to see The Killing Joke, personally I prefer graphic novels to comics because I find them much easier to read and follow than comic book runs, which is why I tend to wait ages for a story line to run its course then buy the collection as one solid book. Anyway one of my favourite graphic novel creators is the mad man behind V for Vendetta and arguably one of the greatest graphics ever, Watchmen – the great Alan Moore, who happens to be one of the geniuses behind The Killing Joke, so I was super hyped to see his creation brought to life (kinda) on a big screen.

I’m also a huge fan of DC’s animated creations, not only because they tend to be so much more loyal to the comics, and can do a lot more on smaller budgets, they are also guaranteed to cast the characters right and I grew up on Batman the animated series and its really what got me interested in superheroes to begin with. As much as I love the animated xmen series and spiderman series, animation is probably the one arena where I significantly prefer DC over Marvel, and I will probably continue to until they do an R rated Deadpool animated series. And its because this is the one place where DC isn’t afraid to ignore the ‘family market’ in favour of loyalty to the story, I love the Young Justice series but DC’s significantly less PG animations are so much better (like Son of Batman or Assault on Arkham).

Anyway I’m getting off topic, so I was super hyped to see The Killing Joke, so much so that I paid £10 a ticket to go see it a the ONE showing they had at 8.30 on a Monday on the other side of Bristol after a 8 hour shift without my car to get my boyfriend and I there or home afterwards, adding about 2 hours of bus travel and £10 each in bus fare to the day.

And after all that I spent the first 20 minutes of the movie sat there, wondering if I’d walked into the wrong screening. Now I will confess that I’m not an expert on The Killing Joke, I did watch the Comicstorian video on it before hand to refresh my memory, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember there being so much Barbara Gordon in the graphic novel, and certainly not more screen (page?) time than Mr B’man himself. Now normally I wouldn’t have a problem with more screen time going to one of my strong independent ladies, and especially not one voiced by the magnificent Tara Strong, but I had paid to see an animated and therefore (at least in my mind) loyal adaptation of a dark, mature, and complex tale about the Jokers origin (one of many), and what I was seeing was an unfamiliar surprisingly cheesy look at Barbara Gordon’s day to day life which could have been written for one of DC’s kid friendly shows if it weren’t for the repeated references to sex, although even that reminded me of a coded and shy conversation between 15 year olds than a conversation between grown ups. They tried to tell us she was dealing with a terrifying and deadly young mob boss, what they showed us was an arrogant young man playing at crime, who had no right to the ‘terrifying reputation’ the screen writers were adamant he had, it was so childish and cheesy I’m pretty sure I heard Mario Puzo rolling in his grave. It was rated a 15 over here in the UK, the same age rating given to The Godfather when it was re-rated in 2008.

Now I am aware that the creators added this in to make Babs  a much more sympathetic character so that audiences would be much more horrified when later on in the film (but very early on in the novel) the Joker shoots and presumably sexually assaults her. However, first, a female shouldn’t need a f*#king long back story and sh*t ton of screen time to illicit sympathy from the audience when she is shot and assaulted, no one was in favour of that happening to her. Second, whilst I am aware that as DC villains go, the Joker is a fan favourite and has quite a following, I am one of those fans, no one actively supports his actions, he is an incredibly complex and chaotic character, people are interested in him not because they agree with his actions but because his actions confuse, horrify and intrigue them. People like the Joker for the same reason people watch documentaries on murderers and shows like American Horror Story, or read books on the psychology of psycho- and sociopaths, fascination.

I also understand that the creators may have been concerned that some people in the audience were not aware of who Barbara Gordon was and may actually have needed some set up to the character to make her more accessible, its understandable and the same logic that led Zack Snyder to forgivably spend 15 minutes or so on Bruce Waynes origins in BvS. However, whilst I personally am well versed with Batmans origins and have seen it on screen previously in Batman Begins, I will accept that there are probably a lot of people who haven’t, whether they actually know it and just haven’t seen it or are complete B’man newbs who are only just getting to know the character through BvS, there was some justification to having it there. However, BvS ran in cinemas for weeks if not months, had a huge marketing campaign, and was named after the two BIGGEST superheroes in pop culture. People unfamiliar with their origins were bound to see it, they even gave it good reviews to show just how little they knew about the characters and universe. The Killing Joke ran in cinemas for one night, less than one night in fact, one viewing. At least that was the case in cinemas near me, it was also classified as a special event with a special higher price and it had so little marketing that a. had I not been following Mark Hamill on twitter I wouldn’t have known it was being released so soon and b. had I not actively searched it out I wouldn’t have even known it was showing in UK cinemas. There was not a person in that screen who did not AT LEAST know who Barbara Gordon was, because I’m willing to bet at least 70% of the people in there had read the graphic novel of The Killing Joke, in fact I’d probably say 80% based on the grumbling I heard as we left the screen. Whilst I understand the justification of setting up the character, it was about as necessary as showing Thomas and Martha Wayne’s deaths would have been.

The biggest reason I have an issue with the Bab’s story in the beginning is because for me personally, it actually made the later events less horrific. I couldn’t actually appreciate what happened in the rest of the animation because half of my brain was trying to figure out why I’d had to spend so much time watching Barbara Gordon at school and flirting with criminals and the rest of my brain was looking for more mistakes. I became too occupied with trying to distinguish what was adaptation and what was added on that I couldn’t actually engage with the story enough to really watch the rest of the film. That’s why I’ve spent so much time talking about the tacked on Barbara Gordon story and so little on the rest of the film, because the tacked on bit was so distracting that I can’t actually remember the rest of the film. Did I enjoy Batman’s engagement with the Joker? I don’t know, because all I remember is being so confused and frustrated by the opening that I spent a good portion of the later film trying to remember if I was actually thinking of the right Batman novel, there was about 5 minutes where I confused the story line with the story of Death of the Family because that was the only reasoning I could come up with for so much screen time being diverted to this boring Barbara story.

So in conclusion, all I can really say about The Killing Joke is that it was a disappointment, the unnecessarily tacked on story line was so messy and boring that it really ruins the rest of what I think may have been a pretty loyal adaptation. And when you’re adapting from a comic form to an animated form there isn’t really any excuse not to be 100% loyal to the source material, especially when you have the kind of freedom from age restrictions that this film had, which is why the result was so disappointing to so many people. But who knows, maybe when I’ve seen it again and I’m not trying to follow it in the comic in my head and I’m not so conscious of how much money I’ve spent on it, I might enjoy it more, but as it stands right now I find myself thoroughly disappointed by DC, not for the first time this year and unfortunately not for the last time either…