“Suicide Squad” is a broken movie.
Writer-director David Ayer and Warner Brothers clearly felt differently about the direction of the movie, and it shows in every single frame. Many blockbuster movies have clear creative fault lines, but “Suicide Squad” boasts the year's most obvious ones.
The problem is that neither movie — Ayer's vision of dark antiheroes finding family in the face of destruction or Warner Brothers' movie about lovable-oddball antiheroes finding family in the face of destruction (with pop music!) — seems very good. The characters, the plot, the aesthetic, the script — it's all off in "Suicide Squad," but perhaps the biggest problem is that almost none of it is even borderline good.
Trailers and advertisements promise the faithful moviegoer a rainbow buffet of oddity, humor and style (not unlike, say, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which they are more than clearly trying to rip off). “Suicide Squad” is not that movie and Ayer would not have been the man to make that movie. Oh, sure, there are colorful introductions to the characters at the start, and a constantly cued-up movie soundtrack that gives you the feeling of being in a car driven by an ADD-addled 16-year-old. But the essence of Ayer’s work has always been grit and grimness, "manly men" on a mission. That is the undercurrent of “Suicide Squad.” The colorfulness is window dressing, lipstick on a pig.
For an ensemble movie, the storytelling economics of “Suicide Squad” are downright embarrassing. Members of the squad are, in order of prominence: Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshot (Will Smith), Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman), Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), the Enchantress ( Cara Delevingne), Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Katana (Karen Fukuhara) and Slipknot (Adam Beach). The last four could be cut from the movie with no ill effect. They add nothing.
Not that many of the prominent characters really do much, either. Deadshot has a very simple story that amounts to very little, and Flagg and Waller move the plot along. El Diablo has the story's sole character arc of interest. All the wasted space — Boomerangs, Croc, Katana — add little to the movie.
The only character who really stands out is Harley Quinn, an IP juggernaut equivalent in some ways to Deadpool in terms of B-list shifting to A-list in the last 10 years or so. Robbie’s great in the role, playing dangerous, funny, exciting, alluring and off-putting in equal measure. She’s also the camera’s favorite character; Ayer focuses on her body as provocatively as possible, and includes two scenes of all the male characters ogling her body. I found this unfortunate. Creating a movie from the male lens is not an inherently bad choice, but creating a movie about the most prominent female character in modern comics where her sexuality is only understood through the eyes of teenage boys? Poor choice, creatively and commercially.
Anyway, Jared Leto’s Joker is godawful, and barely in the movie. He was very, very clearly excised from the film in massive ways because as it stands he kind of just pops in at random. It's true: You need a Joker to contextualize Harley Quinn; why they chose this one, I do not know. Much of the problem boils down to Leto, who seems determined to ruin the character forever. Sure, there are infinite ways to play the Joker, and everyone has their favorite interpretation. But Leto’s is just impossible to track on a basic level. He's never given a full scene or moment to ground our understanding of him. When he does get a chance, Leto never keeps a consistent persona.
Sometimes he's violent, edgy. Sometimes he's spouting 30 Seconds to Mars-like lyrics. It's constantly baffling.
Can the Joker work without Batman as a counterweight? Sure, it’s done plenty in the comics, although it is difficult. More difficult would be incorporating this Joker into Ben Affleck’s current iteration of Batman. The Joker needs to reflect and enhance the Batman myth, and this Joker does not manage that. He’s so base, so human in how he uses violence. There’s nothing funny or interesting or strange about him.
In fact, there is noting funny, interesting or strange about “Suicide Squad,” and therein is the movie's main problem. You've seen this same gritty "Dirty Dozen" knockoff before; you've seen these same character archetypes before; you've seen glowing portals in the sky that need to be shut down before. You've seen all of “Suicide Squad” before, in movies both better and worse than this one, and there is no reason to watch this half-assed amalgamation.
The DC Entertainment Universe has a broken aesthetic. They don’t really know how to manage their brands. Comic books and pop culture thrive on expansion and inclusion. The characters themselves are only as effective as the number of people who identify with them, and at any given time you have new fans coming into the fold and old fans growing up, tuning out, detaching. The DCEU, as it’s known online, "grounded" itself in a bleak, nasty worldview from the start, hoping to appeal to a hardcore male audience that doesn’t really exist anymore. “Suicide Squad” attempts to break out of that, but the effort is just painting over a movie crafted with the old style. It feels false. It doesn’t work.
“Suicide Squad” is a fitting way to end the 2016 spring / summer blockbuster season. Aside from “Captain America: Civil War” and “Deadpool,” it has been a year of near-absolute failure in the franchise world. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” remains perhaps the worst superhero movie ever made. “X-Men: Apocalypse,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,” “Warcraft” and “Jason Bourne" were all awful. “Star Trek Beyond” and “Ghostbusters” were mediocre, with advantages.
Why do I keep watching this stuff?