“Suicide Squad” is a 2016 superhero film directed by David Ayer. This film was one of the very first movies in the “DC Extended Universe,” which is DC Comics’ effort to compete with the very successful Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film stars Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman and Viola Davis. It is no secret that this film received negative reviews and harsh reactions from fans back when it was released. Ayer has dismissed the final cut of this film in many interviews following the movie’s release. Let’s examine the reason this film was bashed as we take a look back on Suicide Squad.
In “Suicide Squad,” a USA intelligence official puts together a team of evil and incarcerated supervillains for a top-secret mission. After being armed with government weapons, Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang and others must learn to work together. Dubbed Task Force X, the criminals face a mysterious and powerful entity, while the diabolical Joker (Jared Leto) launches a separate evil plan.
The first thing people will notice about this movie is that there is a large number of licensed copyrighted songs. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with using licensed music, however, it is a problem when you have a well-known licensed song every 3-5 minutes (and sadly, that’s not exaggerated). It gets old real fast and feels cheap. These songs are used when introducing the characters and most of them don’t fit the characters’ very brief backstories. For example, the song “Fortunate Son” (a song about Vietnam ) was used to introduce a crocodile character.
Another poor aspect of this movie is the editing. Scenes are oddly placed and things don’t add up. Ayer (the director), said that his original cut of the film felt like a “soulful drama".This is not the case with the final cut of the movie, which seems to have been heavily edited by the studio. It is no secret that one of the most popular superhero movies at the time was “Deadpool” (an edgy rated-R movie that constantly broke the fourth wall), and you can tell the studio really tried to turn Ayer’s film into that style.
When watching a movie about a team, the viewers would expect some character development. Unfortunately, there is no character development. All we get are the quick edgy introductions (with lots of text displayed over them) which is not substitute for “character development.” As viewers, we don’t care about these characters or what happens to them because we don’t get to know them and don’t find it remotely credible that they are friends by the end of the film.
The villain of the movie is also very underdeveloped and uninteresting. As viewers, we don’t even know what the villain wants or why he’s even there. One of the most iconic DC characters, The Joker, is also present for absolutely no apparent reason. We will probably never know if he had a bigger purpose in the director’s original cut, but as far as the released cut goes—his presence feels like a cash grab.
Overall, this film is one of the worst superhero movies out there. The only redeeming quality to be found in this film is that some of the actors are really trying, it is too bad that their talent is wasted on poor dialogue and editing. This film is so bad that in 2021, a stand-alone sequel, “The Suicide Squad,” came out and it barely addressed anything that took place in this film. It is a big problem when a studio messes up a director’s vision and tries to turn it into a poor copy of whatever is making money at the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a DC Comics fan or just a fan of movies, I would recommend skipping this one and watching the 2021 sequel.
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