What aunt_zelda Thinks: Suicide Squad
Aug. 7th, 2016 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aunt_zeldaI'm very disappointed about the Suicide Squad movie.
I feel insulted.
What I feel most insulted about is the very basic flaws to this film on a technical level. Terrible sound design, bad editing, inconsistent pacing, a total lack of character arcs, screenwriting 101 failures, and a complete lack of coherence. It really is as bad as the critics have told you.
This movie was just plain bad. Messy, badly written, the pacing was off. The cast was by and large pretty damn good (except for whatever the fuck Leto was doing, I'll get to that later) but they were given crap to work with and not shot well at all.
I cannot get over how lazy and badly written this movie is. Like, Screenwriting 101 problems. That's where I have to start. I have to start that fucking basic with this movie. I can't go right to personal problems I have with how the characters are handled, no, I have to start with shit I learned in my very first screenwriting class in college, in the first week.
Characters often SAY what we should be seeing onscreen. "She's crazy" or "she's a bitch" or "wow, that's messed up." Stuff like that. Stuff that we should be seeing and understanding as an audience, that we should be seeing from actors emoting and visual cues.
Songs are often used in place of development and actors emoting. Songs tell us what we, the audience, should be feeling in a particular scene. These songs are loud, obnoxious, and happen way too much to let you the viewer catch your breath. Again, basic screenwriting mistakes.
Even in ensemble films, there are often characters who stick out as the main focus. Even in the big Avengers ensemble films, there's a few characters who have most of the important emotional beats. Sometimes this is just one character (Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy, Tony Stark in Age of Ultron) sometimes it's multiple characters (Tony and Steve in Civil War, Tony and Steve and Thor in Avengers.)
Who is that character/are those characters in this movie? Deadshot, who changes not a bit throughout the whole movie? Harley, who ... also changes not a bit throughout the movie? Rick Flag, who seems to be poised to have some kind of plot about not trusting the government or his bosses and feeling betrayed and used as a honeypot against himself ... who ultimately doesn't change either?
These characters don't change or evolve over the course of the story. Things happen to them, around them, they do stuff, but their fundamental selves don't change. Deadshot still wants to be with his daughter. Harley still wants to be with the Joker. Rick Flag goes from a loyal soldier in a relationship with June to ... a loyal soldier in a relationship with June.
What, I ask, was our emotional investment in this movie? What was the story arc supposed to be? Who grew or changed?
A) Deadshot, an assassin who loves his daughter who ... stays an assassin who loves his daughter
B) Harley, a woman in an abusive relationship who ... is still in that abusive relationship at the end of the film
C) Rick Flag, a soldier who likes sleeping with June ... and then he can't sleep with June anymore ... and then goes back to being able to sleep with June
The only change/tension in the film from an emotional investment really comes from Rick Flag's relationship being in danger. Seriously. I'm shocked, but that's ... that's it. That's the only real arc in this movie. Will Rick Flag continue to be able to stick his dick in June? That's ... that's what we've got. Rick Flag's dick almost ends the world, btw. That's a plot point.
I'm too angry to talk about Harley at length.
This movie was awful to women. Most were half naked and shown in sexually suggestive poses, often vulnerable sexually suggestive poses. Harley was especially prone to this, objectified by the camera so often I lost track of the times it happened. A very upsetting scene occurs early on in the film where the prison guards hover around her while she huddles half naked on the floor looking disheveled, and this is followed by a force-feeding scene where the sadistic prison guard leader taunts her and seems to delight in having her tied up and at his mercy. I don't think it would be out of place to suggest they're implying some sexual violence happened there, maybe not rape but something happened. Enchantress was a great intersection of racism and sexism all in one. June was this doe-eyed innocent in bulky clothes who turned into a writhing "exotic" half-naked Aztec witch when Enchantress took over. Katana walks around in a midrift baring bandage wrap for no apparent reason, speaks only in subtitles and growls, is treated more like an attack dog than a human, and her one plot detail is to literally cry and have other characters talk about why she's crying. I hesitate to call her a "sexy lamp" but it's close, people, it's really close. Only one to get out kinda ok was Amanda Waller but let's be real Viola Davis in that role was always gonna be amazing, and even she was subject to some bizarre writing and vaguely racist moments.
This movie was racist. Far more informed and appropriate people to discuss this than me have already gone off about that. But yeah, it's there, and it's not subtle. They stick an award-winning African actor under layers of prosthetics and barely give him a few sentences in the entire film. Adam Beach is killed after saying like four sentences at best. I won't even get into how they handle Chato Santana I'm still too angry about that. "Wasted potential" and "shoehorned in at the last moment" are some choice phrases from my housemate. I've seen worse but like, not much worse.
So there were bits of this movie blatantly stolen or lifted from movies with Marvel characters. And I don't mean in a homage way, or a coincidence way. I mean in a way that I think executives were like "you must put this into the movie."
I mean ... off the top of my head: roguish character with a unicorn fetish (Deadpool), elevator fight scene (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), the song "Spirit in the Sky" (Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack), hell the entire marketing campaign was ripping off Guardians all the time.
Speaking of, does anyone know what the payoff was for the pink unicorn joke was? Like, we saw it twice in the movie and ... it never resurfaced. My roommate and I were chatting and I was like "I mean if he went into his cell at the end and they had like a giant pink unicorn plush doll in there for him and he smiled ... that woulda been something, you know?" but we didn't get ... anything. Just, a weird Deadpool ripoff moment for some reason.
And like, look, I'm not a fan of people dying in movies, especially not women dying for a man's angst, but June surviving the ordeal seemed ... unearned? Too easy? Like, no consequences, no tragedy, June survives it all and lives to cling to Rick's manly chest.
I watch a lot of action films, and enjoy a lot of fight scenes in the media, but I found the way guns were depicted in this movie to be rather ... fetishistic? And I say that as an American, who has been exposed to a lot of gun fetishizing advertising over my lifetime. Something about the way guns and bullets falling in this movie were filmed felt ... kinda gross to me? Somehow? IDK. It felt different than other movies with lots of guns.
Jared Leto's Joker is appallingly bad. Like, he's shockingly bad. He growls like a cat and lisps through his grills and it'd be funny if it weren't so embarrassing. Thankfully, he is in very little of the film total, and it sounds like a bunch of his scenes were cut. But even the little we have with him is atrocious. I'm all for redesigns and new ideas. But this was too far, too tacky, and too removed from the character's origins. The Joker is not some crimelord bad businessman. Also, way to shove in some "threatening male bisexuality" into the film, thanks movie, thanks a whole lot for that.
They never actually show Batman and the Joker interacting, at all. I just realized that. Oh my gods.
Will Smith as Deadshot was WONDERFUL. He's one of the best parts of the film, and while that isn't saying much, he's clearly having fun, does a great job with the character, and some of the strongest scenes are focussed on him. My favorite scene was the flashback to him in the alley with his daughter and Batman. That was really good. I wish the whole movie had been like that. I have to wonder how much of the good stuff was Will Smith being his awesome self though, because I don't think most of those lines came from the script.
I do not recommend seeing this movie in theaters. This is one to wait for DVD, and even then, I would advise against it. It is disappointing, poorly made, and just all around not good. I laughed twice and I think that was out of sheer desperation.
This is not an amusingly "so bad it's good" movie where you enjoy the ride. This is a movie that makes you sad when you realize how much work and money and effort was poured into making it, and the end result was something this messy and bad. Production design put a lot of work into it, there's some good things to be seen, particularly the effects on the people ripped apart by the spell, all spiky and half missing, and as much as I don't like the choices for the Joker and Harley, can't deny that costuming and props did a great job with their stuff. There's a few cool visuals (Enchantress in the bathtub is one such moment, Harley dangling from the helicopter is another.) Will Smith as Deadshot deserves his own movie. The cast is pretty good (except for whatever the fuck Leto is doing) and it's important to have diverse actors in key roles like this. But ultimately it's a loud, confusing, badly paced, badly written, mess. And it's disappointing.
I find it baffling, utterly baffling, how a movie with this much money behind it, this much talent, was this bad. Usually even movies that are kinda disappointing are like, watchable. They're competent. There's so much oversight that even a bad movie adheres to a basic plot structure and has some basic character arcs. It fulfills some things on a standard movie checklist. It satisfies general audiences enough. This movie doesn't do any of that.
I could go on and on about this movie. I'll probably remember things later. Just ... I'm very disappointed. I've seen 14 movies in theaters this year thus far, and this is the worst one I've seen.
I feel insulted.
What I feel most insulted about is the very basic flaws to this film on a technical level. Terrible sound design, bad editing, inconsistent pacing, a total lack of character arcs, screenwriting 101 failures, and a complete lack of coherence. It really is as bad as the critics have told you.
This movie was just plain bad. Messy, badly written, the pacing was off. The cast was by and large pretty damn good (except for whatever the fuck Leto was doing, I'll get to that later) but they were given crap to work with and not shot well at all.
I cannot get over how lazy and badly written this movie is. Like, Screenwriting 101 problems. That's where I have to start. I have to start that fucking basic with this movie. I can't go right to personal problems I have with how the characters are handled, no, I have to start with shit I learned in my very first screenwriting class in college, in the first week.
Characters often SAY what we should be seeing onscreen. "She's crazy" or "she's a bitch" or "wow, that's messed up." Stuff like that. Stuff that we should be seeing and understanding as an audience, that we should be seeing from actors emoting and visual cues.
Songs are often used in place of development and actors emoting. Songs tell us what we, the audience, should be feeling in a particular scene. These songs are loud, obnoxious, and happen way too much to let you the viewer catch your breath. Again, basic screenwriting mistakes.
Even in ensemble films, there are often characters who stick out as the main focus. Even in the big Avengers ensemble films, there's a few characters who have most of the important emotional beats. Sometimes this is just one character (Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy, Tony Stark in Age of Ultron) sometimes it's multiple characters (Tony and Steve in Civil War, Tony and Steve and Thor in Avengers.)
Who is that character/are those characters in this movie? Deadshot, who changes not a bit throughout the whole movie? Harley, who ... also changes not a bit throughout the movie? Rick Flag, who seems to be poised to have some kind of plot about not trusting the government or his bosses and feeling betrayed and used as a honeypot against himself ... who ultimately doesn't change either?
These characters don't change or evolve over the course of the story. Things happen to them, around them, they do stuff, but their fundamental selves don't change. Deadshot still wants to be with his daughter. Harley still wants to be with the Joker. Rick Flag goes from a loyal soldier in a relationship with June to ... a loyal soldier in a relationship with June.
What, I ask, was our emotional investment in this movie? What was the story arc supposed to be? Who grew or changed?
A) Deadshot, an assassin who loves his daughter who ... stays an assassin who loves his daughter
B) Harley, a woman in an abusive relationship who ... is still in that abusive relationship at the end of the film
C) Rick Flag, a soldier who likes sleeping with June ... and then he can't sleep with June anymore ... and then goes back to being able to sleep with June
The only change/tension in the film from an emotional investment really comes from Rick Flag's relationship being in danger. Seriously. I'm shocked, but that's ... that's it. That's the only real arc in this movie. Will Rick Flag continue to be able to stick his dick in June? That's ... that's what we've got. Rick Flag's dick almost ends the world, btw. That's a plot point.
I'm too angry to talk about Harley at length.
This movie was awful to women. Most were half naked and shown in sexually suggestive poses, often vulnerable sexually suggestive poses. Harley was especially prone to this, objectified by the camera so often I lost track of the times it happened. A very upsetting scene occurs early on in the film where the prison guards hover around her while she huddles half naked on the floor looking disheveled, and this is followed by a force-feeding scene where the sadistic prison guard leader taunts her and seems to delight in having her tied up and at his mercy. I don't think it would be out of place to suggest they're implying some sexual violence happened there, maybe not rape but something happened. Enchantress was a great intersection of racism and sexism all in one. June was this doe-eyed innocent in bulky clothes who turned into a writhing "exotic" half-naked Aztec witch when Enchantress took over. Katana walks around in a midrift baring bandage wrap for no apparent reason, speaks only in subtitles and growls, is treated more like an attack dog than a human, and her one plot detail is to literally cry and have other characters talk about why she's crying. I hesitate to call her a "sexy lamp" but it's close, people, it's really close. Only one to get out kinda ok was Amanda Waller but let's be real Viola Davis in that role was always gonna be amazing, and even she was subject to some bizarre writing and vaguely racist moments.
This movie was racist. Far more informed and appropriate people to discuss this than me have already gone off about that. But yeah, it's there, and it's not subtle. They stick an award-winning African actor under layers of prosthetics and barely give him a few sentences in the entire film. Adam Beach is killed after saying like four sentences at best. I won't even get into how they handle Chato Santana I'm still too angry about that. "Wasted potential" and "shoehorned in at the last moment" are some choice phrases from my housemate. I've seen worse but like, not much worse.
So there were bits of this movie blatantly stolen or lifted from movies with Marvel characters. And I don't mean in a homage way, or a coincidence way. I mean in a way that I think executives were like "you must put this into the movie."
I mean ... off the top of my head: roguish character with a unicorn fetish (Deadpool), elevator fight scene (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), the song "Spirit in the Sky" (Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack), hell the entire marketing campaign was ripping off Guardians all the time.
Speaking of, does anyone know what the payoff was for the pink unicorn joke was? Like, we saw it twice in the movie and ... it never resurfaced. My roommate and I were chatting and I was like "I mean if he went into his cell at the end and they had like a giant pink unicorn plush doll in there for him and he smiled ... that woulda been something, you know?" but we didn't get ... anything. Just, a weird Deadpool ripoff moment for some reason.
And like, look, I'm not a fan of people dying in movies, especially not women dying for a man's angst, but June surviving the ordeal seemed ... unearned? Too easy? Like, no consequences, no tragedy, June survives it all and lives to cling to Rick's manly chest.
I watch a lot of action films, and enjoy a lot of fight scenes in the media, but I found the way guns were depicted in this movie to be rather ... fetishistic? And I say that as an American, who has been exposed to a lot of gun fetishizing advertising over my lifetime. Something about the way guns and bullets falling in this movie were filmed felt ... kinda gross to me? Somehow? IDK. It felt different than other movies with lots of guns.
Jared Leto's Joker is appallingly bad. Like, he's shockingly bad. He growls like a cat and lisps through his grills and it'd be funny if it weren't so embarrassing. Thankfully, he is in very little of the film total, and it sounds like a bunch of his scenes were cut. But even the little we have with him is atrocious. I'm all for redesigns and new ideas. But this was too far, too tacky, and too removed from the character's origins. The Joker is not some crimelord bad businessman. Also, way to shove in some "threatening male bisexuality" into the film, thanks movie, thanks a whole lot for that.
They never actually show Batman and the Joker interacting, at all. I just realized that. Oh my gods.
Will Smith as Deadshot was WONDERFUL. He's one of the best parts of the film, and while that isn't saying much, he's clearly having fun, does a great job with the character, and some of the strongest scenes are focussed on him. My favorite scene was the flashback to him in the alley with his daughter and Batman. That was really good. I wish the whole movie had been like that. I have to wonder how much of the good stuff was Will Smith being his awesome self though, because I don't think most of those lines came from the script.
I do not recommend seeing this movie in theaters. This is one to wait for DVD, and even then, I would advise against it. It is disappointing, poorly made, and just all around not good. I laughed twice and I think that was out of sheer desperation.
This is not an amusingly "so bad it's good" movie where you enjoy the ride. This is a movie that makes you sad when you realize how much work and money and effort was poured into making it, and the end result was something this messy and bad. Production design put a lot of work into it, there's some good things to be seen, particularly the effects on the people ripped apart by the spell, all spiky and half missing, and as much as I don't like the choices for the Joker and Harley, can't deny that costuming and props did a great job with their stuff. There's a few cool visuals (Enchantress in the bathtub is one such moment, Harley dangling from the helicopter is another.) Will Smith as Deadshot deserves his own movie. The cast is pretty good (except for whatever the fuck Leto is doing) and it's important to have diverse actors in key roles like this. But ultimately it's a loud, confusing, badly paced, badly written, mess. And it's disappointing.
I find it baffling, utterly baffling, how a movie with this much money behind it, this much talent, was this bad. Usually even movies that are kinda disappointing are like, watchable. They're competent. There's so much oversight that even a bad movie adheres to a basic plot structure and has some basic character arcs. It fulfills some things on a standard movie checklist. It satisfies general audiences enough. This movie doesn't do any of that.
I could go on and on about this movie. I'll probably remember things later. Just ... I'm very disappointed. I've seen 14 movies in theaters this year thus far, and this is the worst one I've seen.
