After Man of Steel kicked off the Suicide Squad arrived to give the franchise a whole new sensibility. Ayer brought a splash of humor into Zack Snyder’s bleak universe, while well-cast actors like Margot Robbie and Will Smith elevated their thinly written roles.
Warner Bros. rushed the filmmakers’ process and then brought in outside help to butcher Ayer’s cut to suit their own misguided vision, inspired by the success of Deadpool. As a result, the movie is a complete mess. Even taking into its few saving graces, Suicide Squad is an artistic failure.
Right: Humor
Zack Snyder’s early DCEU entries, like Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, are miserable, humorless affairs. On the one hand, this contrasts with Marvel’s quip-heavy comic sensibility. On the other, it results in superhero movies that aren’t very entertaining.
What made Suicide Squad stand out from the other DCEU installments was its sense of humor. Not all the jokes land, but at least they’re there.
Wrong: Introducing Every Single Character In One Long Montage
At the beginning of Suicide Squad, Amanda Waller sits down with a couple of suits and explains her Task Force X idea. She introduces every single character in one go with a long montage.
Instead of developing the characters through their actions and personalities, Suicide Squad just offers up a generic bio of each one before cramming them all together.
Right: Casting Margot Robbie As Harley Quinn
The MVP of Suicide Squad is Margot Robbie, one of the best actors working today, who was perfectly cast in the role of Harley Quinn. From her Wolf of Wall Street Brooklyn accent to her zany comic energy, her performance was always a joy to watch.
Robbie would’ve needed a better script and a more congruous production to really shine in Suicide Squad, but she was given just enough creative space to make Harley one of the DCEU’s most popular characters.
Wrong: Trailer-Like Editing
The reason why there have been calls from DC fans for Warner Bros. to release the Ayer cut, similar to the Snyder cut, is that after Ayer finished cutting Suicide Squad as a dark, edgy blockbuster, the studio hired some new editors to butcher the movie.
Warner Bros. execs got cold feet after the failure of Batman v Superman and the success of Deadpool and hired the editors of Suicide Squad’s well-received trailer to essentially recut the movie as a feature-length trailer. The character introductions all play like teaser trailers for future DCEU spin-offs.
Right: Casting Will Smith As Deadshot
Although the movie didn’t wring enough emotion — or any, really — out of Deadshot’s double life as an assassin and a father, Will Smith was a great choice for the part and will undoubtedly bring a fine portrayal of the character to the DCEU in the future.
Idris Elba was initially cast to replace Smith as Deadshot in The Suicide Squad, but his role was changed to a different character to leave the door open for Smith to return, which was a smart move, because he really should. He’s a great actor who was short-changed by a flimsy script.
Wrong: Harley Quinn’s Ridiculously Unnecessary Undressing Scene
When Margot Robbie scored a gig executive-producing the Harley Quinn spin-off Birds of Prey, she made a concerted effort to avoid the male gaze. In Suicide Squad, David Ayer didn’t make that effort, and included a painfully awkward scene in which Harley undresses in front of the rest of the squad, then seems clueless as to why they’re all staring at her.
In the comics, Harley is sexualized but only in her role as a femme fatale. She uses her body to get what she wants from people like Batman and the Joker. She’s not a complete ditz like this scene makes out.
Right: Fast-Paced First Act
One of the benefits of getting trailer editors to edit the movie was a rollicking first act. The first act is essentially a trailer for the movie, introducing the characters and setting up the stakes, and Suicide Squad comes out of the gate at a rapid pace.
Unfortunately, it turned out that starting Suicide Squad on an exciting, promising note only served to highlight the flaws with the rest of the movie.
Wrong: Stilted Second And Third Acts
While the first act of Suicide Squad is exciting, the movie stumbles in its second and third acts. The first act sets up a movie that never really happens. It’s one long info dump, which would be excusable if the rest of the movie used that information for any purpose.
The second act does nothing with what was established in the first, while the third devolves into a generic final battle filled with noise and devoid of substance.
Right: Limiting Jared Leto’s Screen Time
Jared Leto’s performance as the Joker was just terrible. It’s not that the acting was bad. For all intents and purposes, Leto is a fine actor and if he was playing a generic millennial clown gangster, his performance would’ve been acceptable.
But he wasn’t; he was playing the Joker, one of the most iconic characters ever created. The way Leto played the character is at odds with his established psychology. Fortunately, the editors brought on by Warner Bros. cut out a lot of Leto’s Joker scenes, so fans didn’t have to suffer through too much.
Wrong: Overusing Exposition
There’s a right way and a wrong way to convey exposition in a movie. Time and time again, Suicide Squad exemplifies the wrong way, usually through Rick Flag. Poor Joel Kinnaman was forced to deliver lines like, “This is Katana. She’s got my back. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims.” Come on.
Warner Bros. reportedly only gave David Ayer six weeks to finalize the script for Suicide Squad before going into production, so it’s no surprise that it’s horribly written.
