Suicide Squad (2016) Revisit: A Squad Mission Mostly Left Unaccomplished and Half-Baked
Title: Suicide Squad (2016)
Director: David Ayer
Based on: Characters from DC
Release Date: August 5 2016
Summary
A ruthless government officer (Viola Davis) assembles a ragtag team full of supervillains freed from prison. Why did they get out of jail in the first place? They have a secret mission to complete in the city! With all these crazy inmates, from the smart Deadshot (Will Smith) to the chaotic Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), they have to work together to defeat a far worse supervillain unleashing destruction on the city, while the Joker (Jared Leto) is on his own evil job.
Reasons
For the most part, Suicide Squad notably suffers from a predictable story and rushed character writing. To be completely honest, incarcerated supervillains working together on a secret mission is a decent concept, even for a Marvel or DC Comics movie. Well, the sad thing is the concept just had to be wasted using extremely clichéd plot points and putting action over character development. Throughout the story, it is easy to tell what happens next, plus being hard to tell why a character is doing that. Additionally, the villain's motives is completely overused with no reason why they are going to destroy the city. Instead of focusing on the character arcs, they focus more on making the action stylish and entertaining. This is a rather bad move because it is going for style over substance, a commonly bad trait seen in some critically panned movies. Well, the action is entertaining to watch because of how hard the stuntmen instructed the cast to perform all of that choreography. Despite how good the action is, the writers barely focused on fleshing out the character arcs. If at all, it only focused on Deadshot separated from his daughter and June's possession by the Enchantress, and nothing else. To finish off, this is what happens when a good story concept gets wasted.
In addition, Suicide Squad also incorporates lazy visual editing and uneven pacing in some moments. Surprisingly, gross does not always mean the movie looks beautiful. The editing looks more like TV show episodes condensed into one whole marathon. Better yet, it looks more like a movie that is made for TV instead of the theaters. Most of the transitions (especially the second-long fast-foward transitions) and introductions are not that cinematic. Also, the fire is not realistic nor cinematic because its movements are slower than that of real life fire. To make things worse for the movie, the pacing is slow and uneven. One bad offender is the exposition which lasts longer than expected. To make things clear, the exposition lasts for around 40 minutes in a 2 hour runtime! It gets the squad ready and banded together late which means that this movie has too much exposition than what is needed.
Even though this is not really a good movie, the number of Suicide Squad’s strengths, the soundtrack, cast performances, and scenery, are almost equal to the flaws. Arguably, the soundtrack is the best part of the movie. Some of the songs, like “Heathens” by twenty one pilots and “Sucker for Pain” by Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, and Imagine Dragons, even went into the charts! Although not a top-charter, “Medieval Warfare” by Grimes is a great song, too. Another good thing about the movie is its cast perfomances, notably Margot Robbie, who were brave enough to make their talent bring these villains to life. For most people, Harley Quinn was the most iconic character because of how Robbie perfectly portrayed her crazy personality. Jared Leto and Will Smith also had great talent in this movie. Finally, the scenery is decent for having the dark and mysterious vibe. Admittedly, all of the settings look well done, especially the city of Gotham. To compliment the blacks, it uses some bright colors to give out the dangerous city vibe.
Conclusion
Although this was a big sour treat for 2016’s box office, Suicide Squad can be sometimes diabolical but it is more of what is called…suicidal, as the title suggests. Seeing out-of-prison DC villains going on a mission is a decent concept. Unfortunately, it had to be wasted with an overall unoriginal story and half-baked character writing. The movie uses a fair amount of clichés in order for the watcher to predict what will happen next. Aside from the story and character writing, the editing is lazy and unnatural and the pacing goes on for too long. There are some good things about it, too. The soundtrack is sure to be the most iconic part of the movie. Its cast performances and scenery are also pluses to ensure that the movie is not that terrible. Even if this movie is not really any good, you may do much worse with choices much more vile than this squad.
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