A movie that can’t get out of it’s own way because it’s handcuffed to a writer and director who tries way too hard to replicate talents who have done it better.
Screaming into the smaller, but more varied DC Extended Universe is James Gunn’s third foray into the realm of superheroes as a writer and director. He sprinkled the MCU with fairy dust in bringing the Guardians of the Galaxy to life, and now he gets a chance to pump some life into the previously ravaged band of misfits in 2016’s, Suicide Squad. This time around, the Suicide Squad infiltrates an island off the coast of South America and takes on a more manageable story. Bad guys with guns trying to prevent them from getting to a specific location that’ll reveal colossal secrets. Despite the promise of popping heads and giving the Suicide Squad their due, The Suicide Squad is another James Gunn mess. A hat trick in writing himself into a wall that he can’t direct himself around. It’s one thing after the next that makes The Suicide Squad an unfunny chore that highlights every trope the Internet loves to exclaim.
The Suicide Squad’s biggest obstacle is it’s leader, James Gunn. Since his early days of writing scripts for Scooby-Doo, he has gotten bigger and bigger projects. Bringing his roots of mean-spirited supplements to the blockbuster landscape, Gunn seems like the right type of storyteller primed to capitalize on his own writing. The issue is that the skill simply isn’t there in both writing and directing. Once again, Gunn banks on character banter and cruel jokes to substitute any proper form of development or identity. There is a constant attempt to try and signal that these characters are more than just their death suits, but there isn’t enough there to exemplify that. Oftentimes he’ll bring the story to a screeching, alarming halt to expose the inner workings of a character. It’s supposed to act as development, or the basis for eventual catharsis, but it grinds any momentum to a complete stop. Characters wax on about their origin story as some attempt to create subtext, but it’s so explicit in its delivery that it’s purely text. There isn’t any ounce of nuance or crafty maneuverings to expand on key ideas that are clearly present because it is only concerned with making sure the audience is aware of every motion. Great storytellers allow their POV to flourish based not on what is said, but what is seen. If the only way to get us to care is to spell it out for us, then that trust between the audience and the camera was never established.
This isn’t to say that The Suicide Squad is intended to be as dramatically captivating as a high end drama, but if the goal is to get us to care, then needing to do it well is still important. There are too many times where it is clearly trying to be the multi-million dollar movie of a niché sub-genre, that the dramatic swings drop their hips. If guts and glory like that of a Troma picture or low budget midnight movies is the sought after identity, then you might as well fully commit. It has clear strokes resembling the roots of Gunn’s inspirations, but it’s about 45 minutes too long, and interested in making us care. That isn’t to say a movie can be the best of both worlds, but it is neither the best nor committed to either world. It’s a juggling act with knives and flipping them with the blade instead of the hilt. It’s spilt blood, home to your ideas, identity, and flourishes without structure to maintain the volume. There are too many times where The Suicide Squad drags itself to and fro violent outbursts with half-written ideas, and unnatural progression. Once more, convenience is prioritized over proper narrative developments to push us to new sights and sounds. At this point it’s no longer a coincidence, but a clear flaw in his act that has spanned his career.
The most notable disappointment has to be the characters. Whether it’s their return to the big screen, or their first (and only) appearance, none of these characters are interesting. Rick Flagg gets a second go at it but he’s just as uninteresting as before. Harley Quinn makes another appearance but takes a huge step back compared to where she was in Birds of Prey. Idris Elba’s Bloodshot is noteworthy as the definitive lead, but there is nothing about him that makes him really stand out as a character. Every supporting character is visually distinct, but there isn’t anything going on for them to make an impression that counters someone else’s existence. They may run around in some decent costuming, but they’re all delivering the same blunt dialogue that is supposed to define them. It’s neither captivating, engaging, or even worth being emotionally invested. When you compare the cast of titular characters, they all feel like the shell of what is really the most excellent part of his Guardians movies. Which is a shame because it feels like this was the part that was supposed to separate itself from 2016’s Suicide Squad the most, and they both respectively miss the mark by a noticeable margin.
I feel it’s also worth mentioning how far IP can really go when a mulligan feels like a last ditch effort to keep a branch of the brand attached. After the last outing, we all left a bit baffled by the attempt to make the villain an ancient God that objectively outmatches the cast on a broader level. The power of teamwork coincidentally saves the day, and this film is a more pop infused version of just that. This time, Gunn gets to flex his convenience package just so he can end the movie and deliver more blatant text. I’m not really sure how we’ve gotten to a point with these two films and many have collectively decided this is the better option when they’re essentially the same movie. This time we get a fan favorite, visual feast that diehard comic readers have been aching for, but there has to be more than, “I can’t believe I got to see this for the first time. I never thought I would.” In some capacity it feels like a bypass because it validates being someone who grew up with something weird to love that no one else did. In that same sense, so was the original and they’re both poorly edited, written, directed, shot, music videos with character vignette style storytelling. More violence and visually weird costuming overwhelms having merit, I guess.
The Suicide Squad’s biggest tragedy is that isn’t funny. For all the cadence that James Gunn carries as a storyteller, his sense of humor seems to be everyone’s favorite quality of his. This go-around it’s littered with jokes that overstay their welcome, tap into a weird boomer/millenial angle, and struggle to be delivered with any proper sense of timing. John Cena can be a funny guy when the material he’s given is actually funny. If you look at his work in Blockers, his protective Dad role showcased how funny he can be. You would think Gunn could extract a special performance as he did with Dave Bautista’s Drax, but it’s clear there really isn’t as much passion behind Peacemaker as there is with any of the Guardians.
It feels like Gunn isn’t really invested in the cast. Everything is manufactured to reach the lowest hanging fruit and you feel that every step of the way. It’s mean-spirited and eager to revel in violence, but it’s built around the idea that it’s doing something special, when it’s not. When we look at violent, mean-spirited movies that explode with gore, the talents involved typically find a way to make it satisfactory. All of the gore in The Suicide Squad feels like it’s trying too hard to embody the movies it’s inspired by, and the same can be said about everything else. The sense of humor, the violence, the writing, the directing, the explicit text, it’s all boring and derivative that any identity it thought it had is wiped away. Characters expel brief, momentary thoughts that are supposed to be some sort of thematic uprising amongst the bloodshed, but it’s brief and meaningless. It’s one of those moves that a lot of modern directors are doing where they don’t really infuse their movies with an idea and visually explore it. They just say it to try and fool the audience into thinking it’s saying something. The Suicide Squad is the type of movie that expresses it’s going to break the mold, but it’s lip service because it’s a re-lit, re-staged version of what we’ve already seen. Maybe it’s on me for buying into the idea that James Gunn was capable of making a good movie, but it’s another instance where the joke must be on me.