6 Reasons Why Suicide Squad Isn’t As Bad As People Say It Is (& 4 Reasons It Is)

Let’s examine how and why Suicide Squad isn’t actually as bad as word of mouth claims that it is, as well as the most valid criticisms of the movie.

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David Ayer’s 2016 comic book adaptation Suicide Squad is an undeniably messy experience. Reports of vastly different versions of the movie existing through harsh editing and reshoots were easy to believe after it was released in theaters and it quickly developed a reputation as one of the worst examples of a mainstream superhero movie despite financial success in the face of an overwhelmingly negative critical response. Yet the movie continues to accumulate fans and the bones of what it establishes are far from forgotten in the DCEU franchise.

Let’s take a look at both sides of the argument and examine how and why Suicide Squad isn’t actually as bad as word of mouth claims that it is, as well as the criticisms of the movie that can’t be explained away no matter how much you may want them to be.

10 Isn’t: The Cast

Suicide Squad assembled a group of actors that truly felt worthy of its epic rogues’ gallery. Actors like Jai Courtney and Joel Kinnaman were no strangers to Hollywood tentpole movies at the time but had never really felt as well-suited for their characters as they did here and Margot Robbie’s turn as Harley Quinn has proven to be nothing short of iconic.

Will Smith’s star power similarly burns as brightly as it ever has throughout the movie and, in conjunction with heavy hitters like Viola Davis, makes Suicide Squad a high-budget comic book movie that rarely wastes the acting talent of its impressive cast, even if the material itself ends up hacked to pieces.

9 Is: Fast Cut Editing

The editing in Suicide Squad is undeniably atrocious. It emphasizes the movie’s lack of tonal direction and can be downright nauseating for anyone not adequately prepared for it.

While it certainly gives the movie a sense of character that feels geared towards young fans, it also gives the impression that the producers had so little faith in the finished product that they chose to simply cut and disguise its blemishes rather than wearing them proudly.

8 Isn’t: It Won an Oscar

One of the most unfair criticisms leveled against Suicide Squad is that its flaws override its good qualities to the degree that it was undeserving of its Oscar win. Which is patently untrue.

Suggesting that Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini, and Christopher Nelson didn’t earn their shared Oscar win for Best Makeup and Hairstyling demonstrates a total lack of understanding in the processes of filmmaking. Like it or not, Suicide Squad excels in that field and depicts an impressive variety of hairstyles and skin tones on various actors in various conditions without ever missing the continuity beat. The movie is frankly a masterclass in blockbuster quality regarding those integral disciplines.

7 Is: Wasted Characters

The unforgiving editing of the movie is felt the most strongly in what it does to the ensemble, and Suicide Squad is, at its core, an ensemble movie.

Katana and Slipknot are the most noticeably underdeveloped of the actual squad but Jared Leto’s Joker, similarly, never gets the room he needs to build up to something truly memorable. As controversial as his performance was, it still would have been better to have actually seen it rather than the mere snippets that audiences ended up getting.

6 Isn’t: Costumes

Similar to hair and makeup, a lot of thought goes into the varied costumes of Suicide Squad. The hurried pace of events means that a character’s costume has to do a lot of the talking for them and they can often speak very loudly about their history and their personality.

It would have been so much easier for the entire movie to strip the squad of their unique clothing and have them forced into uniforms but Ayer emphasizes just how much clothing can mean to an individual and how it defines their sense of self.

5 Is: Badly Choreographed Action

A lot of Suicide Squad’s action sequences are based around characters standing still and shooting at something which doesn’t really gel with its team-based combat.

Characters are often left standing around in hails of gunfire or sidelined off into their own little hand-to-hand encounters. The squad rarely fights as a group and, when it does, the results are chaotic and unsatisfying.

4 Isn’t: Its True Villain and Hero

Some members of the ensemble were more notarized than others despite not actually being in the movie all that much but Suicide Squad does actually have a clear hero and villain.

It’s a far cry from the kind of emboldening and progressive representation that audiences applauded in Black Panther but Suicide Squad is ultimately a movie about two black characters trying to get ahead in an America that is depicted as being controlled entirely by white characters. Deadshot, Amanda Waller, and the lengths that they both go to achieve their goals, further the movie’s central–if underdeveloped–idea that society creates its own villains.

3 Is: A Lack of Courage from the Studio

As mentioned, the final cut of the movie implies a damning lack of faith from its own producers but its quest to create something generically appealing out of something weird and awkward also appears to destroy a number of really interesting ideas.

Jared Leto being a frightening and genuinely unpredictable version of the Joker is a compelling idea that may or may not have worked but Harley Quinn’s emancipation from him in an exploration of abusive relationships is something that the DCEU ended up doing anyway to great applause.

2 Isn’t: The Themes of Love and Leverage

Believe it or not, amongst the wreckage of the versions of the movie that audiences ended up seeing, there are still prevalent themes within the story of Suicide Squad. Chiefly the connection between the concept of love and the concept of leverage.

To a character like Amanda Waller, there is only leverage. You use what you can against others to further your own interests. Rick Flagg, on the other hand, is motivated by love and both of these outlooks are weighed by Will Smith’s Deadshot throughout his arc in the story.

1 Isn’t: Its Commitment to Bad Taste

This could just as easily be counted as one of Suicide Squad’s bad points but its commitment to the idea of ‘bad taste’ is truly impressive. Despite the cuts and reshoots, for every mundane convention in the movie, there’s something still genuinely risky balancing it out in an obscene way.

Compared to a far less outlandish PG-13 comic book movie like Venom, Suicide Squad actually depicts its villains as villains with the garishness of their world–and its connections to our real one –providing something substantive even if when the movie’s not being particularly entertaining. From music to fashion to just general attitudes, Suicide Squad spits in the face of normalcy in a way that’s fittingly offensive and occasionally even a little subversive.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/reasons-suicide-squad-dceu-will-smith-movie-good-bad-underrated/