Suicide Squad (2016) Off Scale Low /10
First of let me just briefly explain my stance on the whole comic book thing. Marvel and DC both share equal blame for the corruption of the medium (Give me The Haunted Tank anyday over any of their stuff) for their endless aping of one another. They got a human torch we need a burning man, they got a Thing we got a Croc, they got a witch, we got a witch, they got Thor, chripes they can have im we dont need one. OK there is the argument that it mirrored cold war parity but that's a real stretch to explain what is darn near serial plagarism on both parties sides. They diluted the medium into cotton candy not really worthy of reading. The only one to get the superhero genre right and make it literature was Watchmen.
Thus endeth that rant. Now on to Suicide Squad, wherein DC me toos itself into a ludicrous clone of Avengers Mark I ( a ridiculous enough film in it's own right) and makes things even worse. Like that clone IE800 on Alibaba the look is there the guts are missing, well not missing but really really messed up. This is what happens when you let a tracer obsessed hack with only one decent writing credit too his name and a pp record directing loose in the superhero arena. Ayers might be able to hold it together for a 3 minute music video but for one second longer he's just a liability to film if not the human race itself. Make no mistake here, this film is first and foremost a Wil Smith Margot Robbie (Well Margot Robbies rear actually) vehicle. Smith is Smith and Robbie does nowhere as good a Harley as any of the animations did. She cannot hold the voice and is relying on the eyecandy factor to carry her through. Leto's Joker works really well here for the brief time he's on screen. Everyone else is doing a walk on. Katana?????????? thrown in why, just because, is Ayres dating her? Is she from Toronto? Daddy was a financer? Makes no sense to have her there.
Warning Might be Spoilers in here, I am just not sure if there are of if in fact you can spoil something strung together like plate of spaghettini spilled on a freshly waxed floor.
Which of course is the whole point. Nothing in this film makes sense. Why they strung it together with characters no one knows about (and worse luck few who do know dont care about) is mystifying. Where Avengers built on characters already well established in the film world Squad has none other than Batman (don't give me any grief here but that is Asspik's standin filling out the suit for the 15 seconds)and the Joker. So you have a bunch of baddies we see briefly and hear about and boom next thing you know and with no further ado we are going to send them into combat. Kay, no meet and greet just out of your cell and here's the mission thank you very much.This follows well with the theme of the film as really why tell them anything when obviously they had not yet conceived the plot. I have this mental image of Ayers showing up on set Monday with a mescaline hangover busily typing dialogue on his iPad with the drug addled conviction that "If I just write enough witty lines, a plot will emerge" Problem there is he is not a wit and the lines are just regurgitation of things we have all heard elsewhere. This movie flows along as if it were random snippets taken from the stars social media accounts and strung together then filmed. By the time some story has actually emerged half the film has gone by and you sit scratching your head thinking ok why did we not start here? At this point the film takes a little time out to showcase Robbies rear in case you missed the first 800 shots of it, oh and to fill in a little more of the backstory on The Human Torch and offer some really deep intellectual views on being a bad guy. No reason for it other than to stall the plot which was just basically exposed for the first time. Ayers here obviously saw his big error in almost becoming coherent so threw this scene in to right the course of the film back into complete chaos. So eventually you get to the big save the world send Loki packing, oops sorry Witch or whatever in this one packing which actually contains a few tiny morsels of intrigue which leave you scratching your head wondering why just why did they (he really, no mistake here the fingerprints are all over the rotoscope this is Ayers mess entirely) not explore those points of interest earlier on, say at the beginning of the film where it would have built story rather than winding up as non sequitur bites in what was supposed to be a climax (which isn't because you have seen it before in Avengers I, you just don't get Thor with this one, which is a blessing).
All in all with all the major inconsistencies and complete lack of plotting, structure acting, directing and oddly cut hip retro music clips this thing leaves you feeling like somebody dosed your drink in a bar where everyone was 10 years younger than you and sat you in the corner. Flashes of action, Flashing lights ,flashes of dialogue and music and a hot rear flashing by every couple of minutes, but you have no clue really what the devil is going on.
