Suicide Squad
(with Jared Leto's retarded Joker!)

I was originally going to skip writing about Suicide Squad since, when I saw it, I came out of the theater thinking, "You know what, that wasn't too bad." But then I reflected on the two hours that I spent in that cinema. I stewed it over in my brain for a few weeks. And although it's not the travesty against film (and mankind) that Batman V. Superman was, it really wasn't all that good itself. In fact, it fucked up even more than BvS in a lot of instances, and after talking it over with my friends I understood just how much potential it blew. Suicide Squad could have been an extremely fun "Dark Avengers" movie, but instead it simply feels like a poorly edited TNT "movie of the week" with an enormous budget. Is TNT even still a thing? Whatever.

So Suicide Squad has to do with US Secret Organization (A.R.G.U.S.) leader, Amanda Waller, putting together a team of imprisoned super villains and making them run suicide missions for the good of the country. These criminals are all injected with tiny bombs in their necks that can be blow'd up if they don't do as they're told, or they get a little out of hand (which, they're the scum of the Earth, so of COURSE somebody will get out of hand. That's kind of their thing). Then, when bad shit goes down, and the US needs to neutralize or just plain take care of the issue at hand (but they can't afford to send in actual uniformed troops) they ship in the Squad, and disavow any knowledge of them if they get caught or die, or both. At least that's the main plot of the comic that this movie is based off of.

The movie version of Suicide Squad is all about how Amanda Waller is kind of an idiot, sets things up so that she herself is responsible for a huge threat to the country, and then sends in the Suicide Squad to get her out of a city where supernatural shit is going crazy, and people are dying, and city blocks are getting vaporized. Oh, and the Suicide Squad is sent in with a couple of platoons of special forces men, and the Joker appears a few times, but he does absolutely nothing to advance or change the plot in any way, and there's a lot of 80s rock music that never lets up because that worked well for Guardians of the Galaxy. And... That's pretty much it.

The tone of this flick is not that dark really, but it TRIES to be edgy as all fuck. Instead it's like it's tailor made for middle schoolers who only shop at Hot Topic. It's a known fact that Warner Bros. stepped all over David Ayer's version of Suicide Squad, making it "funnier," forcing in more characters, cutting out already filmed backstory for the majority of the cast, and editing the fuck out of it so that it wasn't Ayer's movie at all in the end, and worst of all it wasn't funny either ("Ha! Captain Boomerang likes unicorns! HILARIOUS!"). But Ayer is not totally blameless in the resulting shit soufflé that we got. I was originally hoping for something as entertaining as the animated Assault on Arkham animated movie that came out a few years ago — featuring the Suicide Squad infiltrating Arkham Asylum to get at the Riddler's confiscated goody-bag. That story had an actual plot that made sense (in a comic book world), super-powered villains that (get this) actually USE their powers or skills, and it was a much smaller story, which is all an SS tale should be. NONE of that fun comic book world is even hinted at in Ayer's movie. There's no way that's 100% WB's fault.

And that's probably my first big issue with this flick: they tried to make it about averting an apocalypse. That is never what the Squad goes up against. They're all low-powered villains who are sent into dangerous areas to eliminate threats or extract people or things. They are NOT good guys who save the world. They're bad guys who murder people in their free time. We're allowed to feel some pity for them and their situation, but we're always meant to remember that just a short time ago they shot a man in the head for a lot of money, or they helped the Joker kill Robin, or they literally ATE a person (I'm looking at you, Killer Croc). This movie tries to make all the self-serving criminals that we're following appear to be ultra-heroic do-gooders. That's strike one (it's too grand, and the Squad should never be filled with heroes).

Strike two is the most frustrating part of the movie to me. So, you get Deadshot in the cast (a guy who can kill people with any firearm imaginable, who can ricochet bullets off of street lights and still get a bullseye in the back of the skull of whoever he's taking out), but for the rest of the movie, after he's put in the Squad, he never does anything that a regular soldier couldn't do. He only shoots straight ahead of him, no tricky shots, and nothing that a regular Navy SEAL couldn't hit on a bad day. What's the point of a sharp-shooter like him in this thing?

Killer Croc is super strong, has a bite that can crush steel, and he eats goats whole. What does he do in fights? Just punches people.

Captain Boomerang has fucking specialized BOOMERANGS for his main weapons (hence the name), but all he ever does in battles is stab people with knives. What?

Oh, and Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend, she's played up as somebody with super gymnastic abilities in the beginning of this flick, but the most she does in a fight (outside from using a bat to a faceless minion's head) is to jump up, shove her Joker-smashed crotch in somebody's face, and twirl to thigh-throw them to the ground. I think that Will Smith's Deadshot did that at one point too.

Compare all that to the first Avengers movie, where in the final battle everybody had their own specialized way of both taking out the bad guys and working together. Wasted potential here, and it completely destroys the need for these "specialized" people at all.

Strike three for me is the Joker. For well over a year now Warner Brothers has been bragging about how "awesome!" and "creepy!!" Jared Leto's Joker was going to be in Suicide Squad. After Jack Nicholson's deadly and insane take in the original Batman, followed by Mark Hamill's goddamn brilliant version of the Clown Prince of Crime in all of the DC Animated Universe productions, and rounded up with Heath Ledger's anarchistic, but brilliant-planner Joker in The Dark Knight, Leto had some big (clown) shoes to fill... In the end he didn't fill them. Instead he tripped all over himself and fell flat on his own face, showing the world that the joke was indeed on him.

First of all, as I stated above, the Joker brings nothing to the plot. He changes nothing in the story by even being there, and Leto's take on the insane clown posse leader is a little limp, especially when compared to the different versions that came before. I was not frightened by anything that he did, and in fact just wanted him gone as soon as he appeared on screen. Everybody I've talked to has said that the Joker was the absolute worst part of this movie for them. Who the fuck would have thought that an audience would prefer a DC movie WITHOUT the Joker in it?

Yeah, yeah, I know, in Ayer's original cut we supposedly had about 5-10 minutes more of Leto running around with his lame silver grill in his mouth, pretending to be crazier than Jared Leto is in real life, and it's supposed to make him more indispensable to the real plot, but that's not the movie that we got. In the actual movie he does nothing, except piss me off because "Jared Leto is a method actor who pretended to be as dark and mischievous as the Joker even when the camera was not rolling... *Snicker* He even sent deranged gifts to his co-stars. See! That's creepy! I mean really, who shits in a box and mails it to Will Smith?! The Joker, that's who!" No, nobody does dumb shit like that. Christ.

Other that that, there were a ton of things that just made me wonder who was in charge of continuity and script corrections in Suicide Squad. (The answer is unsurprisingly NOBODY.) For example, just before getting deployed to the city that's under attack by one of their own, the Squad members get all their shit back (weapons, clothes, etc.), and are given time to "suit up." A few minutes later they're all on a chopper en-route to the extraction zone and we see that Harley Quinn has a fully charged cell phone and she's receiving texts from the Joker. Who the fuck gave Harley a phone knowing that's the first thing she'd do if she got one?! And how did the Joker find out about the bomb in his lady's neck (he was already well on his way to find a way to disable it before she first contacted him), where it was developed, how to neutralize it, and then hijack a military helicopter to "rescue" her in the first place? Especially in the short amount of time that Harley first got in touch with him? I'll tell you how: BAD WRITING.

And all they were originally supposed to do was extract Amanda Waller in a helicopter from the top of a high rise near this supernatural ground zero on US soil... WHY did it have to be supervillains doing the extraction? They didn't need to disavow them from this mission if it went bad, it was IN THE US. And they were already sending in two entire large helicopters filled with specially trained soldiers too... Why even bother with the Squad in this instance?

After all is said and done, everything in this movie is either underdeveloped, unnecessary, or just plain stupid. The choices that they made every step of the way in this production were, in hindsight, ludicrous. The plot was so full of holes, most of the main characters were pointless to the story, the added "humor" was not all that funny, and did I witness Amanda Waller shooting all of her paper-pushing team members in the head for no good goddamn reason at all? Seriously, if she trusted them to work for her and get her through this catastrophe in the first place, why did they have to be plugged just as they were being rescued? Ugh... I'm supposed to be wrapping this shit up, but more crap just keeps extending it.

Fuck it. I'm done.

Suicide Squad is not as fucking terrible as Batman V. Superman (what is, really?), but it's no Guardians of the Galaxy, or The Avengers, or Ant-Man, or Iron Man, or Thor, or Captain America: Civil War.... You see where I'm going with this. I give it 3.5 out of 11 Stars of Suicidal Tendencies, and advise you all to either skip it, or wait till the Riff Trax comes out for it.

WOW! Aren't I just WACKY!?!?!?!?!?! I am THE GREATEST METHOD ACTOR ALIVE! No, I don't know what "method acting" really means, but that don't stop me from being THE BEST! I sent dead flowers to the hot girl who played my girlfriend in this movie! I mean, HOLY SHIT! DEAD FLOWERS! My god I'm amazing!

You notice all those tats on my Joker? Dude, that was totally me! I came up with that decision. I mean, The Joker's dangerous, and DAMAGED, so doesn't it make sense to have the word "damaged" tattooed on his forehead? I mean, how the hell else would people even KNOW?!

Did I mention that I am a method actor? I am the best! Leo's not a method actor! HE never played the Joker... I DID though! And I methoded the SHIT out of the role! Woo-hoo! I'm CRAZY!... But only when I play the Joker. For reals. I'm that good.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. But I am the best actor ever. I am the greatest Joker ever! Although Warner Brothers tricked me into playing this role, and I am angry about that, but I acted the FUCK out of it. I am so awesome. And WACKY! HEE-HEE!

Shit, dawg, I once started up my own "suicide squad," but I think it was a little bit different-like than what this movie makes them out to be.

See, this one time, I was really jonsin' for, well, for the sake of the kiddies I'll say "a Coca-Cola." And I needed a Coca-Cola BAD, yo. But my dealer... Um, my soft drink distributor was closed for the day. But I NEEDED it. So I gathered together a group of Coca-Cola-heads that live in an alley near my soft drink distributor, I gave them all bats, bricks, tire-irons, and all that shit, and told them that there was tons of free Coca-Cola in that building with the iron bars over the windows, and the reinforced steel door.

Those Coca-Cola heads all went through those mothafuckin' doors and windows like ripe tomatoes in a blender! That was mostly thanks to my soft drink distributor's habit of setting up booby-traps with circular saws and flayling katanas to go off on anybody who doesn't knock before entering. After all those bodies clogged up the apparatuses of death, I then stepped over the Cuisinarted corpses as best I could (I still got stains on my new Chucks, dammit!) and raided my soft drink distributor's "fridge" for some of that tasty Coca-Cola. Always Coca-Cola. Man, with enough Coca-Cola I could totally teach this bitch ass planet to sing in perfect harmony!

I just drank some more Coca-Cola, and I totally forgot what I was reviewin'.... If it was my Coca-Cola, then I give it 2 fucking awesome thumbs up, G!