Mad Reviews: Suicide Squad

Let me start off with this: I'm a huge fan of DC, mostly Batman. His baddies are among the greatest villains in comic-book lore. So seeing these villains team up in a movie had gotten my fanboy-self quite excited. That being said, keep this in mind when I review a movie: I put my fanboyism aside, and I judge the movie as a movie itself. While I can still enjoy a movie like this as a piece of fan-service, this needs to be a good movie first. If a well-shot, well-written, well-acted, and well-directed film can still bring out the comic-book loving manchild in me, then that's icing on the cake. Got it? Good.

With that said, what did I think of Suicide Squad? Well, the fanboy in me enjoyed it, but the film buff in me thought this was just like its female lead: a hot mess.

I remember feeling so underwhelmed when I saw this. My friends had seen this before me and had told me just how good it was and how much fun they had while watching it, and how I should ignore the negative reviews (26% on RT as of writing this) and just go and enjoy it. The problem is most of my friends are comic-book fans first, and moviegoers second, so I knew right away my opinion would differ from theirs. But I didn't think it would differ this badly! How does seeing your favourite DC baddies on screen make up for being such a poorly written, awfully edited, poorly paced, cliché-riddled load of bullshit? I hate to be that guy, but I think all the bad reviews were on to something. I wanted to see a film, not to have my fanboy boner jerked off!

Calm down, internet. I know I'm ranting here, but I didn't think this was completely bad. There are some positives to take from Suicide Squad, not a lot, but some good stuff is in this. So, before I dive into all the garbage this movie gave me, let me talk about the things I liked about it:

1) It's better than Batman v Superman

I'll get to that piece of shit another time, but yes, Suicide Squad is an improvement on that pile of garbage movie that came out in March. In this one, there's no cartoonish Jesse Eisenberg, and none of the characters' moms share a first name! So it's better, it's not saying much, but it's better.

2) Margot Robbie was perfect as Harley Quinn

I've been saying she's the perfect Harley since the moment she was cast, and she didn't disappoint. Whenever she was on screen, I did not see a performance of Harley Quinn, I saw Harley Quinn herself, and that's something that my 12 year-old self was pleased to watch. Seeing her in her underwear was good too... Oh wait, was that sexist? Eh who gives a shit.

3) It was nice to see Will Smith be Will Smith again

Will Smith used to be one of the most entertaining actors in Hollywood, until he got critical acclaim for playing Muhammad Ali. Since then, he's spent most of his time trying to shit out an Oscar. Don't get me wrong, I like that he's been challenging himself dramatically, but I've long yearned for the days when he was fun, charismatic and likeable. In Suicide Squad, Will Smith was (mostly) back to his old self again, he was having fun as Deadshot, and I was having fun watching him.

4) Jai Courtney

I'm only saying this because I think it's a miracle that Jai Courtney wasn't the shittiest thing about this movie. Yes, I can't believe I'm saying this, but there were aspects of Suicide Squad that were worse than Jai Courtney! Way to go, Jai! You're moving on up now!

That's it! Those were the only positives I took from this "film." Well... Maybe that part where El Diablo burnt 2 whole floors to a crisp too. But other than that, it's all downhill from here. Be very afraid.

Here's the first thing I noticed while watching this movie:

This is so frustrating to me. This movie has such a unique premise that we've never seen in Superhero movies before, but it has little to no originality in it whatsoever. This movie is about a group of bad guys who team up to stop even worse guys. These villains are brought together by government officials who forced them to do so, and getting devices planted in them that will kill them if they don't follow orders...

Wow, real fucking original there! Is Snake Plissken going to be joining this team? If he doesn't I'll be super pissed at this point!

Seriously, this movie has been gift wrapped for you to be made into something new and amazing, and you start off by using the most overused cliché in the fucking book? I'm shaking my head as I'm writing this.

What's next? Is one of these characters going to go rogue, and get killed to be made an example of?

*Watches Slipknot get killed*

OH COME ON!

Does this movie's story have to be so fucking predictable? Next thing you know, one these baddies on this team is going to turn out to be the real villain of the film that the Squad will fight against and...

*Enchantress breaks from the team and becomes the main villain*

Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me!

Can you guys at least give me something that hasn't been done to death?

With all of this overused bullshit, you might as well just end this movie with the villain shooting a beam into the sky and...

*Watches the climax*

OH MY GOD I WAS JUST JOKING, I DIDN'T WANT YOU TO ACTUALLY DO THAT YOU FUCKING MORONS!

Seriously, does every movie ever made have to have a giant fucking beam shot in the sky? I mean it's cool imagery, but Ghostbusters did this over 30 fucking years ago! The Avengers did this too and the cliché was already getting tired then! That moves me on to my next problem with this: It tried to be way too much like Marvel.

From the light-hearted tone, to the retro music soundtrack, to the group of rogues teaming up, down to the lame-ass forgettable villain. This movie is the DCCU's own lobotomized answer to Guardians of the Galaxy. The only difference is this schlock has an incoherent story, by-the-numbers character development, and no real interesting visuals or action sequences. What a fucking load.

Do you understand why this is so infuriating? This is a Superhero film in which the villains are the main focus. This is a completely unique premise for DC. You have the chance to create something new, fresh, exciting and masterful, and what do you do? You fall back on every piece of cliché storytelling you can find, and at the same time you pull off a half-assed attempt at ripping off your own fucking competitors! This had the chance to be something incredible, it really did, and it has become one of the most lazily-written blockbusters of the past 10 years! Fuck. You!

It doesn't help that this "film" is poorly edited too.

I don't know if this is David Ayer's doing or the studio's meddling, but the editing and story is all over the map. While I was watching this, it felt like there were entire scenes missing! We get full on introductions for Deadshot, Harley, Croc, Captain Boomerang and the like, but that O-Ren Ishii character just shows up in the plane out of nowhere. I was like "who the fuck is she?"

The same thing happens with Slipknot, who just shows up as they get together and dies 3 minutes later. What the fuck was the point of that? Were all the other cast members not expendable? Why the fuck would you bring in a new character out of nowhere, just to red-shirt him right away? It would've been better if, you know, we knew who the hell he was!

Onto the next problem I have with this movie: The character development is either non-existent or by-the-numbers. We get a glimpse of some of their backstories via Amanda Waller (a slightly less annoying Fish Mooney) reading their criminal files. This has to be one of the lamest ways to introduce characters ever. It's as if Joe Rogan was doing a tale of the tape and announcing all of the attributes to each member of the Squad. Yawn!

Way to go, DC. You go from introducing the Justice League via a fucking email, and now you introduce us to Suicide Squad via criminal background checks. Way to fucking go, you fucking uninspired hacks! What's next? Are you going to tease us on how much the Joker is involved and only give him minimal screen time?

*Joker has approximately 10 minutes of screen time*

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!

Well, to be fair, I'm actually glad he got such minimal screen time because Jared Leto's performance was absolutely awful! I never saw The Joker in this movie, I never saw a character being brought to life. All I saw was Jared Leto being Jared Leto. As a film buff, this pissed me off because Leto is actually a talented actor. As a Joker fanboy, this caused me to have nightmares where the Joker sings 30 Seconds to Mars songs! Gah! Cesar fucking Romero from the god damn fucking Adam West show was a better Joker than Leto! Fuck! What the fuck was with the Grillz in his mouth? Am I supposed to be scared by that? All I see when this "Joker" is on screen is Leto being like "Look at me! Look how awesome I am! Notice my acting! Notice my acting!" Fuck man he was terrible!

Well, at least there were no 30 Seconds to Mars songs being played on this wannabe-Dazed-and-Confused soundtrack.

That's another thing: What the hell was with all the songs being played in this movie? Within a 30-minute span, we get like 15 different songs being played. Songs like Paranoid by Black Sabbath, Without Me by Eminem, House of the Rising Sun by the Animals, and Fortunate Son by CCR appear in the movie and they're completely out of place! Don't get me wrong, I love all of these songs, but they should at least be used to compliment what we see on screen. Instead, it just sounds like I'm watching this movie while someone keeps kicking the jukebox at Hot Topic. Where the hell is Hans Zimmer when you need him? Oh, he was working on that new Nolan film... Gotcha.

I guess that brings me to my last problem with Suicide Squad: The best part of sitting through this whole thing was seeing the 1-minute teaser for Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk. That's brutal! When the most memorable part of the movie is the fucking trailer for a completely different movie, that's a problem!

Final thoughts: While this movie did have some enjoyable elements, the overall final product was a total clusterfuck. In due time, I might come around and possibly enjoy this movie as guilty pleasure fun. But that's the problem: I wanted a good film, not a guilty pleasure movie that I would lump in with Batman & Robin and Wild Wild West. In my opinion, DC now has 2 live-action bombs in one year, and even their animated version of The Killing Joke (while still pretty good) was a huge disappointment. I really liked Man of Steel, it had some problems but I thought it was a great way to kick off the DCCU. Unfortunately, BvS and now Suicide Squad have sunk this universe into a really big hole. A big hole that I don't think the Wonder Woman movie, nor even Ben Affleck's Batman movie can dig the DCCU out of.

I know a lot of people really like this movie, and I can definitely see why they do. But for me, this was not a good film. The pacing is off, some of the acting is bad (except for Margot Robbie and Will Smith), the story is cliché and predictable, the characters have no depth, the writing is poor and unmemorable, and the visuals are not interesting at all.

I know people who liked this film are going to say "What? Were your expecting something like The Dark Knight?" Well... Yes I was! This (and BvS) had potential to be just as amazing if not better than Nolan's Trilogy. This material was practically gift-wrapped for David Ayer to transform into something incredible, and instead we get this. All I can say is wasted potential. Absolutely wasted!

I know I'm going to get outright attacked by fans of this film. Because they've been attacking critics even before this movie came out.  Even some of my friends on Facebook commented "critics are full of shit, this was a good movie." One fan even went as far as to start a petition to shut down Rotten Tomatoes for giving this and BvS a low score! Are you fucking kidding me?

Apparently, critics have a bias and are being paid to give low ratings to DC movies... Hmm... Let's see here...

Yes, of course they hate DC... Oh wait!

Fans like that just make me fucking sick! They actually started a petition to shut down this website, and they had over 10000 votes before it got shut down. Seriously?

Listen up, fans: Critics are not always going to see movies the way you do, just like how you won't see movies the way critics do. Do you really have to go out of your way to try and ruin their livelihood just because they didn't like two fucking movies you did? Fuck right off! There's plenty of critically acclaimed movies I don't like (American Hustle and Birdman off the top of my head), and there's plenty of critically panned movies that I actually like (ex: Showgirls and Basic Instinct), but I never try to ruin these peoples' lives just because I disagree with them, I don't trash these people online just because they like a movie I don't like. Roger Ebert gave two thumbs down to both Die Hard and Kick-Ass, two of my all time favourites, but I never sent him death threats or tried to get him fired just because he gave bad reviews to movies I love. Granted, I troll my friends all the fucking time for stuff like this, but that's because they're my friends and that's how I am with them! What DC fans did with this petition is downright fucking petty and absolutely disgusting! Can you people really not stand the fact that some people (who you don't even fucking know, no less) have a different opinion than you? Guess what? We all have different opinions! If you don't like the movie, that's cool! If you do like the movie, that's cool too! You can all like and dislike whatever the hell you want. But for the love of fucking God, GROW THE FUCK UP AND BE FUCKING ADULTS!

I’m actually raging as I’m typing this. I know I’m going on about this a lot more than I should be, but my god was that petition ever childish! I can only hope that I’m not the only one who sees it this way. Shit like this is why I'm dreading the release of the next DC movie. On one hand, I’m afraid to like the next DC movie because I will then share a trait with people like this. On the other hand, I’m afraid to dislike it because it will lead to a fucking shitstorm of self-righteous assholes who tell me how awful of a person I am. It’s ridiculous.

Just note: I'm not lashing out at all DC fans, I know some fans of this movie who were respectful of my opinion and the low RT score. I'm just lashing out at the ones who created the petition and can't say they like the movie without saying "Fuck the critics." No, don't fuck the critics, fuck you.

One more thing before I give my rating: I just know that they’re going to release an extended edition when it comes out on Blu-Ray, and I’m not going to be buying it. It seems that Warner Bros wants to make huge profits at not only the box office, but on home video sales as well. How do they do that? Well, in my opinion, they meddle with the final product to the point where it becomes non-cohesive, then they allow the real version to be released on Blu-Ray. People who liked the theatrical cut will buy this and think it’s even better, and people who didn’t like the theatrical cut will be prompted to buy the extended cut. It won’t matter if they change their minds on the movie or not, because Warner Bros still got their money! It’s a brilliant marketing ploy, I'll give them that, but I want no part of it.

Anyways, since there are some good parts about this movie, it’s enough for me not to give it an outright awful rating. This letdown gets 4.2 out of 10 from me. It’s not a total piece of crap, but it’s still pretty damn bad.

If you disagree with that rating, feel free to post below. I’d tell you to be civil about it, but that would be asking too much.

I’m out…

- Mad Mike of Metal

Mad Lists: Top 10 Favourite Comic Book Movies

Welcome back to Mad Lists! With Suicide Squad coming out this weekend, I thought I'd give you a treat and name my top 10 favourite comic-book adaptations of all time!

Note: I've also counted in graphic novel adaptations for this list as well, just incase you lose your shit over a graphic novel movie being on a comic book movie list. What I'm saying is don't be a little bitch.

Anyways, here goes...

10. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Spoiler here, this is the only MCU movie on this list. Does that mean I hate the MCU? Far from it! I do think there are better superhero movies out there, but I do find a lot of their movies enjoyable, and The Winter Soldier is the most enjoyable of them all. This movie puts Captain America up against both SHIELD and the mysterious Winter Soldier. There are twists and turns throughout, things happen that you don't see coming and it always keeps you guessing. The action is done superbly and the overall tone is very serious and borderline gritty. This almost feels like a Bourne movie with Marvel Characters. The Captain America movies happen to be my favourite in the MCU, and this brilliant sequel lands at number 10.

9. V for Vendetta

This is one is a bit of a head scratcher for some, but I love this movie. This might be the first time a comic-book/graphic novel adaptation caused a split between critics and fans (before it started happening with every DC movie coming out lately). It has a 73% score on RT, which is solid, but a whopping 90% fan rating on that site, with many praising it as an instant classic. I'm one of those fans, as Alan Moore's classic graphic novel is brought to life by the Wachowskis, in their last truly great film. V for Vendetta is a complex, brilliantly written, character-driven dystopian epic, brought together by great performances by Natalie Portman as Evey, and Hugo Weaving as Anonymo... I mean V. It's commentary on the political landscape has only gotten more relevant with time, especially with this joke of an election coming up in the States. Anyways, if you haven't seen this movie yet, for the love of Fawkes watch it now! Don't wait till November 5th!

8. X-Men: Days of Future Past

Next to Terminator 2, this is my favourite movie about an indestructible badass with a metal skeleton travelling back trough time to stop a shape-shifting assassin from killing someone important and thus damning the human race to be obliterated by machines. I just blew your mind, didn't I? Alright, even though this movie has obvious parallels to my favourite movie of all time, I still love it to death! We get to see the new cast of characters from Matthew Vaughn's First Class team up with our favourite characters from the original trilogy. Hugh Jackman as always killed it as Wolverine, Jennifer Lawrence was at her best as Mystique, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were awesome as Xavier and Magneto, and seeing Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen as their older counterparts was a real treat. It was almost as if this was a passing of the torch from the older X-Men to the newer X-Men, and never is it more prominent than when McAvoy and Stewart share an amazing scene together. Oh, and that Quicksilver sequence doesn't hurt either...

7. Kingsman: The Secret Service

Betcha didn't think this one was a comic book adaptation, did you? Yep, this obscure Marvel property was brought to life by the great Matthew Vaughn just last year. Are you a fan the pre-Daniel Craig James Bond movies? Did you like Austin Powers but wish it was R-Rated? Do you want to see Colin Firth go on a killing spree in the Westboro Baptist Church while listening to fucking Free Bird? Do you want to save the world and be rewarded with butt stuff from a Norwegian Princess? If you answered "yes" then this is the movie for you! In an era where all spy movies have gotten grittier and more serious (ie The Craig Bond, Bourne, etc), Kingsman brought a nice change of pace to the genre while bringing back the elements that made spy movies so beloved in the first place. This movie is kickass, fun, charming, exquisite, and as said before, it gives us all the butt stuff! Manners maketh man!

6. X-Men: First Class

Ok, I promise I don't have a boner for Matthew Vaughn... Although can you blame me if I did? His movies are fantastic and this is another one of the his many masterpieces! With X-Men First Class, Vaughn manages not only to resurrect a dead franchise Nolan-style, he manages to move the franchise forward and set up a whole new series of X-Men movies. With the Cold War as it's backdrop, First Class introduces us the group of characters before they grew to be the people we loved in the original trilogy. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are perfectly cast as Xavier and Magneto, and a then unknown Jennifer Lawrence killed it as Raven, and seeing these young mutants brought together like this is fantastic. Add in one of the greatest cameos of all time, and Kevin Bacon as the villain, and you got yourself one hell of a movie!

5. Kick-Ass

Alright, alright, I promise, this is the last Matthew Vaughn movie you'll be seeing on here. What can I say, this guy knows how to make good films. I remember seeing this in theatres 6 years ago, and I was instantly blown away by it. It brilliantly satirizes the superhero genre and gives us some clever social commentary on movie violence. A lot of people were put off by an 11 year-old girl senselessly killing tons of people in this movie, but I think that is the point Vaughn was trying to make: Why is it so bad to see a young girl commit senseless murders, but watching a full grown male committing the same act is not met with the same type of outrage? Murder is murder no matter who's doing it, right? Well maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but given the director, I'm sure there was a method to all this madness. Oh, and Nicolas Cage was awesome!

4. Deadpool

If Kick-Ass gave birth to Superhero satires, then Deadpool perfected it. This movie is only six months old and I already believe this will go down as one of the greatest superhero movies and one of the greatest comedies of all time! One thing that warms my heart about this movie is how it was made. This script was on Fox's desk for years, and still wasn't getting green-lit even after the X-Men franchise was brought back to life. Finally, after test footage was conveniently leaked and fans went nuts, Fox finally realized they were sitting on a gold mine and allowed this movie to happen. It's the kind of story you don't see nowadays, especially for comic-book movies because studios throw their money at these properties like I throw my money at strippers (speaking of strippers, this movie has the best Stan Lee cameo ever). Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool has to be singlehandedly the best casting job in the history of superhero movies, it resurrected his career the same way Iron Man resurrected Robert Downey Jr., and I'm pretty sure it's Deadpool playing Ryan Reynolds in real life and not the other way around. This movie knocked the superhero genre on its ass, and then tea-bagged it. It's one of the funniest, most well-acted, most action-packed comic-book films ever made. I feel like it will only get better with time.

3. The Crow

This one's a shocker! I wonder if anyone even remembers this movie. Because it seems to have been all but forgotten about in this era of having comic-book movies come out every month. This stylistic revenge movie was a childhood favourite of mine, and it still holds up to me as an adult. Everything about this movie is bleak and gothic, from the lighting to the costumes, the tone and the writing, the set design, the music, etc. It was a gritty comic book flick before gritty comic book flicks were a thing. As you know I'm a sucker for originals, and this was the first hard R-Rated comic-book movie, before Blade or Deadpool or Kick-Ass. This is what started it all. Seeing Brandon Lee put on the performance of a lifetime still makes me choke up, knowing that he died tragically on the set of this film. His portrayal of Eric Draven will go down as one of the greatest anti-hero performances in the history of cinema. Alright, enough about this one, if you haven't seen it yet, check it out. You won't be sorry!




2. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Aww, did you really think I'd be leaving Batman off this list? Hell fucking no! I'm saving the best for 2nd last! Batman: The Animated Series was a huge hit in the early 90s, and Warner Bros decided to capitalize on its success by releasing a feature film based on the series. The result? The greatest animated movie ever made in my opinion. Yes, I mean it. Everything from the animation, to the story, the voice acting (brought to you by Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist, Dana Delany) is perfect. Like some of the best episodes of TAS, this movie brought us something new to the Batman lore all while remaining faithful to the character. Ok do I need to say anything more? Check this one out if you haven't yet.

And now, my number 1 favourite comic book movie of all time is...

1. The Dark Knight Trilogy

Of course it's this one! I know this is a slight cheat by putting 3 movies in one spot, but I love all 3 films so much that I had to put them all on here somehow. Something you have to know about me is that I view movies as a film buff first, and a fanboy second. This means that when I watch a superhero film (or anything else based on intellectual property), I put my fanboyism aside to judge the movie on its own. Thankfully, this magnificent trilogy helmed by the great Christopher Nolan manages to satisfy both the film buff side of me AND the Batman fanboy side of me. I can watch these films to study all of the subtexts and cinematography and editing and such, all while the inner-manchild who loves watching Batman fight off Scarecrow, The Joker and Bane can enjoy this movie at the same time.

Batman Begins uses Year One as a backdrop to give us a fresh new take on the character, and give us the on-screen origin story we had always wanted. Liam Neeson as Ra's Al Ghul and Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow give us amazing villain portrayals for Batman to go up against. Christian Bale is amazing as Batman in this film, and it sets up the character perfectly for future crimefighting adventures.

The Dark Knight... Well, what else can I say about this one? It's the best of the bunch and Ledger's Joker will go down as the greatest movie villain of all time.

The Dark Knight Rises, while the weakest of the trilogy, is still a grand masterpiece of a film. Tom Hardy's Bane is an amazing villain, and challenges Batman in ways that no other villain has. It ends the trilogy on a beautiful note and gives us a fucking kick-ass film in the process.

Seriously, these movies are not only the greatest superhero movies ever made, their some of the greatest films of all time in general. I wouldn't be surprised if The Dark Knight made appearances on future AFI top 100 lists. What else can I really say? This is one of the greatest trilogies ever made, and they are my absolute favourite comic-book films of all time. Thank you Nolan, thank you Bale, thank you Neeson, thank you Ledger, thank you Hardy, and thank you Zimmer!

Did you enjoy this list? Or am I full of shit? Tell me in the comments below...