I saw this film three times. I get a lot of the criticism but also some of the positives. I mostly liked it, though I did have issues with it.
Enchantress was the weakest link. I wish they had gone with a stronger, older actress like Charlize Theron, but if you had gotten Theron it would've likely overshadowed Margot Robbie. I thought the Enchantress actress was too young to play a scientist. She wasn't terrible, but still hinging so much of the film on her and her relationship with Rick Flagg, I think that was a mistake. And I wish there had been a better motivation and explanation for how she was going to destroy the world. I thought Enchantress was too powerful for the Squad to go against. None of them, on paper, had the ability to stop her, until we did see what Diablo really could do; however there was no sign that Waller even knew that Diablo could do that, or that he was more than what he seemed.
I also thought the dancing stuff Enchantress was doing was silly, perhaps unintentionally silly. And her fighting the Squad before pulling back and using magic to disarm all them made no sense. I mean why waste time like that? It was just to add more action to the film without being organic to the character. I also found it a little hard to swallow that the Squad was so worthy that Enchantress decided to spare them and wanted them to serve her. Why not just turn them into zombies to accomplish that?
I did like her look though. I thought the production and FX there was mostly good. I did like how Incubus was rendered for the most part and wish that Apocalypse had been that size for the X-Men film. And while I generally thought Incubus was cool, it seemed odd that they used a relatively unknown actor to play that role. Common (who I thought would be Tattooed Man) was wasted and seems to me that he should have played Incubus, instead of wasted as a throwaway character Monster T. Granted, I did like the name Monster T. I would like to have seen more with him and his relationship with the Joker. Was he a rival, a subordinate, partner, or what?
Will Smith was surprisingly one of the best things about the film. At first it was hard for me to buy him as Deadshot. I thought his civilian outfit looked odd, like out of time, a holdover from the 70s. And I was thinking early on that the film could've easily switched roles between Deadshot and Rick Flagg. That being said, Smith was good, I wound up liking him, and he had the biggest bad ass moment in the film when he took out all those zombies.
Conversely, Margot Robbie didn't wow me. I was expecting that she and Captain Boomerang would be the breakout characters, but I felt Robbie's performance was uneven and that she didn't quite own the role. Though at times she got the accent and the attitude right, but it was hard for me to believe she was Harley. I also didn't like how Waller initially described her as being crazier and more fearless than the Joker. I felt that unnecessary and wrong to attempt to prop up Harley that way. No one should be crazier than Joker in the DC universe period. After reading about some of the behind-the-scenes problems I think the studio interfered too much and cut out too much from the film regarding Harley and Joker and their abusive relationship, perhaps to make a more casual audience friendly film, and Harley suffered as a result. Two of my favorite scenes with Harley was when she was looking through her old costumes, with a very appropriate Eminem song playing in the background, and when she told Diablo to own what he did. I thought those showed her potential as a character, the manic glee but also the darkness. And I really loved seeing Robbie in the traditional Harley costume in that flashback. And overall I think Robbie did look like the New 52 version of the character a great deal. So physically she nailed it, and sometimes acting wise she got it. Though from what was presented in this film I don't think it was strong enough to support the pre-movie buzz of a Harley Quinn solo film.
Boomerang was also a disappointment. I was hoping for a rude, crude, racist, sexist, cowardly character. There were glimmers but the film soft pedaled it. When Flagg released them in the bar and Boomerang bounced I really liked that because that felt right for his character. But it was inexplicable why he came back like a scene later, and no one questioned him on it.
I can accept that both Diablo and Killer Croc were stereotypically depicted, however I think they did a good job showing that Diablo had some complexity and Jay Hernandez did a good job making us care about Diablo, though I thought they should've had him add the ink after the tragedy instead of before. I liked the makeup for Killer Croc but he didn't get much to do, and it seems like the bomb under the flooded tunnel was added in there just to give him something to do. He needed more screen time for me to buy him as the 'urban, hood, hip-hop' kind of character. I didn't find him that offensive, but more so under cooked. Katana also didn't get enough time. She had a cool look, but the film didn't really do much with her mystical sword despite fighting a mystical enemy. I wouldn't mind if Slipknot had gotten a couple lines of dialogue but I wasn't mad about it because I was thinking that him and Diablo would be the most expendable when I first saw the lineup.
I'm iffy on Amanda Waller. First Viola Davis was a great choice. However she played her so cold, so unblinking it was hard to get into her at first. Plus she felt a bit more villainous to me than I was expecting. Sure Waller is ruthless, but she is a patriot and is doing things for what she perceives the greater good. Here it felt a bit different. But that being said, after watching the film for the third time I read New Suicide Squad Volume 3 and that depiction of Waller was pretty similar so my 'issues' were born from my mis-perception perhaps of the movie Waller not quite being true to the comics. The movie's Waller reminded me a bit of Arrow's take on the character. I also wonder why Waller, or this Waller, relies on generally powerful white men, including Bruce Wayne, in order to operate. Perhaps she uses the government to cover her plans, but still it stuck out to me that she derived her power from white men so her badassness was conditioned on white support; I guess its no different than how she has always been, but it did just stick out to me.
I was also iffy on Rick Flagg. I didn't think Kinnaman (sp) was the best choice for Flagg when I heard he got the role. There's something oily about him that didn't square with the All-American kind of character I thought Flagg was. And when I heard Scott Eastwood was going to be in the film I thought he would've worked better as Flagg. But now after seeing the film I was okay with Flagg. He and his relationship didn't get enough focus but he did try to sell it. I also liked Flagg and Deadshot's relationship.
The backup team. I get why they are there. More expendable characters, but if you got this team it reduces the Squad's importance. The Squad should only have been there for a truly desperate situation. I mean the whole point was to have a covert Taskforce X that does dirty, secret stuff that the government can disavow, so why send them into Midway City? If CNN was on hand for Doomsday in Batman v. Superman, wouldn't they be on hand for Midway City? And is it possible that CNN or another media outlet would catch some glimpse of the Squad? And where was Batman, Flash, or other heroes to take on Enchantress? She was way too powerful for the Squad to take on, especially in there first movie. One of the things that I think made Deadpool work was that the stakes were relatively small. And it was very simple to understand. A guy is trying to save the woman he loves from the man who turned him into a monster. Simple.
To me, Suicide Squad should've had a lower level villain to face, in terms of power, and not a world ending threat. Because now where do you go after that?
All that being said, like I said before, I did like this film, even if it doesn't seem like I did. I thought the costuming was good across the board. I also think Squad has one of the best-if not the best-comic book movie soundtrack. Hopefully Marvel will also take note. I also liked the crooked Belle Reve security guard. The first time I watched the film I thought it was a mistake not to have Deadshot get the revenge he promised on the dude, but on subsequent viewings I liked the guy more and am okay he wasn't killed. He was often the boorish kind of character Captain Boomerang should have been.
I also liked the Joker. I can accept the criticism that he was barely in the film. But from what I saw I liked for the most part. He felt more 'real' to me than any other live-action Joker. I liked his style, and his performance because that's what it was. The Joker is a performer and that worked for me. Like Jack Nicholson's version once described himself as a homicidal artist, I got that sense from Leto's Joker. We didn't see enough of it, and the reedits mangled his relationship with Harley-the studio seeming reluctant to actually let these villains-including the Joker-actually be bad. Leto's Joker fit Affleck's Batman. So I'm looking forward to seeing those two go at it, but I would really like it if it was a R-rated film. Perhaps even another take on The Killing Joke, but better than the recent animated film.
