Suicide Squad (2016) (1 Viewer)

[steve jaros]

Saw this today.

Pros: Mildly entertaining. Will Smith had some good one-liners in his banter.

Cons: SFX and action sequences were generic, villains were underwhelming, worst of all, almost zero chemistry among the 'squad'.

Would recommend as an HBO view six months from now.

 

[Tino]

I saw the movie last night in an IMAX 3D presentation.

There is a mid-credits scene so be sure to stick around until then.

Technical stuff first: looked great on an IMAX screen, and the 3D conversion was good, and at times, very good. I think DC has been a little bolder with their use of 3D compared to Marvel.

As to the movie itself, without wanting to spoil it for anyone, I didn't love it. It felt disjointed and messy to me. The pacing felt strange, almost as if the movie jumps from the first act to the third without bothering to have a second act. Tonally, it was a mess. The story is a pretty conventional gathering of the heroes origin type story, and I wish that the filmmakers had shown a greater sense of daring in their choices. All of the marketing was about how this was the most unconventional group ever, and yet, it's portrayed in a very conventional manner. It didn't feel genuinely edgy; it felt like it was pretending to be.

I thought Will Smith was fantastic, though he wasn't doing much more than being Will Smith, it's been a long time since I've seen him having fun like this onscreen. Hands down, he was the best thing about this movie to me. I would happily watch a solo movie with this character. I also really liked the Diablo character - I don't think I know him from the comic books but I liked all of his scenes.

I did not enjoy the portrayal of Harley Quinn or the Joker; it felt like bad cosplay. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but I thought they really missed the mark with those two.

The climactic finale felt oddly similar to the ending of the new Ghostbusters movie.

It was very hard for me to tell if there was a good movie in there that just got lost along the way due to studio interference (which seemed to be what happened with BvS) or if it never had the goods. Most of the characters get very little development. The villain was lame. And before the "heroes" arrive at the city where the final battle will take place, we've never heard of this city and only see it portrayed as a disaster zone - because the filmmakers don't characterize the city or people that are supposedly in danger, I never felt the weight of the threat or any motivation to feel something. Characters talk about the stakes being high, but nothing happens to make me feel that.

Spoiler

I loved every Batman/Bruce Wayne moment in the movie. The flashback showing how he arrested Will Smith was a great scene, and probably the best moment of the movie for me. I felt something during that moment, which is more than I can say for the rest of the movie.

On the whole, I think this is the weakest of the three DC movies. It has individual elements that are enjoyable but never quite comes together as a whole. It often felt more like a long trailer than an actual movie to me. I didn't hate it, and I'll probably see it again when the disc came out. But I think on the whole, there was a lot of wasted potential here.

Josh your reaction it pretty much exactly the same as mine after seeing it today. You just saved me a lot of typing.

I would give it ️️Out of ️️️️

 

[Tino]

Ya think? I say it drops close to 70%

From Deadline

"Looks like Sausage Party‘s festivities are cutting into Suicide Squad‘s business. While that film will pull in just over $13M for Friday, industry estimates have it at a $44M. If that figure holds, that’s a 67% drop, which is 2% higher than Batman v. Superman‘s -69% sophomore weekend drop. I hear matinees on Suicide Squad are down 93% and that doesn’t account for the $20.5M business the DC villain film did on Thursday"

 

[Malcolm R]

Off nearly 80% Friday-to-Friday. Lands at #2 on Friday behind Sausage Party.

 

[Brandon Conway]

The Friday-to-Friday drop is somewhat pointless to discuss for these huge front loaded films with large opening Thursday night. Even Captain America: Civil War dropped 74% "Friday" to Friday.

Even if SS drops around the 67% predicted for the overall weekend it'll be around $450m WW box office in 10 days, which when the project was announced was what I figured the end of its run would be around. It will likely finish in the $600-700m range, which is a good return on a $175m budget. (Compare it to other 2016 releases with $150-175m budgets like X-Men: Apocalypse, Ghostbusters, Star Trek Beyond, Legend of Tarzan, etc. and it's nothing but a great result for WB/DC).

What this says more than anything is that people want to see the DC characters on the big screen. The comparison isn't exactly the same because of the era differences, but $1.4-6b in WW box office for BvS and SS is about double what the #2 and #3 MCU films, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2, made at the WW box office, which was $887m. (The combined budgets of those was $350m vs the combined budgets of BvS and SS of $435m). Even if one compares it to the #3 and #4 MCU film of Iron Man 2 and Thor, those two had a WW box office of $1.07b on a combined $350m of budgets.

The "problem" for WB is that while SS is hitting about where their pre-year predictions were of $500m, (in fact, even a tad better), BvS was expected to bring in $300m more. This is why you're reading the false narratives that SS needs $800m to "break even", which is nonsense. What that means is if SS could get to $800m (it won't) it would allow the WB suits to achieve their expectations of $1.7b WW they expected from the two films combined.

In any case, the reason they have such lofty expectations is because the know that if DC can deliver a critically admired and audience pleasing film (WW?) it may really smash some records.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Also, a solid article that shows in graph form which trying to spin SS as anything but a box office success is foolhardy.

http://comicandscreen.blogspot.com/2016/08/box-office-success-suicide-squad-and.html

 

[Tino]

Of course it's a success. Just like BVS was.

 

[Bryan^H]

I wonder what the promotional budget for this film was? The average is half the production budget , but the way this movie has been advertised I'd say it might be a lot more than that.

 

[Tino]

Promotional budgets for these type films are usually EQUAL to their production budgets. That's why they usually have to gross 2-3 their production budget to break even.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Promotional budgets for these type films are usually EQUAL to their production budgets. That's why they usually have to gross 2-3 their production budget to break even.

Also: the studio doesn't get every dollar earned by the movie. It's not like a movie that sells $100 million in tickets means the studio gets $100 million...

 

[Michael Henry]

I was so disappointed in the movie...

Suicide Squad SHOULD have been DC's Guardians of the Galaxy - SS just had no "fun" to it like GOTG...

I love rewriting bad movies, so here's my take.

The Joker is in jail from getting caught by Batman and Amanda Waller is in constant contact (ala Hannibal Lecter) who she comes to for advice about putting the squad together etc...I can see some really good interactions here with how crazy The Joker is...

Meanwhile she put the squad together to go after a bad guy (doesn't matter who because the bad guy ends up being Amanda Waller)...

In the end she goes down, the squad is victorious after a fun fight between her and her goons, and Harley Quinn helps The Joker escape - setting up the next Batman movie...

Come on Hollywood, it writes itself at this point.

 

[mattCR]

I've loved a lot of films that were not box office successes. But this is just not a good film. Whether it is a giant box office winner or a flop is meaningless. I've loved some of both.

This film is really thin on story and the squad chemistry is pretty poor. Really underwhelmed. I'd give it a C

 

[dana martin]

OK my Fanboy rant

so i finally got to see this, my take, well unlike many that have had many complaints, about WB's DCEU films, here goes, read a damn comic book people and see if something dark isn't going on all the time, its about saving the world, not always bright, not always funny, the WB films them selves have set them apart from Marvel, and i am ok with both interpretations. if you came out of this thinking Amanda Waller is a mean bitch, well then they got that right, Harley is nutty as a Christmas fruit cake, they got that right, Deadshot only has one redeeming quality that he loves his daughter, ditto. all pretty spot on to the comics.

Maybe what will end up happening is that every time the film that WB changes gets released for home viewing we will get the directors cut instead, and it will fix the issues that shouldn't have been there, but someone else thought needed to be edited out.

and for all the complaints, hey we could go back and see how well Fox has done with Fantastic Four, some things are just going to be harder to translate. If DC/WB was smart, they would quit hiring writers who know absolutely nothing of the characters to hammer out a screen treatment of these films. And instead go to the source material, Batman alone has twenty great graphic novels that could fit into this universe, that same could be said for the rest. Without too much tinkering, 300 and Watchman prove the point follow the source material.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I thought it was okay. I'm a little disappointed with the villain premise. IMO, that's where they short-changed this film. I doubt I'll see it again in a movie theater. I will buy the Blu-ray though.

Okay, I lied. I did see it again, but it wasn't planned. I was on my retirement relocation scouting trip in Boise, Idaho and decided to check out their IMAX theater. This film was showing so I decided to catch a matinee 3-D showing of it. I actually liked the film more after this second showing. The film is still a disappointment due to the weak villain premise, but the film was more enjoyable to me for some reason.

 

[Jacinto]

I just saw Suicide Squad yesterday with the two of my kids that are age-appropriate. Count me as disappointed like many here. I loved the tone, I loved the style, I loved most of the characterizations, but the overall story and the villain were just plain weak. In certain ways it felt like I was watching X-Men Apocalypse again: Rag-tag, hastily assembled group goes off to try to stop an incredibly powerful villain whose specific powers are frustratingly vague and insufferably slow only when it serves the story and who wants to destroy the world because, well, REVENGE, I guess.

If Enchantress' magical brother and magical "machine" can both be destroyed by explosions, why do we even need the Suicide Squad? If you were a ridiculously powerful evil sorceress, would you waste your time getting in a sword fight? If you were assembling a powerful team to fight evil metahumans – possibly to prevent a Superman-powerful meta from taking over the world – would you recruit the crazy chick with a baseball bat and no powers or military training? Be honest, and answer that from a strategic POV, not as somebody who wants to fantasize about Harley's short shorts after watching the movie.

I had some fun and I was entertained throughout, but I found the story to be tired, lazy, and sloppy.

 

[Nigel P]

That made me think of Hawkeye in Age of Ultron. "The city is flying ... we're fighting an army of robots ... and I have a bow and arrow, None of this makes sense."

 

[dpippel]

Warner Bros. announced an extended cut of Suicide Squad today. Here's the trailer:



More info:

http://comicbook.com/2016/10/05/suicide-squad-extended-cut-announcement-trailer-released/

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Warner Bros. announced an extended cut of Suicide Squad today. Here's the trailer:



More info:

http://comicbook.com/2016/10/05/suicide-squad-extended-cut-announcement-trailer-released/

That's interesting, if only because the studio and filmmakers were so vehement earlier in the year that there would not be an extended version of this particular title. Unlike Batman v Superman, which had its extended version announced even before the theatrical version opened in theaters, when Suicide Squad opened the filmmakers and studios stated that that would not be the case with SS. Wonder what changed their mind.

 

[dpippel]

My guess is that they're simply trying to generate as much revenue from the production as possible.

 

[George_W_K]

The majority of the Batman v Superman Ultimate Cut additions filled out the story and weren't really unnecessary. I hope this Extended Cut of Suicide Squad goes that route and not just filler scenes that should've been deleted.