Bad art happens all the time. At least the bad art people usually complain about. Radio has crappy songs playing in rotation, a lot of TV is unwatchable, and many of the books on bestseller lists are probably better used as doorstops than titillation for the mind. And just think, this is supposedly the “best” stuff someone decided to put money behind to publish and produce.
Because “bad” can mean a lot of things. It can be awful. It can be interesting. And bad can be fun. But the worst type of bad is something that’s unsure of itself and hollow. Some of what are considered the worst works of art are still appreciated for having an artistic vision. They might not work for one reason or the other, but at least it tried to say or do something. The inverse is a work that doubts its own meaning or substance that’s patched together like Frankenstein’s monster in hopes of pleasing a focus group and still fails miserably.
We see this all the time in politics. There’s a tragic nobility in doing what one thinks is right, aiming for greatness, and coming up short, instead of being someone like Mitt Romney and basing your support of abortion rights, health care law, and any other important issue on which way the wind is blowing.
The latest attempt by Warner Bros. to get their D.C. cinematic universe going, David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, is a sometimes enjoyable mess that’s been butchered in the editing room. Reacting to the negative criticism to Batman v Superman, the suits at the studio decided to patch together a film that’s more a two-hour music video than a cohesive narrative. At the same time, the film has raised some interesting questions about sexism, and the ratings system in Hollywood.
When the early reviews for Suicide Squad started filtering in, I asked a friend who’s an anime and superhero addict whether she still wanted to go see it. Her response: “I wanna see this dumpster fire.” I don’t know if I would call it that, but it’s definitely a severely disjointed film that pulls its punches while trying to be Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool, instead of trying to go its own way.
Suicide Squad begins in the days following Batman v Superman. The aftermath of those events has destabilized the world. Nations are searching for their own “metahumans” to use as weapons of mass destruction. Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), a government official in the A.R.G.U.S. organization that has the Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) on the payroll, proposes using the detainees in the Belle Reve prison to confront any supernatural threat. The resulting Task Force X is a suicide squad of the “worst of the worst,” who are mostly B and C-list Batman villains. Under the threat of death if they misbehave and favorable treatment if they succeed, the team is sent to confront a giant swirling combo of light and trash in the sky, that’s turned the people of Midway City —the home of Hawkman— into sorta-zombies, with the titular Suicide Squad giving the government plausible deniability if and when things go to shit.
David Ayer made his biggest break writing Training Day, and most of his work has a gritty edge that can be seen in the World War II tank movie Fury or a police drama like End of Watch. But that sort of tendency towards gruesomeness is neutered and sanitized in Suicide Squad. It’s a movie that tries to exude attitude and style, but feels like a poser that stole their parents credit card to raid Hot Topic.
It’s also a film about bad guys that’s too afraid to let their bad guys be bad. The most memorable characters in the film are softened a bit from the source material. Deadshot (Will Smith), an assassin with a code who wants to prove himself to his daughter (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon), is made into a much more heroic figure. The relationship between Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and The Joker (Jared Leto) is made more into a whacked out love affair, instead of the abusive and destructive relationship it’s been since it’s origin in Batman: The Animated Series. It’s a love based on torturing your former psychiatrist until the point of mental breakdown is romantic. Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller is a morally ambiguous character doing something extreme because she thinks it’s the right thing to do for the situation. So, basically, a variation of her character from How to Get Away with Murder.
Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and his Navy SEALs are in charge of the team. Flag is in love with Dr. June Moone, who unfortunately has been possessed by the Enchantress, and sees the mission as a way to free her. Katana (Karen Fukuhara) is Flag’s bodyguard, and wields a sword capable of taking souls. El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is a former gang-banger with a tragic past and the power to burn things. Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) has a skin condition that makes him look like a reptile, so he’s decided to behave like one. And Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) is a mouthy scumbag meant as comic relief that kills people with boomerangs. None of this really stands out all that much, and feels like redone and tired story cliches.
Moreover, the editing of this movie is atrocious. The first act is a combination of music video and montages, where the soundtrack’s music cues and classic rock are meant to punctuate the emotion of the scenes —“Fortunate Son,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Sympathy For The Devil,” and “Spirit In The Sky” are among the tracks used. But it just doesn’t work, because there’s not really anything of substance to punctuate. There’s not one action set piece in this film that’s memorable. When one gets to the end, if you’ve seen one group of faceless mooks get blasted down, you’ve seen ‘em all. And to top it off, this has some AWFUL effects. The bits and characters that are the most tantalizing, for example The Joker and Batman (Ben Affleck), are either misused, are tangential and shoehorned in, or done in ways that make absolutely no sense.
This is something where one wonders how in the hell they screwed this up. The basic formula has been done since at least The Dirty Dozen. It’s a better movie than Batman v Superman, and there are moments where the inherent fun of the concept and characters bleed through. But it’s still all a mess.
A source with knowledge of events says Warners executives, nervous from the start, grew more anxious after they were blindsided and deeply rattled by the tepid response to BvS. "Kevin was really pissed about damage to the brand," says one executive close to the studio. A key concern for Warners executives was that Suicide Squad didn't deliver on the fun, edgy tone promised in the strong teaser trailer for the film. So while Ayer pursued his original vision, Warners set about working on a different cut, with an assist from Trailer Park, the company that had made the teaser.
By the time the film was done, multiple editors had been brought into the process, though only John Gilroy is credited. (A source says he left by the end of the process and that the final editor was Michael Tronick.) "When you have big tentpoles and time pressure, you pull in resources from every which way you can," says this source. "You can't do it the way it used to be, with one editor and one assistant editor."
In May, Ayer's more somber version and a lighter, studio-favored version were tested with audiences in Northern California. "If there are multiple opinions that aren't in sync, you go down multiple tracks — two tracks at least," says an insider. "That was the case here for a period of time, always trying to get to a place where you have consensus." Those associated with the film insist Ayer agreed to and participated in the process. Once feedback on the two versions was analyzed, it became clear it was possible to get to "a very common-ground place." (The studio-favored version with more characters introduced early in the film and jazzed-up graphics won.) Getting to that place of consensus, however, required millions of dollars' worth of additional photography.
Other sources describe a fraught process — one cites "a lot of panic and ego instead of calmly addressing the tonal issue."
In an ensemble that leaves no woman unsullied by some slight or another, Margot Robbie’s centerpiece turn as fan favorite Harley Quinn is at once the most captivating and the most troubling.
Forget the hyper-sexualized costumes Robbie gamely squeezes into as The Joker’s hopelessly devoted gal pal—a male gazey look that The New York Times’ A.O. Scott described as “a frat boy’s idea of what a feminist action heroine might look like.”
"What I love about working with this group, it's a rainbow — it's all races, creeds and colors. It's the diversity and inclusion that this country is supposed to be about," said Will Smith to thunderous applause at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.
- Jared Leto’s method acting: This iteration of The Joker is more of a tatted-up and twisted mobster/gang banger, with Leto reportedly basing it on Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. According to reports from the set, Leto insisted his fellow cast members refer to him as “Mistah J.” and pranked his co-stars by sending a live rat to Margot Robbie and bullets to Will Smith, a soiled Playboy magazine to Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and a dead hog, while spreading out anal beads and used condoms to the whole crew. Scott Eastwood, who plays one of Rick Flag’s SEALs, commented that Leto frightened him at times with his behavior, and Smith mentioned that he never had a real conversation with Jared Leto as Jared Leto.
Enchantress and Incubus are the worst comic book movie villains of all time. Full-stop. At least we know what the endlessly dull Malekith from Thor: The Dark World wants. At least Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze is a campy hoot to watch and quote. At least Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor was weird enough to create conversation and at least Doomsday felt like a world-threatening force of nature (even thought he looked like a big pile of troll poop). These two want to destroy humanity just because. They spend the entire movie hanging out around a giant sky portal just because. While Enchantress is embarrassing because she spends the bulk of her screen time gyrating in front of an ill-defined “weapon,” Incubus is a debacle on every level, a CGI creation who gave me flashbacks to the Scorpion King from The Mummy Returns. He is the first special effects character in over a decade that made me want to crawl under my seat because I was so embarrassed for the movie I was watching.
- The PG-13 rating: The PG-13 rating was created back in the mid 1980s as a middle ground, because of controversy over the PG rating given to movies like Poltergeist, Gremlins, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. If one goes back and look at some older films from the 1970s and early 1980s, there are many PG rated films with lots of strong language and nudity. However, in general, the current rating standards are such that any depiction of female nudity, course language beyond “damn” or “shit,” or drug use is usually an automatic R-rating. Whether a film is rated PG-13 or R can mean millions of dollars, especially to movies that need to recoup large budgets. A PG-13 film can be attended by teenagers, where an R rating may mean fewer screens showing the film and less advertising from the studio. For example, one big change from the 1980s to today is that almost all action movies are PG-13 instead of R, because the studios want the added revenue from teenagers. The studios also rationalize the decision by thinking they can always add the violence and sex back in for the DVD and market it as a "Director's Cut." This also means the ratings sometimes don’t make much sense.