I would like to start off this article saying I have a great deal of respect for this very funny Vloger. He’s a bright young man and I hope you like, subscribe and comment on his video.
I would also like to add that the smartest thing he says in this video is that if you believe either of us is wrong and you’d like to comment, use words. I don’t care if you insult me, the only thing is, it doesn’t make for much of an interesting conversation.
In this video ironically I get to criticize a guy criticizing “the worlds worst villains” with the worlds worst criticisms. The following blog is my response to his video:
You start off the video claiming you were going to shed some light on why professional critics grumbled like a bunch of teenage boys about Suicide Squad, showing all us fans why their thoughts are "Oh so superior to ours", only to regale us with a bunch of criticisms about the movie that sound like those very same teenage boys. Criticisms that remind me of the following gem that make up the aggregate score for SS on RT:
“An over-caffeinated, underwhelming succession of skirmishes and squabbles with plot borrowed from X-Men: Apocalypse and lessons not learned from Batman and Robin.”
James Croot of Stuff.co.nz, I presume was on drugs when he wrote this. I can only hope that his friends will give him the intervention he needs and put him in rehab before it’s too late.
Irony can be so hilarious and perhaps it’s time the critics also get critiqued as to the value of their criticisms.
1.
Tone switches all over the place - doesn't make sense.
First of ALL you talk about the tone switching all over the place and then describe all these different kind of films and how the movie doesn't make sense because at different points it reminds you of said movies, such as Escape From LA, to modern noir movies, to even Kill Bill etc etc etc
See while you may have impressed me with your knowledge of genres and films the suicide squad may have referenced, what you neglected to do was demonstrate how exactly the tonal shift lead to the film not making sense to you. How was a film maker, referencing films that are all tonally compatible with each other, disorienting for you? What about Who Framed Roger Rabit? That references gangster movies, Disney children’s movies and Film Noir! Was Robert Zemeckis’ late 80s classic also a challenge for you to follow because it referenced other genres and was tonally heterogeneous?
In fact the film made perfect sense and I would think someone as smart as you would be able grasp plot points that my 8 year old nephew wasn't confused by.
I believe sir you are exaggerating to sound smarter than the video actually is. Also, if we were to take your Vlog seriously, there is an easy answer to your question. The reason for the tonal shift in the movie, is because the characters it follows come from very different backgrounds. Why does it seem like an acid hip hop video at one point then Kill Bill the next. Because in one scene they are following a gangster in a strip club and in the other a samurai. Why is that? Because it’s a comic book movie based on a comic book whose source material has characters from various backgrounds. Case closed on vapid point number 1.
2.
Music greatest hits - doesn't make any sense.
So now the music also makes the movie make no sense. What? Another criticism from "I'm trying to hard to be an intellectual.com." It’s hard to respond to this, because the sentence itself makes no sense. If the music didn't work for you because you didn't like it or it didn't fit the scene that is one thing, but then I'd like an example of maybe three songs that didn't fit the scene, or how the music confused you, obfuscating the narrative.
3. Show, don't tell.
The movie made the mistake of showing and not telling. Movies do this a lot, and it is indeed one of the most common narrative mistakes, especially for dialogue as it can make the dialogue feel stilted. However having said that, in this movie, there is only one scene I can think of when it affected the dialogue so heavily it was distracting. That was during the explanation of Katana's sword. Perhaps it was that Viola Davis is such a brilliant actress that you hardly notice her narration or perhaps it’s that the beginning bios of the characters ape so well an actual comic book that it seems authentic for SS to use this narrative choice within the context of the type of movie it is.
Either way I think it worked for me and general audiences. I'm also glad you mentioned Escape From LA, because SS obviously lends much of its style from 80s B-Movie classics like Escape From LA, which ignored the show don’t tell rule often due to limited budgets. Ayers use of practical affects, space age looking monsters and colourful visuals again fits with the Neo B-Movie tone of the movie. In fact I think the show don't tell was a very high brow stylistic choice that the "Oh so smart" film critics overlooked.
4.
Harley Quinn and her Booty Shorts.
a.
Margot’s Performance: Well if you don't like Harley Quinn, I don't understand. Most of the critics you so readily agree with don't seem to share your view, pointing Harley Quinn and her short shorts out as one of the high lights of the movie.
They point her out as the standout, above every other actor by the way, even Viola Davis who I thought pretty much stole the show in every scene she was is, wasn't objectified in her depiction, was an outstanding villain and was a strong ethnic FEMALE lead, which these modern critics seem to love so much.
See Ghostbusters for proof. "No No but Harley wore short, shorts."
Check on Rotten Tomatoes, nearly all of them give her accolades for her performance.
“Robbie is genuinely terrific as Harley Quinn, earning the movie’s best lines and nailing almost every one of them. (That said, the camera’s incessant leering at her hot-panted posterior is a bit, let us say,
Michael Bay-ish.)”
Christopher Orrr The Atlantic
“Robbie’s incandescently hot, perfectly cast and absolutely brimming over with charisma.” GQ Magazine
(Both of the above remarks about Margot Robbie were found in reviews that said SS was rotten)
I personally thought her depiction was extremely sexist, especially her outfit, but I did enjoy Margot's performance independently of what she was wearing.
b.
How is she is able to fight demons with a bat?
That goes all the way back to the cartoons. I have always thought Harley Quinn to be pretty daft. I have no idea why she is so beloved, but as it goes, the world wanted Harley in a film (box office proves it) and Ayer and Margot gave it to them. Minus the shorts I don't see how they could have pulled it off any better, given the tone of the movie.
I’d like to add as loved as The Joker is, it seems he also has a great deal of feats coming from a guy who is usually depicted as a scrawny man who escaped from the Insane Asylum. I think Injustice Gods Among Us highlights best how remarkably silly The Joker is as a threat when one really thinks about it.
1. By the way, I notice you ran out of "technical" film points of why critics don't like Suicide Squad at about the 5.27 mark after talking for about 30 seconds about the film. So Tonal Shifts and the movie telling rather than showing is the only “technical” negatives you can find in the movie? That was really it? Apart from that you had no other technical issues, just issues with the characters and nitpicks like the rest of the critics. WOW!
6.
Where are all the people in midway city?
You needed to actually see homeless people to know they were in the city?
So here is where the people were if you found it hard to follow the logic of the movie.
1. Enchantress had changed them into the Goo Demons
2. Probably away from all the gun fire, that happens in this movie where ever the SS are. If you’re in the middle of an urban warzone turned into a living nightmare and you hear gunfire and the loud screams of demonic creatures standing under or around some blue pulsating orb in the sky I would think you might run away from the chaos, rather than to it.
Case closed on where the people were in Midway City.
2. Jared Leto as the joker (It’s like he's in a rap video)
I will not try and justify how they cut Joker in this movie. I'm pretty sure Leto was better than the way the movie cuts his performance. However it's worth noting that I believe Ayer had a very dark cut of the movie in mind for release and considering the response all these critical clowns had to BvS about it being too dark and humourless, his efforts were derailed and I'm guessing Warner Brothers caved to all the babies and took out most of the dark bits of the movie with the Joker and replaced it with some humour to satiate all the complainers.
3. Jai Courtney (comes back)
Yeah, this is pretty easy. He runs because that is his criminal and selfish instinct that he's had inbuilt in him as a thief, but then he comes back because obviously he has a pang of conscience. This way he remains a lovable rogue. Although he still has the bad boy in him, somewhere deep down he's come to see this colourful bunch of rag tag super criminals as his mates. So he comes back to help them. Guys think he's funny as hell. Women think he's funny, cute and sweet. Win Win at the box office if there’s a sequel.
This is not a plot hole, it is actually character development and it was funny as hell.
Get it now nit pickers?
4. El Diablo: Why does he see the SS as his Family?
Well I'm a pretty cold cat, I see all my friends as expendable tools and secretly despise them, so you may be asking the wrong person. But I'll give it a stab. The question why does Diablo call the SS his family when he doesn't know them? Because he's in an extreme situation. People bond with others a lot quicker when they are in extreme life threatening situations. They share life experiences they would never usually share with strangers, rely on each other for their life and form bonds they will never forget.
Suicide Squad for the audience may feel like a fun ride, but for the characters inside it it is a life threatening situation. They’ve been in Helicopter crashes, been shot at, had fights with Zombies, plus they have bombs in their necks, with the trigger being held by some evil, ruthless and perhaps insane apparatchik woman who wouldn’t think twice before blowing their heads off. So perhaps we as the audience feel it’s artificial for the Squad to become so close to each other so quickly. Especially in the social media era when friendship and actual bonding with real human beings seems like a primitive practice lost somewhere in the cave man era.
But my guess is if you see the events of the movie purely from the character El Diablo's point of view, he sees the SS as his family because he's a guy with a big heart, who lost his family, grew close to people in an extreme situation really quickly (who also helped him come to terms with the great loss he's felt in life and he grew up as a gang banger, where criminal gangs were his extended family in the hood. Maybe the SS kind of remind him of that kind of family. As you recall not everyone shares El Diablo's sense of fraternity.
Harley Quinn states "You're messing with my friends." as she kills the Enchantress. So clearly some feel more strongly than others.
9 Ennchantress Cara Delevene (Dancing. how is she alive at the end)
a. Nitpick. I have a video on this I will post here. But seriously Nitpick. She's alive at the end because the writer wrote it that way. Simple as.
b. She's a mystical being so who knows what happens when her heart is crushed. Maybe that simply killed the evil spirit dwelling within June Moon.
Did it honestly bother you and the critics so much?:
c. Why is it wrong for a model to be made main villain again? Not sure the logic there. But whatever.
d. well I liked her dancing. Cara can dance that spooky dance with me anytime. I think she did fantastic taking on three distinct roles and was spooky as [frick] in one of them.
Added to that Cara, model or not, probably has more talent in her little toe nail than most of the critics on rotten tomatoes have in their whole body.
5. Amanda Waller (why is she making a group)
Amanda Waller throughout her storied history in comics and cartoons much like Death Stroke has been depicted as a straight up villain or antihero depending on the story the writer is telling with her. My guess you were exposed to her in the JL animated series, so you feel the portrayal in SS was out of character. I don’t. In the SS reality she was clearly a villain and for me my favourite part of the movie. I can only hope we get some more bad assery from The Wall in future.
Again judging her character off the little information you've garnered from some animated TV show is not a fair criticism to a movie that operates in a completely different universe, isn’t it really. Her killing the agents was completely in character and bad ass as well. It’s supposed to be shocking. We know she’s capable of doing whatever to get the job done, but it’s absolutely shocking to see just how vicious she is. That’s the point of it. And since when did movie audiences not want to be shocked? When did it become the norm that movie goers wanted to be spoon fed everything that happens in the movie, so that watching a film requires minimum attention? Wow.
Viola played a much better villain than the vanilla marvel villains we tend to get. In one scene she out-sinistered every marvel villain in their filmography to date and helped me live vicariously through her fulfilling in some small way my fantasy of killing my office Interns. J
Finally your claim that she brought together basic criminals is just plain wrong. Enchantress is clearly supervillain who could take on superman. Amanda clearly had control of her for some time.
So there goes the argument, how could the SS take on Superman? Very easy I imagine. Enchantress plants some weird fantasy in Superman’s head, Deadshot pops him from several feet away with a Kryptonite bullet. Added to that they could find out his secret identity and threaten those he loves.
Why the rest of the SS? What use would they be in the Field?
A. Well a crocodile man who seems to be able to breath under water and has the strength of 5 men, what kind of use could he be to a military task force? Hmm, let me see! (Sarcasm)
B. What about a dude who can shoot round after round in the centre of a pin size bullseye and never miss.
C. A crazy chick who has been reported to go toe to toe with Batman, as well as take over the whole criminal underworld (Okay I admit I'm stretching with Harley :)
But I already said I've never understood the character.
D. Captain Boomerang. Cause he's a bloody laugh, get a sense of humour. Everyone needs a few chuckles on a dangerous adventure. Plus he's expendable and he'll keep the moral up of your Metahumans on trips with his Kangeroo jokes and boomerang tricks.
So there we go, in all seriousness 3 of the 5 SS are proven to be extremely useful.
Killer Croc, Enchantress and Deadshot. Amanda Waller's task force mainly makes sense for now, and I'm sure she was not done collecting.
This is my Video where I take on the main criticisms of the Suicide Squad in more detail
With Enough Prep Time Episode 5:
Please like subscribe and Comment on both or Either Vlog.