Author Topic: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***  (Read 1443 times)

Offline Chris

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The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« on: July 29, 2021, 04:10:55 PM »
The other thread wasn't for spoilers so I created this one.

Online perc2100

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2021, 11:24:14 AM »
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The other thread wasn't for spoilers so I created this one.
It's not often I'm jealous of folks living in England, but they get to see what by all accounts is a wildly entertaining movie a week early.  So, maybe I'm a little jealous of England this weekend...

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #2 on: Today at 09:59:14 AM »

Offline Chris

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2021, 11:59:08 AM »
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It's not often I'm jealous of folks living in England, but they get to see what by all accounts is a wildly entertaining movie a week early.  So, maybe I'm a little jealous of England this weekend...

I am shocked.  Apparently this one is good. 

Offline mark

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2021, 04:53:10 PM »
It has polka-dot man. Oddly enough I can't imagine a bad movie having polka-dot man in it.

Offline Chris

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2021, 12:03:11 PM »
Just finished.  While it didn't move me, I enjoyed it.  I think this was the mark that the first one was trying to hit.

Offline TardisMom

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2021, 01:46:08 PM »
We saw it in a theatre last night.  I found it very entertaining!  I don't know the comics so it's just a movie to me, and I thought it hit the mark.  Ratcatcher is a great character, and Harley is perfect. 

Offline Chris

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2021, 02:43:46 PM »
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We saw it in a theatre last night.  I found it very entertaining!  I don't know the comics so it's just a movie to me, and I thought it hit the mark.  Ratcatcher is a great character, and Harley is perfect.

Agree.  I think this was the best writing/acting for Harley.  John Cena was also great.

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2021, 09:09:44 PM »
James Gunn, writer and director of THE SUICIDE SQUAD, has found his stride in making films that center of a group of misfits coming together for a common good.  All of his films (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY vols 1&2; SUPER, and SLITHER), all expertly blend humor (often dark humor), action set pieces, and characters with heart.  I've been a fan of his since his Troma studio days (when he wrote TROMEO AND JULIET), and he legit keeps getting better and better with all of his art: be it writing, producing, or directing.

THE SUICIDE SQUAD is Gunn's current high water mark, and boy has he set an incredibly high bar for himself!

The film kicks off straight into the action, setting up the plot of the film via the Squad's interactions as they're en route to their mission.  By my count there are 13ish Squad members, and by the end of it all they all felt like they had a personality, and weren't just canon fodder.  Though, don't get me wrong: there is A LOT of cannon fodder to be had!

The performances were all somewhere between fun and and fund-but-also-sympathetic.  THE SUICIDE SQUAD is a rare film that knows how to use Idris Elba, as Bloodsport (expert marksman and tactician, who put who's rep is he put Superman in the hospital w/a kryptonite bullet).  He's hilarious, has action hero swagger, and is only doing this job to protect the government from hurting his daughter.  We also have Jon Cena as Peacemaker: another badass warrior who will do ANYTHING in the name of peace, up-to and including murdering women and children.  Daniela Melchior plays Ratcatcher 2, carrying on her dad's legacy of being able to control all rats (think Ant-Man but w/rats).  David Dastmalchian plays Polkadot Man: a 'crazy' guy (his words) with serious 'mommy'/family issues.  We also have King Shark, a not-too-bright man-shark who nonetheless is incredibly powerful and a huge asset in a battle.
Returning from the original SUICIDE SQUAD film (while this is a "kind of/sorta" sequel to 2016 film, only the returning characters are a reference to the original & you don't need to watch or revisit it to enjoy this) are Joel Kinnaman's Col. Flag, the one non-convicted felon who's a government soldier in charge of the crew on the ground; Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang; and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn.
That covers, what a little more than half the crew?!  You'll figure out the rest soon enough, but these are the core characters/some of my favorites.

They're on the "standard" man-on-a-mission plot that mimics the DIRTY DOZEN: going into a hostile territory after a military coup to destroy any references to "Project Starfish."  I won't spoil what that exactly means in case you're not a comic fan, but I'll just say that this film does indeed of a Kaiju running rampant at one point causing massive destruction and casualties.

But if I'm being honest, the plot isn't as important as the characters, and this film has characters in spades.  Many of our Squad members get at least a moment or two to shine, even if shining includes "kinda hilariously dying quickly."  Even characters we barely knew, having been introduced minutes before their demise, I would've wanted to spend more time with them.  That's how solid the dialogue and character development is in this film.  The members who make it to the 90 minute mark are all having fun with each other, and all taking turns having hero moments.  I personally had a lot of fun at the jocularity between Bloodsport and Peacemaker, both often trying to one-up each other every step of the way.  There was a bit of time where Harley gets captured and the Squad have to take a detour to rescue her (not-a-spoiler: she doesn't really need help escaping).  In her previous two films, Robbie's Harley has mostly had to carry the movie, while here she gets to be a legit part of the ensemble: there's a stretch where one could even be forgiven for thinking "oh yeah - Harley Quinn is still alive in this film") because we're having so much fun with the rest of the crew.

I could go on and on about this fun cast of characters, but I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the exquisite craft of James Gunn.  When he writes a script he explicitly puts song choices in, and then shoots scenes with the specific songs playing on set so actors know how the feel and flow should be.  Those scenes feel like an effortless melding of the visual & musical.  The perfect example is when Harley breaks out of her imprisonment.  Not only is it wonderfully choreographed in a kinetic senes where the camera is hardly ever not-moving, but it's filled with this sweet visual sense giving the audience the idea of how this violent mayhem plays out in Harley's psychotic mind.  Flowers constantly "flow" from nowhere, often in tandem with blood splattering from her victims: all while she is doing seeming dance choreography to both maximize her violence and to avoid getting injured.  All of this plays out to the classic song "I Ain't Got Nobody" by Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Sam Butera & The Witnesses: played out minutes after we see Harley at her most vulnerable, singing/mumbling the lyrics while getting tortured about her mission.  There are about a dozen great needle drops throughout, and if you're a fan of Gunn's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Awesome Mixes, you get the idea of how well he uses music.

Typically a director will storyboard action set pieces, and sometimes a complicated shot, in order to better plan how things need to be set-up on a shooting day.  Gunn storyboards every single shot long before he shoots it.  This helps not only keep things on schedule while shooting the film, but also gives Gunn the chance to think about every shot well in advance.  This prep shows in the final film, where so many shots have style to spare.  I was constantly in awe of scenes such as when the camera is circling action sequences non-stop; or a major revelation is revealed off the reflection of a helmet; or scene titles made of flams, or building wreckage.  It would be hard to nitpick faults with from the technical side of this film.

Now, if you want to nitpick story beats, I can understand.  The 3rd Act feels a bit perfunctory, but that's sort of the nature of comic book action films, isn't it?  While the final action set pieces would be fairly mundane in many other directors' hands, Gunn keeps things interesting with his visual composition behind the cameras, and adding fun story beats or jokes into it.  We of course get a moment where our heroes are at their darkest moment, where it looks like all will be lost.  We _KNOW_ at least some fo them will survive and do hero stuff, but HOW they get to that point is more fascinating than other movies.  There's a scene were Bloodsport is about to fall from a rooftop of a crumbling building: at this point we're fairly sure he'll make it out of this scene (there's still just a little too much left in the film to kill off Idris Elba at that point).  The way he is able to get out of this jam, partially from his tactical decisions, partly from the "lets kinda ignore gravity and physics" trope; but in the end we're on board with the film and likely able to just kind of nod our heads with "well, that's kind of a different way of getting out of the jam than I would've thought of so kudos!"

All in all THE SUICIDE SQUAD feels more like a James Gunn film than a big budget studio comic book tentpole.  The fact that hundreds of millions were spent on it is almost a wonder with the studio system.  It feels obvious Gunn had complete control and could do what he wants with the characters.  There is such a high body count, I'd love to see a running counter of all the deaths in the film.  We're not just talking "a hundredish," it feels like we're talking "literally hundreds killed."  Gunn has said on social media not to get too attached to characters, and he wasn't joking: much of the Squad are left as dead bodies (or dead body parts) by the time we get to the credits.  It's no spoiler to think about how large the Suicide Squad is, so that must mean there are a lot that don't make it for a sequel.  Some of the deaths aren't a shocker, but some genuinely took me by surprise.  And to be blunt, very few story/character developments in movies surprises me, and when that happens I automatically have to give a film and its creative team mad props.  James Gunn deserves those mad props.

This is the fun summer tentpole that has arrived..well...near the end of summer.  I would've loved for this to open earlier and have us talking about THE SUICIDE SQUAD from June-August.  I would have absolutely LOVED if this movie were released w/out a trace of COVID to keep folks out of a theater.  Hell, I'd really have fun seeing this film go up against BLACK WIDOW, just to see if Gunn has a bit of (nonexistent except in my own brain) revenge against Marvel Studios by giving Marvel a run for its m money at the box office.  I think THE SUICIDE SQUAD is easily the best comic book film adaptation of the summer, and I think if you're a fan of Gunn's other work you will easily fall in love with this one.

THE SUICIDE SQUAD is rampaging in theaters or on HBO Max currently
« Last Edit: August 06, 2021, 09:26:15 PM by perc2100 »

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2021, 09:22:47 PM »
Alright, since we're talking spoilers, lets talk about some:

* were you surprised at how many of The Squad doesn't make it off the beach?!  I figured many of these guys were going to die (you can kind of tell from the trailers that many of the Squad are only in either beach scenes or transportation scenes), but I wasn't expecting them to die that soon.  I _LOVE_ it when a director tells us "yeah - I'm killing these guys off so know that they're all going to be vulnerable!"  I was kinda surprised that Boomerang died early since he was such a big part of the 2016 film.

* Bloodsport vs Peacemaker rivalry was off the hook entertaining!  My favorite exchange:
- Bloodsport "no one likes a show-off"
- Peacemaker "unless what they're showing off is dope as fuuuu#k"
- Bloodsport under his breath "f$#k: That's true."

* that being said, I was pretty taken aback when Peacemaker killed Flag!  And also a bit surprised at the unceremonious death of Polkadot Man.  As a main heart of the film, he died pretty unexpectedly: though it was funny, so I'll allow it

* Starro.  WOW!!!  I've read several Starro storylines in the comics and he never really seemed that formidable to me.  Gunn did a great job making him feel like a legit, HUGE threat to humanity!

Anyway, that's off the top of my head.  I'll absolutely watch this at least another time before it leaves HBO Max.  I don't know if I'm in a mindset of "which is better - this of GotG movies?!" but it's obvious Gunn has improved as a filmmaker significantly since his last, and I wouldn't argue with anyone who says THE SUICIDE SQUAD is a better film (in comparison, all three of his comic films are absolutely better than his SLITHER & SUPER films - both of which I adore)

Offline Angology

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #9 on: August 18, 2021, 08:57:34 PM »
For some reason - the part that comes to mind for me and makes me giggle is Polka Dot Man saying "Oh Fiddlesticks" when he dropped what he was carrying. I know it's a teeny part, but it made me smile. And very random LOL

Oh, and hooray for Harley coming to terms with her bad taste in men and not needing to be saved!
Ang

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Re: The Suicide Squad ***Spoilers***
« Reply #10 on: August 19, 2021, 09:25:33 AM »
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For some reason - the part that comes to mind for me and makes me giggle is Polka Dot Man saying "Oh Fiddlesticks" when he dropped what he was carrying. I know it's a teeny part, but it made me smile. And very random LOL

Oh, and hooray for Harley coming to terms with her bad taste in men and not needing to be saved!
1. TOTALLY agree re: Polka dot Man!  It's that type of little, small stuff that makes these characters come alive, and feel multi-dimensional, vs "exists only to further a plot point." David Dastmalchian & writer/director James Gunn did a wonderful job taking a character that feels like a one-off joke and giving him real personality, conflict, a psyche, etc.  I can't logically explain WTF his "powers"/'condition' really is, or what causes it, or how he controls it: but by the half-way point of the film I legit don't care and I'm along for the ride with this wildly interesting character!

2. Also totes agree about Harley.  Had I seen this film in a theater initially, I would've absolutely stood up and applauded her monologue to the, uh, president.  She's clearly still a villain, but being able to get over being controlled or manipulated by awful men: while also being a one-woman army of her own, in one of my favorite action sequences of the last few years from a visual composition standpoint!