It may actually be that very thing - a terrible film with very few redeeming features.
Here's the obligatory spoiler alert, but would you really care about spoilers with this one?
I mean, that trailer's a little enticing. It could have been something cool.
What's Good About It
In descending order, Will Smith. Margot Robbie.
What's Bad About It
Concept. Execution. Everything in between.
That would include things like, oh, writing, directing, cinematography, editing, production design, sound design, sound mix, casting, wardrobe, acting, and well, all of it is a dog's breakfast. And by bad, I don't mean incompetence like being out of focus or boom mics popping into frame, but more like, an assortment of really poor aesthetic choices, one following the other, with bad pacing, out of control performances, and an utter lack of spatial consideration as to who is standing where as whatever the hell is going on is unfolding haphazardly.
A special note about the awfulness of this film's conception: Jared Leto's Joker is simply toweringly awful. He's hardly worthy of being Batman's big adversary, and maybe a little too young. Also, the fantasy sequence where Harley and Joker enjoy a suburban life of normalised nuclear family domesticity with a baby absolutely fails to understand these characters. As such, it was always going to crash and burn. That can't be Harley's secret desire. It's idiotic in the extreme.
Remember the person back in high school who had the dead set opposite tastes in everything that you were both interested in? You love rock, but they love disco? You love Tolkien, they love Donaldson? You love 'Blade Runner', they love 'Escape From New York'?
It's as if that person made a movie.
What's Interesting About It
I wrote about it with the 'Batman vs Superman' entry but the DCEU is utterly failing to deliver satisfying product. It looks worse because the 4 shows on the CW are pumping out competent product week after week, using some of the same characters as these. As a comparison, the Arrow featured an episode where it was mainly Deadshot and other members of the rogues gallery in that TV series who go on their Suicide Squad run, and while it has less spectacular effects and fight scenes thanks to the lower TV budget, it delivers a coherent story as well as ample characterisation so that the audience never misunderstands why they are doing what they are doing.
It's either the case that the CW shows are punching well above their weight, or the movie version of these characters is utterly failing to deliver the product as promised.
Now, Will Smith makes for a better Deadshot, and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is nutty as promised, but there's really not much of substance going on between those two to begin with and even less beyond it with the rest of this miserable film.
I So Wanted It To Be Good
Yeah I did. I really did. A good little picaresque is always great fun. Unfortunately this one was made by people with no sense of humour.
However I've been reflecting on my expectations a little bit and it's interesting that I did want it to be good, because I had zero expectations for 'Batman vs Superman' and 'Rogue One'. I've been asking myself how I could have gotten my hopes up so much. Maybe I sort of expected Warners to lift their game bait based on their recent comic book movie output.
I really didn't expect it to be this lousy.
'Seven Go Around The World'
The classic archetype of this story is called 'Seven Go Around The World'. An oddly assorted bunch assemble to go on an adventure. If the story telling is done right, they are introduced with a cameo and they get to show off their special talent, each of which pays off in a timely manner, somewhere in the plot. That's also the contract this story form takes, so if you don't fulfil it, like this film fails to do, then it looks like you don't know what the hell you're doing.
It's the kind of idea that works better in comic books to begin with, where time and budget aren't an issue, so you can afford the fanciful sidetracks and flashbacks. Because this film cannot and will not afford all the proper affordances, they only sendup covering Deadshot and Harley, and it's not like Harley has a special talent that comes into play at the climax.
The story has too much exposition about who these characters are, with scant thought as to why they are who they are and what truly motivates them. It's amazing that a major studio can turn out a film with so little thought given to character.
Argh. My eternal issue with comic movies is going o be their inability to dig deep. 'The Watchmen' was a great series to read, but when it ended up on the screen, it was a lot less moving and a lot less interesting. 'Iron Man' would start off by tackling the Military Industrial Complex and somehow find a cheap villain with which to distract us. The eternal frustration is that the concepts go nowhere while the CGI explosions an destruction get bigger, wilder, and ever more impossible. What makes it worse is that it comes at us dressed in other genres like science fiction or political fiction, but really, most of the time there is no deeper thought about real problems from which they leap off with their stories.
And that's okay for a laugh if it's 'Guardians of the Galaxy', but with something like 'X-Men: First Class', it ends up being the dopiest telling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So what does this film go and do? This film... aims low and manages to shoot beneath it. Maybe one day somebody is going to champion this film and force us to watch it again in order understand its intricacies better but somehow I doubt it. It really is a big, dumb, corporate, bit of entertainment.
Please Don't Spin Off Anything
There's a bit of talk about spinning off Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn into a solo movies and maybe even WillSmith's Deadshot into its own movie. I'ms are they've got the success of 'Deadpool' in mind but they really shouldn't go there. The Warners people haven't exactly been hitting home runs with these comic book movies. If they can't make 'Batman vs Superman' work, and they can't pull together an interesting rendition of 'Suicide Squad', what makes them think they're ready to deliver something like 'Deadpool'?
Dear Warners, please don't go starting now.
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