Horrible People Doing Horrible Things for Horrible Reasons (or: how that pain in my neck had absolutely nothing to do with The Suicide Squad – but I can’t say the same for the pain in my soul)

This isn’t going to end well.

It was about thirty minutes into my viewing of James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” (2021) when I realized there was something terribly wrong with my face.

For context, it was a little after nine o'clock at night. I was lying on one side of the couch and my girlfriend was on the other. Also, at the time, I had been suffering a pain in my neck of unknown origin, persisting for about two weeks. It was the kind of pain that haunts you after you mysteriously tweak your neck, resulting in an angry, knotted muscle that seems hellbent on murdering you. Failing anything fatal, the knot seems content to make you feel like an actor trapped in a bad Batman costume, unable to turn your head to the left.

Despite my physical ailments, I was actually excited about this flick. Even though I knew better, about twenty-four hours earlier I caught up on the trailers, realized King Shark was in this movie, and grew impatient with my girlfriend’s work schedule because I was eager to put the flick on as soon as it dropped on HBO Max.

(I say that I knew better than to get excited because every time I foolishly look forward to one of these DC films, it’s always a letdown. Surely this time would be different, right? Surely this time there would be more than just an awesome drumming octopus that saves the movie? Surely – maybe? Jesus Christ, please don’t eye-fuck my otherwise innocent brain soul – is that too much to ask, James Gunn, is it?!)

My optimism for this film is already tempered by this interesting cultural intersection we’ve been living through – where creative vision and studio interference have swung to opposite ends of the spectrum and studios have stepped way the hell back, sometimes to the detriment of the creative. Of course, this isn’t always the case and creative freedom is important – but sometimes guide rails (even harsh ones) can inspire creative leaps that would have otherwise never seen the light of day. 

DC/Warner is the torch bearer for negative and damaging studio interference. “Justice League” (2017), the first “Suicide Squad” (2016) – these are movies that were butchered to death because of the studios. Disney has a recent-mixed bag. Taika Waititi’s “Ragnarok” is a brilliant example of a director working inside the guide rails while simultaneously dismantling them. “Solo” is a great (and greatly misunderstood) film shaped entirely by studio interference (although I would have loved to see the original!) and “Rise of Skywalker” is a hot mess of a liquid dumpster fire train wreck careening off a cliff into an erupting volcano – exclusively due to studio interference, ad nauseam.

But just as we’ve seen the studios butcher “Justice League” and the original “Suicide Squad”, we’ve also seen the studios take a step back – certainly in Zack Snyder’s case – and say “do whatever you want”. In quick succession, we got the director’s original vision for “Justice League” (HBO Max, 2021) and “Army of the Dead” (Netflix, 2021). Both movies could have used SOME interference, because they are over-produced, style-over-substance, soulless bore-fests. A little positive studio interference could have honed these flicks into something far more palatable with perhaps an illusion of heart.

(Obviously there’s an audience for these types of movies and I’m not it. If you like them, good on you. I’m just telling you why I don’t like them.)

Let’s get back to “The Suicide Squad”.

I’m thirty minutes in and I realize that there’s something very wrong with my face. I know, right? All this potentially misplaced optimism about the movie, all this positive hope over a pure creative vision … and this screening is going to be ruined by an impending health crisis because a knotted muscle in my neck is trying to murder me?

I’ll spare you any further dramatic tension – as much pain as my neck might have been in (at that moment, not much), the problem with my face was that it had been stuck in a perpetual frown for half an hour.

Can you wrap your head around that? I stepped into this movie with two basic expectations: it was going to be funny (per the previews) and King Shark. I didn’t even care what they did with King Shark, I was just hyped for some dope monster man-shark action.

And yet … I was frowning so hard during the first thirty minutes of “The Suicide Squad”, there was genuinely a brief moment when I thought something was wrong with my face.

“The Suicide Squad” (2021) was such soulless garbage that the “Suicide Squad” (2016) was actually a better film.

The Suicide Squad was so bad, if I wanted to watch a story about psychopathic murderers with no redeeming qualities, I would have preferred to watch a true crime murder doc (AND I FUCKING HATE TRUE CRIME MURDER DOCS).

Here’s the problem with my face: the first thirty minutes of a film (ostensibly the first act, give or take) is supposed to sell you on the premise of the film. While the first ten minutes of this movie might have been clever (and that’s me being generous) the rest of the first act goes downhill fast. And again, it’s not like DC was at a particularly high point to begin with.

The movie and its director reveal themselves in all of their naked glory when the eponymous Suicide Squad (not the fake-out squad) penetrate the island and Bloodsport and Peacemaker engage in a murderous round of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better”.

Hell, everyone is killing – the sequence starts with King Shark graphically gulping down one of the native militia. My gut was obviously trying to warn me about something (hence the perpetual frown painted on my face) and James Gunn drops a glaring clue as to the true nature of what’s unfolding, right smack in the middle of this inglorious one-upmanship. As Bloodsport and Peacemaker trade killshots, callously slaughtering this militia camp, there’s a blink-and-you-miss kill of a woman doing her laundry.

If you hadn’t figured out the twist by that shot, don’t worry – it’s spelled out a minute later when the Suicide Squad finds Rick Flag and discovers that the militia they’ve been murdering are actually the good guys.

This whoopsie is then played off as a joke.

Okay, it’s time to get real: I’m obviously not the core audience of this film, but what exactly is the premise of this movie, anyhow?

Villains becoming heroes? Horrible people doing good things for bad reasons? Horrible people doing good things for GOOD reasons? The best I can figure it, “The Suicide Squad” is about horrible people doing horrible things for horrible reasons.

And here’s the thing: antihero stories AREN’T FUCKING HARD. They’re so goddamn mainstream that the idea of fucking up the antihero arc is actually hard to wrap my head around. Breaking Bad. Goddamn House, MD. You want a murderous, psycophathic antihero to love? Even Dexter is coming back to show James Gunn how it’s done.

Here’s the formula: horrible person does good thing for XXX reason. As long as the audience goes on a journey with the character, it doesn’t matter how heinous their actions are, nor how good or bad their reasons are, we still CARE about the character. Walter White is a good person who becomes a bad person, doing horrible things for good reasons and then horrible reasons – talk about a roller coaster of a journey, but as an audience, we’re with him EVERY FUCKING STEP OF THE WAY. Dexter does horrible things for good reasons – instant empathy!

Aside from Ratcatcher 2, all of the Suicide Squad are horrible characters with horrible motivations doing, ostensibly, horrible things until the very last moment – but you lost me after the first thirty minutes, James Gunn, so I don’t actually care what these psychopaths are doing in the LAST thirty minutes of this dumpster fire.

“But Krumbine: they’re SUPPOSED to be psychopaths!”

I KNOW. And you’d think that would make them more interesting. But James Gunn goes out of his way to turn Bloodsport into a horrible father who doesn’t care if his daughter goes to prison … only if she maybe-possibly risks getting recruited onto a suicide run; King Shark is a graphic killing machine (but token FRIENDSHIP!); Peacemaker is genuine evil and a perfect reflection of current GQP accolytes. I’d love if these characters were redeemable, but that redemption (or any other reason to empathize) has to be seeded in that first act, otherwise they’re all just … well …

Horrible people doing horrible things for horrible reasons.

That’s not a fun movie. It’s depressing. Joyless. Soulless. It’s a sad commentary on the (hopefully tiny) core audience that this movie was made for and a terrible reflection of the real James Gunn, sans studio interference.

I want to root for bad guys doing good and earning their redemption (or at least murdering the BADDER guys). I don’t want to root for the bad guys murdering innocent people.

A few quick hits:

- I think we can all agree that tokenism is just bad writing. We’re used to token diversity, but “The Suicide Squad” does a truly remarkable job introducing token sympathy. Ratcatcher 2, in the context of this film, makes absolutely no sense. She’s surrounded by murderous deplorables and why was she in prison? ‘Cause she tried (and failed) to use rats to rob a bank? At least give her a some kind of crime that justifies her being thrown in with this lot of horrible people. She’s a token good person that sticks out like a sore thumb – because the empathy isn’t earned or justified, it’s only there to distract the audience from how horrible the rest of the characters are. And, also, friendship with the man-shark. But like, TOKEN friendship.

- Worst case scenario, I want to root for the bad guys murdering the badder guys. Starro, in the context of this film, is NOT the badder guy. Starro is categorically misunderstood, captured, and tortured. Starro, in the context of this film, is almost as innocent as the lady doing her laundry.

- Harley Quinn’s roller coaster of cinematic characterization is fucking nauseating and this movie was a magnificently dolt-headed step backwards from Birds of Prey (which was a shit film in its own right). I wouldn’t blame Margot Robbie for abandoning this role altogether with how the character has been treated across the DCEU.

- King Shark should have been an easy win but instead he got drowned out as yet another vector of senseless murdering of innocents. Hard to cheer for that.

- Polka Dot Man was the only bright spot of the film and a perfect example of Gunn’s broken clock being correct at least once or twice. Here’s a genuinely tortured psychopathic character with a compelling arc THAT WE GET TO EXPERIENCE WITH HIM. He does horrible things for iffy reasons, but at least we can empathize with how tortured he is – it’s something that is cleverly shown (“show me don’t tell me”) repeatedly through his visions of his mother. These are genuinely brilliant creative strokes by Gunn, David Dastmalchian, and the VFX team. A shame he had to die.

- The trailers were funny, but the movie wasn’t. When all those jokes packed into a two-and-a-half minute preview are stretched out over a two-plus hour runtime and given ample time to breathe in the context of these soulless, psychopathic punchlines … all the comedy fell flatter than that innocent woman cleaning her laundry after she was murdered by our so-called heroes.

- Finally, I love Peter Capaldi. I love the 12th Doctor. I absolutely head-cannoned that the Thinker was The Doctor living out some punishment in the multiverse. It was so nice to see Capaldi having a bit of fun on film, but such a shame that it was this pile of heartless shit.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve written and rewritten this blog about three or four times. I desperately need to stop talking about how horrible “The Suicide Squad” is so I can work on my Suicide Squad-inspired art piece (it has dinosaurs, so it’s okay).

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