‘The Suicide Squad’ is not as unconventional as it wants you to think
By Jake Skubish
The Suicide Squad falls into the lineage of a growing subgenre of superhero movies: the “Yes, it’s another superhero movie, but this one is different” film. Whether they lean into irreverence (Deadpool), get self-reflexive about the genre (Shazam!), or take themselves far too seriously (Joker), these films all share the belief that, even though they are operating within the most dominant entertainment genre of the past two decades, they are able to break the formula.
And for the opening third of The Suicide Squad, director James Gunn mostly succeeds. The filmmaking is stylish, the characters are refreshingly sadistic, and many of the crude jokes land. The film swings into action quickly, not bothering to get bogged down in plot mechanics. Our heroes are a ragtag group of weirdos sent by the U.S. government to stop an evil plot by a mad scientist in a foreign country. These superheroes are not your standard Marvel gods and kings: one core member of the team can summon rats on command; another is a talking shark. It’s a low bar, but The Suicide Squad opens with the energy of a movie decidedly not written by a studio algorithm.
That energy fades, though, and the film soon becomes a mess. The movie makes the curious choice to abandon any attempt at being funny in favor of a criticism of U.S. foreign policy that is total gobbledygook. The Suicide Squad weakly chides past U.S. interventionism while celebrating these particular imperialists for trying to re-invade and set things right. The criticism of the U.S. feels hollow because the group at the center of the film are ultimately our heroes, no matter how nasty or crude they might be. There are few things more American than superheroes, and to pretend otherwise is an act of corporate nihilism.
The movie also disappoints in a manner more familiar for the genre: the last hour is a bland CGI-fest in which the heroes are stuck in a final battle that goes on for far too long. Nearly every superhero film is plagued by this issue; Wonder Woman stands out as another DC film that was better than most of its peers up until one of the worst final action sequences I’ve ever seen.
The tendency is often a consequence of another failing of these films: uninteresting villains. The Suicide Squad has a grab bag of sort-of-villains: two nondescript Latin American leaders; an evil scientist with unclear ambitions; the government official forcing the Suicide Squad to take on this mission. None are ever the sole target of the Squad’s ire, which means the last hour of the film can never find its focus. From The Dark Knight to Avengers: Endgame, the best movies of the genre have always established a singular, formidable opponent for the heroes. I wish the majority of superhero films could figure out this simple truth instead of prioritizing a mishmash of CGI-laden violence.
Speaking of which: Does James Gunn think he invented movie violence? The Suicide Squad gleefully rips apart limbs and tears out muscles with the panache of a creator under the impression that nothing like this has been done before. I’ve seen a number of comments along these lines: you might not love the film, but you have to hand it to Gunn for taking the studio’s massive budget and making this. But why should I celebrate a vision of violence so devoid of purpose? I don’t need my cinematic violence to have some deeper meaning, per se, but directors like Quentin Tarantino, Julia Ducournau, and Ari Aster are employing violence in ways that actually serve the plots of their films. They are artists serving a story; Gunn is an adolescent playing with special effects. As Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) laments at one point, “All the cruelty tears you apart after a while.”
Robbie is easily the standout of the film. Quinn’s encounter with the president of Corto Maltese and her escape from imprisonment are the best moments of The Suicide Squad, and nobody understands better than Robbie what the film ideally should be: wise-cracking, colorful, fun. It’s why Birds of Prey remains my favorite DC superhero movie by a long shot. She unfortunately gets sidelined by a lot of characters who are mostly uninteresting, despite their crude eccentricities, which is a shame.
If future superhero movies want a roadmap toward bringing something different to the genre they should emulate Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the only truly great superhero movie since The Dark Knight. Spider-Verse did not need to bend over backwards to take itself seriously, or make dick jokes, or employ senseless ultra-violence. It has a distinct idea, fully realized characters, and a unique visual concept, and everything in the film serves the story. It’s not about doing something different, it’s about being earnest in telling a story that, despite the massive scale, can feel personal or meaningful in some way. If we’re going to be stuck with these movies for the rest of our lives, we at least deserve a handful more of those.