Special Edition Podcast
Special Edition – The Suicide Squad
Show Notes
iFanboy assembled its own crack squad of movie reviewers — Conor Kilpatrick, Ryan Haupt, Paul Montgomery, and Mike Romo — to discuss James Gunn’s crossing the aisle in his sequel/remake — The Suicide Squad!
Running Time: 00:46:00
Music:
“Sucker’s Prayer”
The Decemberists
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Great discussion, y’all. Comparing the two cinematic universes, I’d say DC is Toxic while Marvel is Tolerant.
End of the day both are making movies with explosions, guns, fighting, etc. but with Marvel I see attempts to balance this violence with idealism and purpose. DC, using this film as its exemplar, challenges me to deal with a world where violence is so rampant it is a struggle to not be desensitized to it. This could be a compelling commentary on real-world violence and trauma but it never really gets there because I don’t think the movie-makers are trying to pose that question.
That all said, I hope Killer Shark makes an appearance in the Aquaman sequel.
In the MCU, there is death and destruction often which is even shown in Civil War with mentioning events in other movies while showing the brief clips. It’s just glossed over for the most part and you aren’t meant to focus on it. The MCU would not be a great place to live in unless you suddenly forgot a lot of third acts. Asgard was destroyed which was a genocide in Ragnarok along with half of the ones left being killed to start Infinity War who are still dead because it was before the snap. Ragnarok had so many jokes which undercut the stakes of Asgard being destroyed. Trying to include The Suicide Squad in that doesn’t make sense where you wanted it to be something it wasn’t even with what happens to Corto Maltese.
Calling Marvel tolerant doesn’t work honestly. WandaVision just showed Wanda torturing people including children where the finale had the line “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them” to excuse it. That was also glossed over and laughable. The MCU is obviously better than the DCEU, but calling DC toxic where really it just applies to Snyder’s movies in the DCEU isn’t being fair if you have seen multiple MCU films.
Appreciate your points, vacur005.
Tolerant vs. Toxic summation aside (I could have found better words but my mind cannot resist alliterations), I don’t think the offscreen deaths in Infinity War and Ragnarok or the psychological manipulations in WandaVision compare with the onscreen violence in The Suicide Squad. There’s a gratuitousness in The Suicide Squad that isn’t on display in those MCU examples. Yes, both franchises deal in murder and mayhem (alliteration strikes again) but methinks the MCU creators have tried to make these meaningful and less shocking for shocking’s sake.
That said, both Wonder Woman films have acknowledged the consequences and meaning of death and violence. #NotAllDCEU
😉
Wow. Easily the most negative review I’ve seen if the movie so far. Hard disagree with basically everything that Romo said. We got a crew with a guy who doesn’t like Gunn’s work, another guy who fell asleep during it, and a 3rd who thinks 2 hrs and 15 min is shocking long for a movie (have you watched any MCU movies?!). Anyway, to each his own obviously, but damn this was a big collection of hate towards a movie which seems to be getting great reviews both critically and for general audiences.
Yeah, I honestly couldn’t finish the review and it was 9 minutes shorter than Wonder Woman in 2017 which had a much worse third act. I remember how praised that movie was back then in that review. It was 2 minutes shorter than Black Widow which Conor heavily praised. The length criticism is frankly ridiculous. It wasn’t a very good review whether I agree with what they said or not.
You are taking the discussion of length of the film too literally. It’s the symptom, not the disease. If the film is great and everything is working then it can go on forever. If the feeling is that the film is bloated and possibly self-indulgent due to extraneous scenes, characters, and plot lines, then the discussion becomes that it’s too long and could have been tightened up. It’s all up to personal taste about the content of the film itself.
There is no metric for this many minutes = good, this many minutes = bad. That’s obviously ridiculous.
I have no issue with long films so long as they’re well paced, though that’s fairly subjective. I will say that comedies and action comedies often outstay their welcome after about 90 minutes. There are obviously exceptions. I did ultimately have fun with the movie, but in a critical evaluation I had to contend it felt bloated. Perhaps I repeated that once too often in the discussion.
Honestly I was surprised how much I liked the movie. Some of that might have been coming in with super low expectations. I really disliked that first Suicide Squad movie and I’m not an Suicide Squad fan or a fan of shockingly violent comics. So I’m not the target audience for this movie. That said somehow it did manage to have a heart to it (a twisted and kinda psychotic hearts, but there was something there). Also there were some really striking visuals that stuck with me after watching it, which is to it’s credits (That King Shark shot of him ripping a dude apart was pretty striking). The movie itself seemed to be about finding the humanity in even the most inhuman of circumstances, which is a definite step up from other DC offerings that seemed to be about … edgy superheroes I guess.
I don’t think I wanna see a Peacemaker series. I don’t understand what more there is to say with that character. He fit the narrative here, but showing him in a long form series feels like it isn’t adding anything. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong there, I applaud DC for finally looking at less known properties rather than returning to the same few characters, but what a weird choice.
I too fell asleep.
Not a great sign for an action movie.
I Am a fan of the Guardians movies and this felt like a cover band of that template.
Character timing was a space or too off in almost every scene.
Yeah, music stings and one-liners were there but poorly orchestrated.
This wasn’t a bad movie and if you found ways to enjoy it- great.
But it wasn’t great craft and its soul felt like a one size fits all James Gunn.
I was excited when he was announced for this movie because I thought that he would
dive in and uncover the characters- reveal something interesting in a cool setting.
That did not happen.