The Suicide Squad
Followup to the atrocious original Suicide Squad from 2016, directed by James Gunn, rather than talentless producer of copaganda David Ayer. The history here is slightly interesting, Gunn directed Suicide Squad after Disney took him off the Guardians of the Galaxy series, allegedly for some bad taste jokes he made, ten years ago, on his twitter account, in reality though, and very obviously for anyone paying attention, for his critical comments on the Trump Administration. In an interesting parallel with the Justice League's history, it was only by the outspoken public support of audiences and felow artists that Disney eventually agreed to take him back, serving, if nothing else, as a clear example art, especially art that relies on the funding of large, faceless corporations, now, more than ever, requires the people to publically stand up against the studio system financing it and voice their support for the actual artists producing it.
Anyways, in the meantime, Gunn made The Suicide Squad, for Warner Brothers and you know what? It 's pretty alright. There are probably some parallels to be drawn between Snyder's Justice League and Gunn's Suicide Squad in that they both use the tried and true premise of a straight forward superhero team up movie for the respective directors to indulge in their personal stylistic and thematic obsessions. And if nothing else, Gunn's personality and his background in exploitation movies comes through in Suicide Squad in ways it didn't, for example, in Guardians of the Galaxy. TSS has fun gore, a mean sense of humour and an embrace of the campier, pulpier side of comic book aesthethics. Again, in a lot of ways Gunn is gunning (I'm sorry...) for something very similar to Snyder's Justice League, the difference is that where Snyder tries to elevate this kind of story by transcending its lowbrow roots, Gunn embraces them and does his best to polish them until they're worthy of a two and a half hour high budget epic. So, here's the story:
Once again the Suicide Squad, a team of b-list supervillains, is conscripted to do wetwork for the American government, in this case overthrowing the dictator of Latin American island state Corto Maltese who, after a recent coup, does not only rule the small nation but might also be in control of a secret mad science experiment America wants to preferably get under control, but at the very least cover up. The movie starts off with what's actually a rather fun bit, showing what we assume to be the main characters confronting the army of Corto Maltese only to be almost entirely massacred by them, switching perspective to the movies actual protagonists, sort of a B-Team consisting of a super mercenary, a super soldier, a lady who controls rats, a man who fires laser skittles and a shark man. Mind you, they are, in the end, all pretty likeable characters with chemistry good enough to hold an ensemble piece like this together. Which really is the movies big saving grace because the plot never really gets any more interesting than what I've described. You might consider this a spoiler, so feel free not to read it, but would you be surprised the government of Corto Maltese was keeping a big alien monster locked up in a research facility that the Suicide Squad ends up having to fight? I wasn't.
I think when I gave my opinion on Wonder Woman 1984 I said that it was the bare minimum of a superhero movie, just sorta going through the motions. The Suicide Squad is not like that, it has enough creativity and enough good characterization to make up for its generic narrative. But there still remains that nagging feeling that maybe they should have tried a bit harder. Aspects of it are just so lazy that all the self awareness in the world can't make up for it. Corto Maltese's dictator is an eye-rollingly outdated generalissimo-style caricature of Fidel Castro, cigar and all, backstories are conveyed through blunt exposition dumps, Harley Quinn is the only returning main character from the first movie and the Gunn doesn't seem to know what the hell to do with her. See, she's the only survivor of the original unit sent to the island and is, for the first half of the movie, starring in her own digressive b-plot about the dictator's right hand man trying to marry her (A bit that's fun as long as it lasts, if completely pointless), gets teamed up with the other main characters towards the end and continues to not contribute much of anything. If anything, the movie completes her transformation from tragic character driven to madness by an abusive relationship to Quirky Manic Pixie Dreamgirl Waifubait that Birds of Prey started. And by the way, boys, she's single now.
I suppose that's one of the main differences between Snyder and Gunn. Gunn has little shame to indulge in all the low brow nerd fetishes of tits, gore and guns that someone like Snyder considers to be beneath him. Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing, I prefer Gunn going balls out with his sleazier impules rather than trying to reign them in like he did for Guardians of the Galaxy. There is something like a recognizable directorial vision there. But TSS just doesn't really excel at what it's doing. It's too sentimental and not quite nasty enough to be genuinely transgressive. Gunn certainly brings a compelling visual identity to the material, if he got himself a good writer, I wouldn't mind him directing another one of those at some point. But as it is, it stands as a bunch of little vignettes of action and characterization that are pretty good, for the most part, but don't amount to anything really outstanding.
