Here Are the Most Savage Things Critics Are Saying About ‘Suicide Squad’
After what feels like three years worth of marketing, promotion and weird ass Jared Leto pranks, DC’s Suicide Squad is finally, almost unbelievably, opening this week. Are you excited? The trailers sure made it look like you should be.
But here’s the thing about trailers – boy, can they be deceiving. Because, yeah, the reviews are in and they are, well, decidedly not good. Here are the worst of the worst.
What even is this thing?
“It may be pointless to hold the main plot of ‘Suicide Squad’ against it. What fun there is can be found elsewhere, in the costumes and the banter and the exploration of metahuman psychology. Or at least in the dead-serious, delightfully mischievous performances of Will Smith and Viola Davis.”
– New York Times
“You can’t expect a lot of rational behavior when you’re watching a cast of characters that includes a jungle witch, a guy who shoots fire out of his hands, an alligator man, and Will Smith trying to be anyone but Will Smith.”
– San Jose Mercury New
“If you’re going to make an entire movie about the United States government deciding to release a loose selection of murderous psychopaths into the wild, you should probably come up with a good goddamned reason for them to do so. There are many problems with Suicide Squad, all of which unwind from the fundamental fact that the movie is so half-assed, it never even bothers to justify why all these terrible bad guys are together in the first place.”
– The New Republic
Something happened during editing…
“Suicide Squad feels like it was re-drafted in the editing room. It’s clumsy, disrupted by at least eight different plodding flashbacks, filled with lines of dialogue that cut well into trailers but make zero sense in context, and patched up with an embarrassment of rock-along musical cues.”
– AV Club
“There are so many gaps and dodgy edits in these parts of Suicide Squad that the movie sometimes plays like a trailer for itself.”
– The Village Voice
“Its plot is maddeningly circular, with the Suicide Squad getting activated to fight a frustratingly silly-looking antagonist who wouldn’t be around if someone hadn’t tried to put together the Suicide Squad. ”
– Buzzfeed News
What’s the deal with Joker?
“Part James Cagney, part Heath Ledger (who also had a touch of Cagney), Leto doesn’t seem so much unhinged as unhygienic, like a crazy Method actor with no safe word. When he paws his little blonde thing, you wonder how she can stand his rotten breath: Is that why she’s swooning?”
– Vulture
“Again, it’s baffling to me that Joker is in this movie, has so little to do, and is not the villain. It’s hard to even judge Leto as Joker because there’s not quite enough to go on. How is Leto’s Joker as a villain? I have no clue, because in this movie he’s just some dude who wants his girlfriend back.”
– UPROXX
The Enchantress
“[T]he worst thing about ‘Suicide Squad,’ which arrives after a year-long onslaught of hype and advertising and social media chatter, is how toothless and timid the film is. This was supposed to be an edgy, subversive, not-so-serious picture that would upend traditional superhero-movie formulas and bring some levity to the sour, dank DC Extended Universe.
“Instead, ‘Suicide Squad’ turns out to be about a 6,000 year-old evil spirit named the Enchantress who takes over the body of an archeologist (Cara Delevinge) and makes her wiggle her hips in a chain-mail bikini while summoning an army of eggplant-faced CGI monsters to wipe out mankind. I am not making this up.”
– The Miami Herald
“But the evil is never properly defined and, worse, isn’t personified in a way to balance the firepower of the opposition. In a fuzzy and hokey manner that encourages immediate viewer checkout, unlimited malevolence is made to reside in an ancient witch goddess whose physical heart literally is held by Waller and whose horrific spirit insinuates itself into a modern archeologist (played by Cara Delevingne).”
– The Hollywood Reporter
The Enchantress is “the lamest DC villain since Sharon Stone stalked ‘Catwoman.'”
– Variety
Blame David Ayer
“I’d say it’s Ayer’s willingness to go all limp-dick and compromise his hardcore action bona fides for a PG-13 crowdpleaser that would rather ingratiate than cut deep, or even cut at all. My heart sank during the film’s big battle between the Squad and zombie soldiers. You heard me: zombies! The walking dead aren’t the only clichés that eat away at the potential in this material. Superfreaks become supersweeties and Suicide Squad: Dawn of Dullness(my subtitle) does the impossible. Forget Batman v Superman — at least it tried. This botch job makes Fantastic Four look good.”
–Rolling Stone
