Cinemavenger

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The Suicide Squad

If you launched a new anti-diarrhea medicine aimed at drunks and called it Bar Stool but it unexpectedly killed thousands of boozehounds by causing their bodies to literally fill with shit, would you try again a few years later with a hopefully-less-fatal version called "The Bar Stool?" No, you fucking would not.

Despite making the box office its bitch, 2016's Suicide Squad is widely considered to be another failure for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). It screwed up far more than it nailed - the director has even admitted that he chose the wrong Big Bad (what the actual fuck?!) - and critics understandably ass-rammed it. You'd think DC would cut its losses (well, really, count its cash) and move on.

That is, unless you've seen just how easily and completely DC can fuck up making superhero flicks in an era when even the most mediocre superhero movies bank mad moolah. So, of course, DC decided to make a sequel to (and at the same time a remake of) Suicide Squad a mere five years later and call it The Suicide Squad.

The "squad" is really just a bunch of criminals - some with super powers - that get a hall pass out of prison from time to time to take on suicide missions. If they survive, they get 10 or 20 years lopped off of their consecutive life sentences. That's some motivation, huh? I guess it makes as much sense as why the world needs them at all when actual superheroes are everywhere just waiting to get their spandex dirty in the name of truth, justice, and the Corporate Way.

The equally crazy-and-sexy-as-fuck Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie "The Automaton") and Colonel Rick Flagg ("Billy" Joel Kinnaman) are back, and they're joined by newcomers Bloodsport (Idris Elba "Macaroni"), Peacemaker (John "Despues De La" Cena), a half-shark guy, and a rat-controlling chick, among others. Their mission is to destroy a giant, cyclops starfish thing, which turns out to be simultaneously way less fun and way more stupid than it sounds.

If making international treasure Nathan "Mal" Fillion unrecognizable in a cameo role wasn't bad enough, director James "Potato" Gunn runs his movie into an exposition-shaped wall midway through before shortchanging us on Harley bits, which is all anyone came for anyway.

Actual suicide might be preferable.

August 13, 2021