7 Things about James Gunn's Suicide Squad

1. Terrible CG Characters

James Gunn gave us Groot and Rocket from the Guardians of the Galaxy, so it would follow that he should be able to replicate creating a well made CG character using Hollywood A list celebrities. King Shark is a painfully forgettable mess, especially with Sylvester Stallone grunting and slurring his handful of lines. Weasel was seemingly made to be as awful a character design as possible, with no real reason or explanation to it's absolute comical shittiness. Then there is the film's big bad, SPOILER ALERT, its Starro the Conqueror, a giant space starfish. It's all just so absurd that it detracts from what might have been a workable theme.

2. The Theme that Wasn't

American Deniability could have been a massive theme here, with US astronauts finding Starro in space and bringing it to Earth, where it starts Cosmic Horror mind controlling people. After that it's contained, packed up, and then shipped to a small faux Latin American country, and the experiments continue on a level that are horrific and sickening. There is a huge rift between John Cena (played by John Cena) some guy in a t-shirt, and Stacker Pentacost (Idris Elba deserved better than this) where Cena is a strange pastiche of Captain America, but only in context of he loves the government and will do anything to protect it and it's secrets. T shirt guy wants America to be held accountable for this, and Elba kind of wanders between the two, finding a way to secure their freedom while keeping the dark secret.

3. The Great Diversionary Raid

The beginning of the movie starts with a Suicide Squad beach landing against Corto Maltese, where about a dozen villains under command from Waller, attempt to storm a beach, are betrayed, and then play out what a failed Normandy would have looked like. A bunch of unarmed weirdos, a bunch of celebrity cameos, against a wall of latino soldiers with automatic rifles. They're killed almost to the last, with Harley 'somehow' escaping, Weasel washing up not quite drowned after the credits, and Michael Rooker's silky silky blonde hair paddling back out to sea where Waller blows his head off for desertion (despite being unarmed and the only survivor).

The Diversion wasn't for Corto Maltese, it was for the audience. A bunch of Z list villains got cameos, along with actors playing them, to be killed. The landing accomplished nothing other than adding filler time and characters to the screen. Herley's inclusion was just another point of deception. Thanks for wasting my time, Gunn.

4. Boondock Saint's III: Something Something Harley Quinn

I get it, Harley Quinn is a badass.

But the root of her character is the Harlequin, a clown, something funny and amusing, a little nutty. Harley is never funny, never amusing, she ranges from being shot at, to being a Boondock Saint gunning people down in a way that makes John Wick and Neo seem like amateurs. She then wipes out a good company of Corto Maltese soldiers with a spear, that for one scene has cartoon flowers coming out of it, with no explanation, and never it never comes back around. Did someone else write that entire scene? Did the quicky death flowers get cut for not being thematically fitting? What the actual flowery fuck?

When she isn't killing people, she's got bad one liners, and is a completely flat sociopath.

Disappointing.

5. Cleaning House?

At the end of the movie, the only surviving members of Suicide Squad are Harley Quinn, Idris Elba, and Rat Girl. Everyone else was been shot, stabbed, stepped on, or collapsed in a building. Oh, and King Shark has survived, but *shrug*.

If I were more conspiratorial I would bring up something about every single white male character being killed, mostly by each other, but this isn't the time or place.

6. The Tragedy of Amanda Waller

The mastermind and architect of the Suicide Squad was previously as cold as glacial ice, unflappable. She handled the miscreants and degenerates from the Squad with a steady hand.

In round two, she spends most of her time screaming, her team members going off script, being forced to carry through on death threats, and then going into a screaming spitting rage when Elba and the surviving squad members turn back to go fight Starro instead of leaving the space butthole to conquer and consume the island of Corto Maltese. She's millimeters from pushing the head bomb buttons when her own support staff blackjack's her with a piece of equipment, knocking her out stone cold, and taking over to support Elba and company fighting Starro.

Talk about robbing a character of their dignity, especially a black woman in a position of power.

Disgraceful.

7. Wasted Talent

There are quite a few highly ranked and highly capable actors in Suicide Squad, and none of them get to flex their talent. Peter Capaldi is completely wasted in his role as Starro's handler. The actor who plays the president of Corto Maltese gets a few lines and then is shot, and he has an IMDB page a quarter mile long since he is a BFD in Spain and South America. Margot Robbie is reduced to a gun carrier. Elba has a few scenes, but nothing really that great.

John Cena is in it, and he has less acting talent than Dwayne Johnson.

Freebie: The Birds

Who sets birds on fire?

There was absolutely no reason for that.

I don't need Fidel Castreaux setting an aviary of exotic birds on fire to know he's a bad guy, he was one of the people overseeing who was sent to be fed to Starro