The Suicide Squad (2021)

[The Joker]

[The Joker]

New Poster:




Taking inspiration from one of the Suicide Squad posters from 2016.

[The Joker]

Empire Magazine Cover.

[The Joker]

New trailer.

Pretty much what you would expect. DC's Guardians of the Galaxy redux with Deadpool humor and jokes. For some reason I didn't realize (or forgot) that Sylvester Stallone is voicing King Shark. Which is cool. Been a shark lover since childhood (thanks JAWS), and I dig the character. Even the CW version of King Shark provided some entertaining episodes on The Flash, although his CW origin was a little too Beauty and the Beast-lite for my tastes. Outside of Shark, and Harley, not really feeling the rest, and could care less. Although Starro as the villain might just increase my interest a little bit due to my predisposition for liking giant monsters.

Really could have done without butthole eyes Petey Davidson in this.   

[The Laughing Fish]

Pretty much what you would expect. DC's Guardians of the Galaxy redux with Deadpool humor and jokes.

Yuck, count me out. I haven't bothered watching the trailer, though I've heard about the moronic dick jokes on display. Garbage.

Unless Affleck makes a surprise cameo or something, I reckon this thread should be moved into the Other DC Films & TV thread.

[The Joker]

Unless Affleck makes a surprise cameo or something, I reckon this thread should be moved into the Other DC Films & TV thread.

Now wouldn't that be a gas? Yeah right.

Sure, move it. Hell, I had to go thru my own posts to remember which sub forum I started this in when leaving the link for the latest trailer. 

[Silver Nemesis]

This is a hard pass for me. I recently watched The Fantabulastic Birds of Prey: Or the Unbearable Lightness of Being Harley Quinn (2020), and I thought it was very poor. The script was puerile, obnoxious and unfunny (the same screenwriter has also written The Flash film ), and I thought the movie as a whole was Day-Glo woke trash dripping with misandry and ill-judged edgelord humour. It reminded me of Rachel Talalay's Tank Girl (1995) crossed with Deadpool and Kick-Ass. It also contained some of the worst screen translations of DC characters I've ever seen. IMO it's down there with Suicide Squad (2016) as the worst of the DCEU.

In general, I'm bored to death of these quirky CBMs where they play pop music in the background of every single scene. I get it – the juxtaposition of violent imagery and chirpy music is meant to be funny, but do they have to do it so incessantly? The fact the Birds of Prey movie averaged higher critic scores than Joker (2019) or Snyder's Justice League (2021) is a sad reflection on the current state of film journalism. Honestly, if Tank Girl came out today I think the critics would probably rave over it for purely ideological reasons.

As for The Suicide Squad, there's nothing in the trailer that appeals to me. I can't stand Pete Davidson and I'm not a fan of James Gunn. I love Stallone, but his voice isn't enough to draw my interest. The worst thing about this movie, for me, is that they're wasting Starro on it. I've got my own ideas for how Starro could be updated for a modern JLA comic or movie. The original Silver Age version seems to have been inspired by the Pairans from Koji Shima's Warning from Space (1956). Starro debuted in the comics just four years after that movie's release.

My idea for how to update Starro is to make it a Lovecraftian Eldritch Abomination and to emphasise the occult implications and cosmic horror elements pertaining to its mythology. What little we can see of its physical form would be represented as a vast biomechanical pentagram drifting through space, and anyone who looks directly at the central eye would be instantly driven insane. The first portents of Starro's coming would occur when various astronomers across the globe suddenly start losing their minds. Nobody understands the cause of the pandemic, but it gets worse the closer Starro draws to Earth. Apocalyptic cults of Starro-worshippers begin cropping up and practicing human sacrifices in all the major cities. Meteor showers rain across every continent, bringing with them the spores of Starro; here re-imagined as endoparasitoids resembling a cross between facehuggers and Metroids. Soon the spores spread like a plague and infect 99.9% of the Earth's population. Heroes and villains alike fall under Starro's control until only the Justice League members remain to do battle with them. Starro eclipses the sun and shrouds the Earth in darkness as the JLA fights desperately against the metahumans who have succumbed to its diabolical influence.

The atmosphere of mounting dread would be frightening and intense. Early in the story Martian Manhunter would sense the madness spreading, while elsewhere Batman, Cyborg and Flash investigate the cults that are terrorising their respective cities. Aquaman notices the ocean's echinoderms are responding to some extraterrestrial influence. A mentally-compromised Green Lantern returns to Earth, bringing Superman and Wonder Woman a dire warning that a cosmic threat is approaching. There could even be a creepy prologue where we seen Green Lantern fighting possessed versions of Hawkman and Hawkwoman in order to escape from Thanagar before Starro claims it.

I'd love to write a comic based on these ideas. Such a story would have made a great Justice League movie too. Instead Gunn will likely treat Starro as a joke and all that potential will be squandered. Such a waste.

[thecolorsblend]

I'd love to write a comic based on these ideas. Such a story would have made a great Justice League movie too. Instead Gunn will likely treat Starro as a joke and all that potential will be squandered. Such a waste.

My objection is far more pedestrian than that.

Starro is a JLA villain, full stop. He's too big for the Suicide Squad. He's just not an appropriate villain for them if we bear the source material in mind. Scaling Starro down to fit the Suicide Squad is just plain wrongheaded if you ask me.

[The Joker]

It's interesting that despite Justice League and Justice League Unlimited within the DCAU running from 2001 to 2005, there were no big multi part episodes featuring Starro as the big baddie. Best we got was a 2-parter taking place in Batman Beyond, and a quick cameo as a already captured specimen in Superman The Animated Series. I could easily envision Starro as a major villain to overcome in at least one of the 2 seasons JL had, but c'est la vie.

[The Dark Knight]

I'm not big on the Suicide Squad. The crude humor and annoying schoolyard tone isn't something I like DC being associated with. It's also why Rocksteady's new game doesn't excite me that much.

But David Ayer's Suicide Squad was different.

Ayer initially presented to the world a darker toned film that piqued my interest with a cameo appearance from Batman, the debut of the DCEU Joker and the suggestion of an abusive relationship with Harley Quinn. It commented on the death of Superman and the need to form new teams in his absence.

The trailers that followed became brighter and brighter, and coupled with reshoots, the film became something else entirely. The film was not allowed to be it's true self, whereas Gunn's movie seems to have free reign. Gunn's Suicide Squad fully embraces the annoying Marvel-eque tone, and that just isn't for me.

I had no interest at Fandome, and the same is true now.