Films: Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad flyer & tickets

Today, I went to see the film 'Suicide Squad', which is to a certain extent based on the comics of the same name and the animation 'Batman: Assault on Arkham'. Being a fan of Batman villains/anti-heroes - though none of my absolute favourites were in this - I've been looking forward to the movie for a while. Also, my friend, Miseria, came to see this with me, and their favourite character from the comics was in it and I'm pretty sure Killer Croc's never been in a live action version before (besides perhaps extremely briefly in 'Gotham'), so my friend was happy!

I will try to keep this spoiler-free, so sorry if I'm vague about anything.

The initial reviews of the film were extremely poor, but after watching it I honestly don't see what the big problem was. I thought it was good! It was an action film, yes, but it had a decent storyline too and it made sense. Perhaps having the Joker & Harley Quinn sub-storyline slightly detracted from the main plot a little at times because the had to give screen time to setting up that relationship.

So, Harley Quinn and Joker: I don't really enjoy these two as a couple usually. In the animation,  [slight spoiler of 'Batman: Assault on Arkham' coming up here] Harley has been away from Joker and has actually realised how abusive and horrible he was to her and doesn't love him anymore...at first. Until he convinces her to go back to him again. [End of spoiler] I have no problem with Joker being like this, because he's a villain. I don't like that he does it, but as a character, I don't have a problem with him doing it. He's not supposed to be a nice guy. He's not "nice" to anyone at all actually. But in 'Suicide Squad' their relationship is somewhat changed. 

Harley Quinn poster

Well, you can't really say he's "nice" to Harley I guess, but at the same time, he tries to protect her and anything he does to her he does to himself as well (pretty much). This is not usually how this relationship is portrayed. Usually, she's just his and he likes having her around to manipulate and use because it's fun or useful or he gets attached to her. He doesn't care about her feelings much - or even at all. So I have to take this as a different version of these two, because it's really not like them. (Though Harley does have sudden outbursts about "sociopaths", and I think maybe in a scene when she's talking to El Diablo about his past she gets so angry with him because of her previous experiences with Joker, too...). 

Joker poster

Aside from that, I thought it was great to see all the characters that haven't been in live action before brought to life (as I said, technically Croc's been in 'Gotham', but it was for such a short scene and they never actually called him by name). I was pretty pleased with the selection of rogues that they chose.

Killer Croc poster

Enchantress poster

My personal favourites in were Enchantress/June Moone and El Diablo, which is unusual for me because I normally like characters that don't have supernatural powers, like Riddler, Scarecrow, and Mad Hatter. To be honest though, I quite enjoyed all of the characters in 'Suicide Squad', and even the ones I didn't like (Amanda Waller, I'm looking at YOU), were good in their roles. My friend's favourites were Croc, Enchantress, and Captain Boomerang (his pink unicorn toy appealed to them :P).

El Diablo poster

Captain Boomerang poster

The film seems to have had a lot of negative reviews already but I enjoyed it and If I had to give it a rating it would be 8.5/10.