I don't hate this film. I don't love it either. I kind of feel like this was a good film that was abused while growing up and ended up turning to a life of prostitution as a result. There are two main issues I had with it. First, the Joker subplot is fucking pointless. It serves no purpose to the rest of the film and detracts from it. The flashback scenes with him when telling Harley's backstory work, as is the scene with him at the very end. Something tells me that was all there was originally supposed to be, and then an exec said, "Wait, he's really popular! Do you see the press were getting on the casting? Put him in more!!" So they shoved this whole other b-story with him in. Every time the Joker showed up in present day it reminded me of that scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life where the Crimson Permanent Assurance attacks half-way through the film. I kept expecting a voice-over to come on and apologize for the assault from a different film. And maybe drop a building on the Joker. And speaking of the Joker, Leto portrayal is fucking horrible. He comes off as a combination of a gay stereotype and a gangster stereotype. Really bad ones from '50s B-movies. He's the very definition of trying too hard.
The other big issue - the tone is highly inconsistent. The first half of the film is very much the being raped by Hot Topic experience you get from the trailers. And then halfway through the music goes away and the editing and pacing change. It's as if after the first trailer was a success they said, quick, re-edit the film like that! But they only got half-way through editing before the picture had to be locked and just left it that way.
Those are my two biggest beefs. There are other little things, like issues you often have when playing in a larger universe where you wonder why the Suicide Squad is dealing with this huge world ending event instead of say, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash. The end credits sequence is kind of pointless in that the character in question already got the information Waller gives him from Lex's files. If you're not a fan of Will Smith you're not going to like this film as he does his usually Will Smith shtick with his character. He's playing Will Smith more than Deadshot.
There's a good film in here at times, breaking the surface now and then before being pulled under again. It was certainly better than Batman V Superman, not that that takes much.
Also Margot Robbie's ass is quite impressive.

I read somewhere that the film that got released is a mishmash of the directors vision/cut, more somber tone and less humor, and the recut version with a lighter tone/humor from Trailerpark that they screened for test audiences. All the reviews I've read, and the stuff you say Mike, certainly lends themselves to this being the case with the final product.

that's what I'M talkin' 'bout.

So first Suicide Squad fans were petitioning to have Rotten Tomatoes shut down. Now they're threatening to sue Warner Brothers for false advertising because there wasn't enough Joke in the film. I see two possibilities here. Suicide Squad fans are just plain idiots. Or, and this is my theory, the studio is the one planting people to drum all this up to get publicity.

darkness wrote:First trailer:

[youtube][/youtube]

Watch this again. You can clearly see Ayer was shooting for something different, then somebody gave it the Guardians of the Galaxy treatment in a trailer, then BvS underwhelmed, then WB shit their pants and decided to shove jokes in (that don't work). SS is a fucking hot mess. Ayer is playing good soldier, saying the final cut is his cut, because he doesn't want to end up in Director's Jail next to Josh Trank. But make no mistake, this movie is approaching Fantastic Four levels of horrific editing and reshoots all over the place. And yes, Joker more or less sucks, although the fact that he's not given one engaging line of dialogue doesn't help. I've read a bit about some of the cut scenes and original structure, I think if the studio had gotten out of Ayer's way we would have had a better movie. They fucked this one up good. Which is too bad, because you can piece together what they set out to do and all of the original ideas were pretty much fine.

Looks like Leto is trying to distance himself from this film now, even though he's pretty much the single worst thing in it.

batman-news.com wrote:He was very honest about the film this weekend; his disappointment in what he’s learned of the theatrical cut (he’s still not seen the film); feeling sort of tricked into being a part of something that had been pitched to him very differently; thinking it would’ve been more artistic than what it became; feeling overwhelmed by the hate regarding the look and choices…

darkness wrote:I don't hate this film. I don't love it either. I kind of feel like this was a good film that was abused while growing up and ended up turning to a life of prostitution as a result. There are two main issues I had with it. First, the Joker subplot is fucking pointless. It serves no purpose to the rest of the film and detracts from it. The flashback scenes with him when telling Harley's backstory work, as is the scene with him at the very end. Something tells me that was all there was originally supposed to be, and then an exec said, "Wait, he's really popular! Do you see the press were getting on the casting? Put him in more!!" So they shoved this whole other b-story with him in. Every time the Joker showed up in present day it reminded me of that scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life where the Crimson Permanent Assurance attacks half-way through the film. I kept expecting a voice-over to come on and apologize for the assault from a different film. And maybe drop a building on the Joker. And speaking of the Joker, Leto portrayal is fucking horrible. He comes off as a combination of a gay stereotype and a gangster stereotype. Really bad ones from '50s B-movies. He's the very definition of trying too hard.
The other big issue - the tone is highly inconsistent. The first half of the film is very much the being raped by Hot Topic experience you get from the trailers. And then halfway through the music goes away and the editing and pacing change. It's as if after the first trailer was a success they said, quick, re-edit the film like that! But they only got half-way through editing before the picture had to be locked and just left it that way.
Those are my two biggest beefs. There are other little things, like issues you often have when playing in a larger universe where you wonder why the Suicide Squad is dealing with this huge world ending event instead of say, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash. The end credits sequence is kind of pointless in that the character in question already got the information Waller gives him from Lex's files. If you're not a fan of Will Smith you're not going to like this film as he does his usually Will Smith shtick with his character. He's playing Will Smith more than Deadshot.
There's a good film in here at times, breaking the surface now and then before being pulled under again. It was certainly better than Batman V Superman, not that that takes much.
Also Margot Robbie's ass is quite impressive.

finally saw it and agree with all of this. it was exactly the film the DC universe brought upon itself when it let snyder dictate the tone of where it's going. i didn't hate it as much as i expected to, but thought it was just kind of there and immediately forgettable, which is sad considering how many characters they blew making this. if joker had been a post-credits scene or something, it would have been better. croc guy served little to no purpose, either.