The Suicide Squad (2021)

[theScribbler]

The Suicide Squad (2021)

aka Suicide Squad 2







https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6334354/

[shevek]

Thanks for posting this, Scribbler - I didn't notice this video until now. Watched it all the way through, and the upcoming movie looks like it could be pretty hilarious, especially with all of those obscure incompetent villains at the beginning. "Mongal" (the sister of Mongul II...long dead in the actual comics, but making an appearance recently in the DC Superhero Girls cartoon) is a favorite, but too bad it doesn't look like she's going to have that long red hair. This could be a pretty great flick if it's in the general presentation mode of Guardians.

[Maskripper]

New (r-rated) trailer:


Yeah, can be a fun watch....

[Dogfish]

There's daylight, there's a cool looking monster, there's daylight, it's funny, the music isn't incredibly fucking obvious, there's light in the interior locations, there's my boy Sharkface or whatever he's called, and it's lit properly so you can see what's happening.

Fuck this trailer is already forty seven billion times better than the last effort.

[Danorian]

Pretty sad when Starro is a Suicide Squad villain before a Justice League one, but TPTB decided to go full retard with the Justice vs Darkseid right off the bat!

[Mr. X]

So Doctor Who is in this (Carapaldi?). Also Davidson looks like he's playing himself. Yes at least some sunlight.

[Lurkndog]

This is looking good, cautiously optimistic. Seems like it might have some of the bite that the comic had when John Ostrander was writing it.

Hopefully we get Captain Boomerang being an absolute bastard in this one.

[Dogfish]

New trailer looks like there's even more goodness going on.

Way I see it this really can't miss. It's Gunn making a wacky ensemble hero movie where he gets to kill characters off on a whim, or not, with an R rating so anything goes. It's got Idris Elba who is gold on this sort of ridiculousness (see Pacific Rim), it's got Margot Robbie dropping more of that 12/10 Harley Quinn magic and, as I said before, my boy sharkface looks great.

Even if he fucks this up it's still probably going to be the best DCEU movie so far.

[shevek]

That's King Shark, Dogfish, but your enthusiasm is appreciated. The character's previously been in episodes of The Flash TV show.

This looks like it's going to be great for DC - their equivalent of Guardians of the Galaxy meets Deadpool.
Something about it gives me a Mystery Men vibe, too. (What the hell is Ben Stiller even doing these days?)

The general public is about to get very familiar with a bunch of obscure D-list supervillains and a gigantic starfish.
Hopefully that will be good for the sales of comic books and Funko Pops. Looking forward to it!

[Maskripper]

So, they released a new trailer....some days after the other trailer:



:-)

[Dogfish]

So it's here, not everybody will probably have seen it for about a week I suppose.

Reports are positive. Could this finally be the movie that turns the DC movies around?

[Visitor]

Reports are positive. Could this finally be the movie that turns the DC movies around?

One complaint about the DC universe was they kept replacing the executives at the top so frequently that there was no consistency when they make a decent movie with future ones. So even if this works by the time the next ones are released in a few years they may be reboots to fit the "(tunnel) vision" of the next producer.

[ivandobsky]

Didn't they release this a few years ago? Another remaster?

[tallyho]

Didn't they release this a few years ago? Another remaster?

The original was "Suicide Squad"
This is a second film "THE Suicide Squad"
It's made with extra 'THE"

[Visitor]

It was a joke title that stuck.

[Dogfish]

Didn't they release this a few years ago? Another remaster?

Slightly reboot/partial sequel. Because the first one was dogshit but they want as much Margot Robbie in the continuity as possible because she's carrying the DCEU right now.

[Dogfish]

Okay so I stayed up for the streaming of it. And it's good.

I'm not sure it's great, probably won't stay with me that long, but it's very good.

Also Margot Robbie, seriously, is there a hotter woman on the planet? The crush I have on that woman is borderline embarrassing.

Final point, my boy sharkface is awesome. If I had to choose I think the Harley Quinn TV show King Shark is the better of the two, but he's a great character. Got a lot of time for my giant sharkfaced son.

[NotUv2]

Yeah, definitely what a Suicide Squad movie should be. Just straight-ahead, zany fun. Lots of gore, lots of laugh-out-loud moments, often both at the same time. They plainly had a blast leaning into some of the very stupidest characters DC continuity had to offer. King Shark was indeed priceless, really the whole team was good fun... and so great to see Harley learning to recognize red flags in a relationship. Growth!

[Dogfish]

Regarding Harley and spotting red flags, it pains me that because of the various backward homophobic parts of the world and the movie industry's interest in their money we will never see Margot Robbie's Harley reach her final form of pairing up with Poison Ivy. They are the most wholesome couple in either the DC or Marvel universes, and because Chinese people would lose their shit if they saw Margot Robbie make out with another ludicrously hot A-list actress we are denied it.

For shame.

[shevek]

because Chinese people would lose their shit if they saw Margot Robbie make out with another ludicrously hot A-list actress we are denied it.

For shame.

I have zero problem with an explicit Harley/Ivy relationship because when done correctly it is one of the hottest comic book pairings imaginable. What Ivy could do with some well-placed vines!

However, it's not just China, although they are becoming hegemonic. It's pretty much a problem ANYWHERE outside the West.

Someday, my friend, someday. I look forward to seeing this movie this weekend..and although I am hearing that it's not as good as you say it is, I'll reserve judgment.

[Visitor]

Margot Robbie is pushing for a Harley/Ivy romance in the next Birds of Prey movie.

[NotUv2]

Good for her. Hope they do it.

[Mr. X]

I saw it. Its OK. Better than the first. Kind of drags. Not really a theater movie. You're not missing anything from a big screen. John Cena is pretty jacked. Stallone did a good job as well.

[NotUv2]

I was pleasantly surprised by how funny both Cena and Stallone turned out to be. Maybe not surprised, I know they can both manage comedy, but they both did make me LOL at certain points.

[shevek]

Margot Robbie is pushing for a Harley/Ivy romance in the next Birds of Prey movie.

There's not going to be another Birds of Prey movie. It lost money.
The movie that Poison Ivy would be in (if any) would be Gotham City Sirens.
The trio of Sirens actually IS Harley, Ivy and Selena.
However, we've already concluded that a Harley/Ivy simply will not fly in several huge markets outside the West.
So, unless cultural mores radically change in those areas in the next few years (highly unlikely), a Harley/Ivy pairing
will not happen in a blockbuster. It's much more likely to happen on television, which is segmented out by individual country for broadcast. I think they came very close already to expressing the relationship in the adult Harley Quinn cartoon.

[NotUv2]

There's not going to be another Birds of Prey movie. It lost money.

Not true, in point of fact. Although it was undoubtedly a disappointment, it made back more than its production budget, and its overall reception was also complicated by the early stages of the COVID pandemic. That was actually the very last movie I saw in a theatre before the pandemic fully hit.

[shevek]

There's not going to be another Birds of Prey movie. It lost money.

Not true, in point of fact. Although it was undoubtedly a disappointment, it made back more than its production budget, and its overall reception was also complicated by the early stages of the COVID pandemic. That was actually the very last movie I saw in a theatre before the pandemic fully hit.

All that article in Forbes says is that it passed the $200 million mark. It made more than its "production" budget, but it did not BREAK EVEN because it did not cover its additional **promotional* budget. And there will not be another Birds of Prey film - mark my words. Margot Robbie will continue to play the Harley character in other movies instead - we can hope and pray that Gotham City Sirens will take place since that would be the sexiest group of characters a DC movie can put on the screen.

As for Suicide Squad 2 - I just saw it. It was fun and ultraviolent and a bit of a slog. Ratcatcher was heartwarming.
There's not much to recommend specifically for the SHIP crowd, except for a scene where

Spoiler

Harley gets tortured by a taser stick, and during that scene, Robbie makes sure to portray her as relatively unperturbed, as she sings right through the torture

Here's the credits page with all of the attributions for the various comic creators. It's probably the biggest who's who of the comics industry I've seen in any movie. They all got paid, from what I understand (at least, those who are still alive).

suicide squad comic creators credits.jpg (243.61 KiB) Viewed 5390 times

[Mr. X]

I don't think anything is going to make a lot of money. Basically theaters are dead. The money would be in streaming. Used to be you went to a big movie in part for the special fx cause those movies were the only ones with a budget to pull that off. But now fx are available to more producers so you don't need a huge movie to show case them. Don't see why anyone is going to go to a theater anymore.

[Maskripper]

..... Don't see why anyone is going to go to a theater anymore.

Perhaps because you can see the movie first there (normally).
Perhaps because you have a screen there that is SOOOO much bigger.
Perhaps because the audio there is much better (unless you have a really good surround setup)
Perhaps because it's a special experience to watch a movie in a crowded cinema (unless there are annoying folks in your surrounding that aren't behaving like they should)
....etc.

Back to topic:
Guess I will watch this one next week in the cinema, or the one afterward.
Don't expect too much, but an entertaining time....it should provide.

[NotUv2]

All that article in Forbes says is that it passed the $200 million mark. It made more than its "production" budget, but it did not BREAK EVEN because it did not cover its additional **promotional* budget.

The Forbes piece does in fact account for this if you actually read the whole thing.

The R-rated DC Films flick has earned 2.43x its $82 million budget. It’ll eventually break even when it comes to early VOD this Tuesday.

Not something I'm inclined to doubt them on. Birds of Prey very likely broke even, at the least, in the big picture. That said:

And there will not be another Birds of Prey film - mark my words.

Whatever the ultimate breakdown of the box office, all the current news indicates you're right about this. It's a pity.

Margot Robbie will continue to play the Harley character in other movies instead - we can hope and pray that Gotham City Sirens will take place since that would be the sexiest group of characters a DC movie can put on the screen.

That's a nice thought, though.

[Dogfish]

I don't think there really needs to be another Birds of Prey movie regardless. It's one of the best DC offerings but they still don't have the MCU situation where there's a modular universe they can fit movies and TV shows into with a functional continuity. And maybe they should stop trying. They made a movie, it was good because Margot Robbie, but a sequel along similar lines? Nah. Just put Harley Quinn in something else. I liked the other characters in that movie, I don't remember their names and I'm not going to try.

Gotham City Sirens would be a good shout.

It's staggering how poorly managed the whole thing has been though. I mean when you look at how the MCU has dozens of characters cast, established, able to pop up across the universe, it's very efficient and it's pretty great. But it's not the work of movie geniuses, hell a lot of MCU movies are pretty average. WB/DC not even being able to establish consistency even down to an individual character level is pure incompetence.

[NotUv2]

It's staggering how poorly managed the whole thing has been though. I mean when you look at how the MCU has dozens of characters cast, established, able to pop up across the universe, it's very efficient and it's pretty great. But it's not the work of movie geniuses, hell a lot of MCU movies are pretty average. WB/DC not even being able to establish consistency even down to an individual character level is pure incompetence.

The MCU is a staggering achievement of administration and infrastructure in filmmaking. I think we take it for granted given how long it's been around, but the sheer number of movie projects it has coordinated, the way it's been able to keep them all within a fair range of quality even if most of them are never going to be Essential Cinema, and the breadth of time over which that's happened has never before been attempted in the history of film that I know of. It's certainly never been duplicated, and is clearly not easy to duplicate. There's a pretty profitable documentary about the moviemaking process waiting to made there, because that is a genuine story, it's a breakthrough in filmmaking much like Industrial Light and Magic was.

So I don't judge other studios by comparison with the MCU: it's a genuinely unique institution. WB/DC have, that much being said, not performed as well as they could have. The fact they had to bring the Guardians of the Galaxy director in to deliver a decent Suicide Squad movie is proof enough of that.

What I would love to see happen for DC properties is for them to get whoever is directing the animated content involved in the live-action stuff, or least to learn from what they're doing, b/c the DC animated movie universe is genuinely impressive and consistent in quality in a way that does almost match the MCU, and in a way that their live-action projects have simply not been.

[Mr. X]

If they want female empowerment they should use the idea from the Bruce Timm Justice League unlimited episode where the feale heroines are hypnotized to fight each other. Then they all have to fight Gal Gadot.

[shevek]

The R-rated DC Films flick has earned 2.43x its $82 million budget. It’ll eventually break even when it comes to early VOD this Tuesday.

Not something I'm inclined to doubt them on. Birds of Prey very likely broke even, at the least, in the big picture. That said:

Sorry to nitpick here, but the Forbes articles predicted that it *will* break even with VOD. I'm thinking that the break-even did NOT happen, because there would have been another article in Forbes eventually crowing about how it finally broke even...right?

Here is the article from CBR, which quotes Variety.

https://www.cbr.com/birds-of-prey-box-o ... -not-flop/

In essence, the movie has to deal with the *perception* that it was a flop, simply because it did not do remotely as well as Warner Brothers expected it to. It was the weakest earner by far of any DCEU film (even Shazam earned nearly 4 times its budget, compared to BoP's 2.5). So, more accurately, it was a serious *disappointment*. And that's why there won't be another one.

But as to the nitty-gritty of whether it actually even *broke even*, that is hard to say, because no article ever comes out and explicitly says, post facto, "the movie broke even." Instead, the writers dance around the issue so they can help Cathy Yan and Margot Robbie save face.

[NotUv2]

I'm thinking that the break-even did NOT happen, because there would have been another article in Forbes eventually crowing about how it finally broke even...right?

Uh... why? Forbes doesn't have any particular skin in "crowing" about anything, it's not some geek property persisting on rage- or triumph-clicks. That's one of the reasons I'm more inclined to trust them as a reporting outlet for these kinds of things: geek properties trying to propel some narrative or other are the ones generally not to be trusted, I'm certainly never willing to trust a "they're in the tank for the SJWs" narrative about an outlet like Forbes.

In essence, the movie has to deal with the *perception* that it was a flop, simply because it did not do remotely as well as Warner Brothers expected it to.

I expect this part is closer to the truth. I am a bit surprised that WB woudln't have taken the pandemic into account... but then, maybe there were other creative considerations, too. Like, none of the other BOP stars came out as strongly as Harley did in that movie, it was very much the Margot Robbie Show, and Robbie herself appears to have been frank that Harley works better as a supporting character than as a main protagonist.

Whatever the case, again, you would seem to be right that it ain't happening. I'm disappointed but hey, that's the biz.

[Visitor]

Movie studio accountants have a long.long, long history of playing number games for tax and profit sharing reasons. Unless the sales are so huge that you can't dispute it was a success or did so poorly at the box office that it doesn't make back even the production costs there is always room to quibble. Some films don't do well at the start but then pick up with video sales and later releases years later.

The fact actors and directors demand their share from gross instead of net revenues make it harder to calculate the break even point. Net revenue gets tweaked to make the film seem what the studios want it to be. It becomes a negotiating tool for future films.

[NotUv2]

It really is a mug's game to try to play movie studio accountant from outside the process, that much is true.

[shevek]

So folks, all numbers aside, here is an amazing story about the new Suicide Squad movie.

In case you were wondering who "Chris Lawton" and "Nancy Mae Lawton" were in the comic book creators' credits (see several posts
above)..they are not in the comic book industry at all.

They were a mother and son team - she was 44, he was approximately 18 - who submitted the character "Kaleidoscope" (shown briefly in the Belle Reve prison cafeteria scene) in 1982 to the Dial H For Hero feature in the back of The New Adventures of Superboy #36. The mom, Nancy Mae, passed away in 2016, but the son Chris is about 55, and still lives in the Fall River, MA area where he was reading DC Comics as a kid, with his mom.

Can you imagine how his mind was blown? I think you're going to see more of these DC movies snatching random Dial H for Hero one-shot characters for upcoming movies, especially in any further Suicide Squad sequels. The readers (who were not all kids!) who submitted them gave up all their rights, so they are there for the taking!

Here's the first (and only!) appearance of Kaleidoscope. A classic 1980s supervillainess cutie!

RCO023_1470299733.jpg (525.39 KiB) Viewed 5242 times

She's only in three pages, but just like the best 1980s characters, she got into some peril courtesy of knockout gas!

advantures-of-superboy-2.jpg (112.18 KiB) Viewed 5233 times

[NotUv2]

That's really cool! Good for them.

[tallyho]

Yes a nice touch, kudos to them.

[Lurkndog]

To me, The Suicide Squad (2021) answers the question "How grotesque can we make superheroes before the audience starts to tune out?"

It's not a badly made movie, it's just one I found difficult to enjoy.

On the plus side, I found Idris Elba to be a solid upgrade from Will Smith. His ability to unfold a pack of gum into a howitzer a la Iron Man 2 was preposterous, but kinda fun, and it made him different enough from Deadshot that he was his own thing. I dug the H.R. Giger helmet (and the fact that he actually wore it a fair amount of the time).

I wasn't crazy about how they handled Harley Quinn. I think they made her way too uber-competent. Harley should succeed wildly a lot of the time, but she should also fail wildly a lot of the time, and it would be every bit as entertaining. She's a wild card, not an ace.

[Maskripper]

Saw it last week in the cinema.
Watched now 2 movies in the cinema in two weeks. Already twice as much as last year....
I think it was a pretty insane, enjoyable, violent, and funny movie. Nothing brilliant, but highly entertaining for sure.
And I enjoyed the short "mask" scene a lot!

Spoiler

Ratcatcher 2 has this gas mask with her....for whatever reasons (not explained in the movie)....and she puts it on as the little star-things attach themselves to everyone's face. So she used the mask to protect herself...an interesting aspect....

Only a short scene, but somehow...interesting and sexy. ;-)

Some really bizarre and memorable scenes in this one.
That was fun!

[Dogfish]

I wasn't crazy about how they handled Harley Quinn. I think they made her way too uber-competent. Harley should succeed wildly a lot of the time, but she should also fail wildly a lot of the time, and it would be every bit as entertaining. She's a wild card, not an ace.

She's like some kind of super-ninja gymnast gun-bunny who is also a renown doctor of psychiatry. Once rid of Joker (who cramped her style a lot) she's easily one of the most capable Gotham universe characters.

Coupled to the fact Margot Robbie is probably one of the top female action movie stars of all time (there haven't been many to be fair, but holy fuck she's great in this* and Birds of Prey) so I wouldn't question it too much.




*The scene with the torturer and getting the key? Not a stunt double.