Sui­cide Squad

What are movies for? Well, depend­ing on who you ask, their func­tion can be to edu­cate or enlight­en, telling sto­ries that expand our under­stand­ing of the world by trans­port­ing us to actu­al or entire­ly imag­ined places. But movies are also mass enter­tain­ment, at least at the very top end of the scale; prod­ucts cre­at­ed, pack­aged and released accord­ing to pre­vail­ing mar­ket forces. As con­sumers, we like to think that what we say and think has some influ­ence on the kinds of movies that are pro­duced. But it doesn’t. Not really.

We live in an age where vast com­mu­ni­ties of over-indulged, under-sexed fans have col­lec­tive­ly bought into the idea that movies like Sui­cide Squad are made with their best inter­ests at heart. Yet fan pow­er is one of the great myths of our era – the result of care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed glob­al fan bases which Hol­ly­wood mobilis­es as and when it pleas­es. Which is not to say that true fans count for squat. Dead­pool was suc­cess­ful pre­cise­ly because it spoke to its audi­ence in their own lan­guage, but the real­i­ty is that a project being financed off the back of some leaked test footage is no more evi­dence of fan pow­er than it is a vic­to­ry for agile mar­ket research.

Through­out all the usu­al pre-game build up, Sui­cide Squad writer/​director David ​“Fuck Mar­vel” Ayer has been at great pains to reas­sure DC fans, as he is con­trac­tu­al­ly oblig­ed to, that he is one of them, that this movie is for them. Even if you sin­cere­ly believe that, it doesn’t change the fact that the only peo­ple Ayer need­ed to pla­cate in the first place are the stu­dio bean coun­ters who have the pow­er to green­light his next project. Still, the metic­u­lous groom­ing of ​“built-in” audi­ences long before pro­duc­tion even gets under­way reveals some­thing of the cyn­i­cal and insid­i­ous nature of mod­ern moviemak­ing. Because while Sui­cide Squad is unlike­ly to sur­pass many people’s inflat­ed expec­ta­tions, from a mar­ket­ing point of view it is an emphat­ic slam dunk.

DC and Warn­er Bros are play­ing the long game, after all, and although a lot still depends on how this par­tic­u­lar assem­blage is received, they know that whip­ping fans into a state of linen-moist­en­ing hys­te­ria is the only insur­ance pol­i­cy they need. Even if Sui­cide Squad doesn’t break box office records, these twinned stu­dios will con­tin­ue to engen­der a sense of enti­tle­ment and empow­er­ment among fans as they look to expand their embry­on­ic cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse. Have super­hero block­busters become too big to fail? Per­haps, but maybe it’s more a case of tra­di­tion­al­ly risk averse stu­dios shift­ing their pri­or­i­ties, invest­ing more time and ener­gy into engag­ing their tar­get audi­ence months, if not years, before the point of purchase.

It should come as no sur­prise that Sui­cide Squad feels like an extend­ed trail­er because – doy – that’s exact­ly what it is: a two-hour drum roll for future DCEU instal­ments which epit­o­mis­es the wider trail­er­fi­ca­tion of block­buster cin­e­ma. Reports that Sui­cide Squad was recut to be more like its ter­rif­ic ​‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’ beat-matched trail­er may be accu­rate or com­plete­ly wide of the mark (reshoots and recuts are par for the course for major stu­dio pro­duc­tions), but what’s clear enough is that pack­ag­ing and pro­mo­tion are now as impor­tant than the final product.

That ear­ly teas­er has been viewed over 57 mil­lion times since it was released back in Jan­u­ary, and it has been pro­ceed­ed by a steady stream of equal­ly lurid, sim­i­lar­ly effec­tive adver­tis­ing. If just a quar­ter of those peo­ple make the trip to their local mul­ti­plex on open­ing week­end, then Sui­cide Squad will have made back its $250m bud­get plus change. Remem­ber, this isn’t Bat­man or Super­man we’re talk­ing about but a bunch of sec­ond string com­ic-book char­ac­ters whose pop cul­ture stock was com­par­a­tive­ly low up until very recent­ly. That this is one of the most antic­i­pat­ed movies of the year is pret­ty incred­i­ble when you stop and think about it.

Any film that announces itself as brash­ly and force­ful­ly as this is invari­ably going to come under intense scruti­ny from crit­ics and fans alike. As a result, in this instance it’s hard to shake the feel­ing that not every­one behind the scenes was on the same page. Tonal­ly it’s all over the place. The pop music sound­tracked action sequences are tame. The sto­ry, which sees a task force of socio­path­ic anti­heroes assigned to take down an evil gyrat­ing sor­cer­ess (a mis­cast Cara Delev­ingne) in an epic two-act bat­tle royale, is a lit­tle under­cooked. And even though the film’s anar­chic, unpre­dictable humour – inten­tion­al or oth­er­wise – is part of the charm, most of the gags land well with­in Marvel’s wheelhouse.

Still, despite some seri­ous flaws, Sui­cide Squad has a lot going for it, most notably some crack­ing female char­ac­ters (take a bow Vio­la Davis, as fed­er­al pup­pet mas­ter Aman­da Waller, and Mar­got Rob­bie, as psy­cho Bar­bie Harley Quinn), not to men­tion Jared Leto’s blinged-up, bugged-out Jok­er and Will Smith’s wise-ass assas­sin, Dead­shot. Divi­sive though it may prove to be, iron­i­cal­ly it’s the film itself that is polarised, which makes the whole thing odd­ly com­pelling in a vio­lent high-speed col­li­sion kind of way. Like us, you may be left won­der­ing what might have been had Ayer opt­ed to do some­thing dark­er with the material.

The con­sen­sus now is that, try as they might, DC just can’t seem to find the right for­mu­la. But do they real­ly need to? That’s the big­ger con­cern – the stu­dios behind the super­hero boom have a huge man­date to keep their word, but it’s actu­al­ly safer for them to con­sis­tent­ly over-promise and under-deliv­er rather than sim­ply churn out good to aver­age movies with min­i­mal hype. Remem­ber the sen­sa­tion­al first trail­er for Man of Steel? Remem­ber how much Man of Steel sucked? Yet it still made a but­t­load of cash, paving the way for an under­whelm­ing sequel and an expand­ed slate that’s set to take us through to 2020. This pat­tern doesn’t look like being bro­ken any time soon. There will be more miss­es and hope­ful­ly a few hits along the way. So let’s start tak­ing these movies, one by one, for what they are: pop­ulist confectionary.

Sui­cide Squad won’t change your life, but it’s good (un)clean, sil­ly fun that doesn’t demand to be tak­en seri­ous­ly (one of the main char­ac­ters is called Cap­tain Boomerang, fer­chrisakes!), and as such it is one of the more refresh­ing­ly uncom­pli­cat­ed sum­mer block­busters in recent memory.