Suicide Squad

[Dev7on]

ALSO! I want to get this off my chest....

Spoiler for Hidden:

Do you think Enchantress' origin is similar to Scirocco?? Because I think so.

[Arcana]

ALSO! I want to get this off my chest....

Spoiler for Hidden:

Do you think Enchantress' origin is similar to Scirocco?? Because I think so.

Not sure this needed spoiler protection, but fair enough:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Not really to me.  Scirocco wasn't inhabited by another being, my understanding was that he was "turned" like Vader to the Dark Side by a curse.  The Enchantress is a completely separate being from Dr. Moon, as the ending itself makes clear.  In terms of the overall "finding dark artifact in cave" part of the origin, that's common enough to be a distinct scifi/horror trope.

[doc7924]

They do a lot of things better.  Marvel has patience.  Look at the arc of the three Iron Man movies, the three Captain America Movies, the three Thor movies.  Since the first Iron Man movie, we've been watching these movies for eight years now.

Marvel movies also tend to be very character focused.  The Iron Man movies is not about Iron Man, they are about Tony Stark.  The Thor movies are about Thor the person not Thor the thunder god.  The Captain America movies are really about Steve Rogers.

The Avengers movie profited from both good things.  Patience let Marvel develop the characters in stand alone features that focused on the specific characters so we would know and care about them.  So when the Avengers movie comes out we don't have to develop these characters from scratch: we already know them.  We already know the prime antagonist Loki.  We already know the core heroes and Nick Fury.  We can just let the story flow organically.

But I think maybe the least appreciated thing Marvel does well is something it does because it was forced to.  Marvel couldn't make movies about its most popular characters and strongest properties.  It couldn't make Spiderman movies or X-Men movies or even Fantastic Four or Hulk movies because of licensing issues.  It couldn't make movies about the characters people knew the best.  So it had to go to the well and pull up less well-known characters.  Which is not to say that Captain America or Iron Man are unknowns, but compared to Spiderman their backstories are less familiar.  So Marvel couldn't rely on people just knowing who these characters were, and had to invent them for the movies.  Captain America and Iron Man have decades of twisted conflicting backstory.  Marvel had to reduce that down to something simple they could convey on-screen.  Marvel seems to be extremely good at taking a character like Captain America and distilling it down to something simple that movie goers can understand.  He's a naive eager boy-scout that just wants to fight for his country, and is gifted with the ability to do so but finds the politics of it to be something he didn't expect.  He's a straight arrow in a crooked world.  Tony Stark is a rich genius with engineer's syndrome: he thinks he can fix anything with technology.  But he also has PTSD (from multiple trauma) and guilt (also from multiple instances).  Tony Stark is easy to understand: he's tech-smart, but emotionally stunted.  His heart is in the right place but he doesn't have the morals or the boundaries that would prevent him from throwing gasoline on a fire to try to put it out.  Even Thor is someone audiences can relate to.  He's kind of a spoiled child trying to live up to his strict uncompromising father.

Marvel takes comic book characters with fifty years of history, waves a magic wand, and turns them into blank slates.  Then they try to extract a core nucleus of character and backstory that neophyte audiences will be able to appreciate and relate to, and then rebuilds their world around that core.  Asgard is what it is specifically because it serves to understand Thor.  SHIELD and HYDRA exist specifically in the forms they do because it is the world that creates the best opportunity to tell interesting stories about Steve Rogers, super-boy scout.  And in a synergy that feeds itself Marvel builds worlds to suit its characters, then adapts its characters to fit that world.  Ant-Man is the version he is because that fits into the MCU.  Spiderman very obviously is going to be an iteration of Spiderman that fits into the MCU with specific ties to the MCU version of Tony Stark.  I have faith that magic in the MCU will be explicitly a version of magic that fits the MCU and provides the best opportunity to tell an interesting Doctor Strange story, and the version of Doctor Strange we get will explicitly be the one that they can tell the best story about within the current MCU.

I guess if I had to summarize all of that, I'd say what Marvel does well that DC hasn't done well or even at all is they are really good world-builders.  The characters fit the environment and the story, the environment shapes the story and the characters, and the story serves the characters and the environment.  They set reasonable goals for the next step in world building, then execute that goal very well.  They do not try to do more than what their world can contain, but they always try to push the envelope of their world outward for the next set of movies to inhabit.

Notably, people complain that the Batman we see in BvS or the Superman we see in Man of Steel aren't the characters we know.  But actually, the Tony Stark in the MCU isn't really the Tony Stark we knew either, neither is the Thor or the Cap, taken literally.  But you know what?  We *like* the MCU Stark and Rogers and Thor.  And because of that, we see those characters through a prism where we can see how they touch the comic book material in certain places, and we forgive the fact that they aren't exact replicas because we think that the limited parts they did borrow connect the MCU versions of the characters sufficiently well.  We allow that the MCU Thor was "inspired by" the comic book Thor.  But that only works if you start with a character worth liking in the first place.  I think that's why many fans seem to simultaneously hate all the killing that Batman does in BvS and yet praise Ben Affleck for portraying the character.  We like Affleck's portrayal of Batman so we can forgive *him* the fact his Batman does things we think are out of character.  We aren't as crazy about Superman's characterization, so we are much harsher about the "fidelity" of that portrayal.

Perfectly said. As you say they took Cap and Iron Man and others and made them like real people and for the most part they kept the origins and background intact. The biggest deviation was the Thor film, but it didn't matter. You didn't need him as Don Blake turning into Thor, Thor was character enough.

I think the new Bruce Banner actor is great in the role. Before they always tried to make him this skinny, nerdy little guy and you don't have to. Bruce Banner is just as compelling a character as the Hulk is.

This is why I think DC does TV better like Flash and Arrow - they have time to build up slowly and it works.

[Arcana]

I think the new Bruce Banner actor is great in the role. Before they always tried to make him this skinny, nerdy little guy and you don't have to. Bruce Banner is just as compelling a character as the Hulk is.

I think the Eric Bana portrayal of Banner was actually pretty good.  I think you could see that inside of that guy the Hulk was always there under the surface.  He was someone with rage and personality issues.  I think the Edward Norton Banner suffers the problem you mention, that Banner is kind of milquetoast.  I could see why they went that way, but it turned the Banner/Hulk dichotomy into too much of a duality: two different people in (sort of) one body.  I really like the Mark Ruffalo version of Banner in that I see a little something of what I saw at times during Peter David's run on the Hulk where the Hulk wasn't just a monster that Banner turned into but was an aspect of Banner himself.  Although it was described as a multiple personality, it was actually characterized more as a splintered personality with the Hulk and Banner different aspects of the same person.  Ruffalo's Banner is interesting to me because he isn't "the other guy" to the Hulk's "other guy."  Whether he wants to admit it or not he is the Hulk.

Along those lines one thing I didn't like about Leto's Joker compared to Ledger's Joker is that in Suicide Squad the Joker is portrayed as actually running an organization.  The Suicide Squad movie is certainly not the first time the Joker has been portrayed as such, but to me the way it is portrayed undercut the manic unrestrained aspect of the Joker that Leto seemed to be trying to convey.  His Joker is a new age emo Joker that spends time scribbling on walls *and* runs a criminal organization?  The Leto Joker seems to be at least two different people, and not in an interesting multiple sides of personality way.  More like a pair of twins pretending to be one person and living separate lives.

The Ledger Joker is comprehensible even in his incomprehensibility.  We can at least conceptualize that Joker even if we can't actually relate.  We can at least conceptualize the Nicholson Joker even if we cannot relate.  I cannot really conceptualize the Leto Joker, and there's no such thing as the artistic decision to portray a character that can't be characterized by the audience (or if there is, its generally not a good decision).

When I look at the Bana Banner, I see the Hulk as something inside of him.  When I look at the Norton Banner, I see the Hulk as something he becomes.  When I look at the Ruffalo Banner, I see the Hulk as something he unleashes. 

When I look at the Leto Joker, I don't know what I see (figuratively, not literally: I have eyes).  And while there are those that like his version of the Joker, I still think that's a problem.

[Tenzhi]

When I look at Leto's Joker, I mostly see an actor.  And I don't mean that in the literal sense of "oh, look, it's that Leto guy in makeup".  I mean that this Joker is a run of the mill thug playing the part of a legend.  The more theatrical bits of window dressing are just there for show.

[Arcana]

When I look at Leto's Joker, I mostly see an actor.  And I don't mean that in the literal sense of "oh, look, it's that Leto guy in makeup".  I mean that this Joker is a run of the mill thug playing the part of a legend.  The more theatrical bits of window dressing are just there for show.

You know, if you told me that the official backstory was that the original Joker killed Robin, and Batman killed him in a moment of weakness and then never told anyone. and then a disturbed individual decided to try to copycat the Joker and then killed everyone who knew the difference, I'd buy that.

[eabrace]

When I look at Leto's Joker, I mostly see an actor.  And I don't mean that in the literal sense of "oh, look, it's that Leto guy in makeup".  I mean that this Joker is a run of the mill thug playing the part of a legend.  The more theatrical bits of window dressing are just there for show.

So more reminiscent of the Jokers gang in Batman Beyond, then?

[Taceus Jiwede]

So more reminiscent of the Jokers gang in Batman Beyond, then?

You know, if you told me that the official backstory was that the original Joker killed Robin, and Batman killed him in a moment of weakness and then never told anyone. and then a disturbed individual decided to try to copycat the Joker and then killed everyone who knew the difference, I'd buy that.

When  I see the movie this is what I am going imagine, also in Dawn of Justice Batman killed TONS of people.  So it wouldn't surprise me that much.

[Tenzhi]

I honestly don't recall him actually killing many people in DoJ.

[Taceus Jiwede]

[Arcana]

It was always just in passing, he never killed anyone with his hands but he did shoot a lot of vehicles full of people, blow up things with people near them/in them as well as running cars/barricades that people occupy over.  It was mostly left to "Maybe they aren't dead"  I don't remember the scenes exactly but I remember thinking to myself  a lot "Holy zonks Batman, you just killed that guy!"

To be fair, Tim Burton's Batman sorta-kinda kills people in a similar did-I-see-that way.  Consider when he blows up the Joker's smilex factory.  Also, the fight at the end when he hits the guy's head on the bell and lets him fall.  We don't see him die, but that's not really a survivable situation.

[Tenzhi]

I seem to recall thinking the same thing about some *police* that got wrecked chasing Batman in one of the first two Nolan movies.

[Arcana]

I seem to recall thinking the same thing about some *police* that got wrecked chasing Batman in one of the first two Nolan movies.

I think the Nolan movies did a very good job of defining that iteration of Batman independent of all others.  Nolan's Bruce Wayne doesn't have some specific aversion to killing in general.  Its very specifically shown in the first movie that Bruce Wayne is someone who believes the world is unjust and he wants to bring justice to it.  That doesn't mean no one can ever die.  That means he specifically cannot kill someone specifically to extract vengeance or as an expedient punishment.  In the same way that the police can't (or at least shouldn't) arbitrarily kill citizens but are explicitly allowed to use lethal force when necessary, I think Nolan's Batman believes it is not his place to dish out punishment.  He refuses to execute the man Ras Al Ghul presents to him.  But that's not because he refuses to kill.  It is because he refuses to be an executioner.  He does, in fact, turn right around and kill a lot of people when he burns the place down.  He did that in self defense and in pursuit of escaping and freeing (who he thought was) his friend.  That's justified in his mind: they were trying to kill him, and he had no choice but to defend himself.  Nolan's Bruce Wayne isn't a martyr.  He will kill in self defense.  He will kill when lethal force is used against him and he has no choice.  But when he has a choice, he feels he must try not to kill.  He must not kill just because it is easy, and not because he feels justified in being an executioner of criminals all on his own.

That Batman isn't a murderer.  But he isn't incapable of killing.  I think he makes that distinction.

[Tenzhi]

I don't mind Batman occasionally killing (or apparently/arguably killing) criminals - particularly if it's in a sort of indirect 80s action hero kinda way.  Public servants and innocent civilians, however, are casualties which are more likely to raise my brow.

[Taceus Jiwede]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfH3bDPNGHw

Warning: Robot Chicken so you know... parental advisory etc etc.

[Vee]

Just saw it. Were elements I liked, specifically that they got Waller right. Most of it was ok, but it felt like two movies to me. One was a Suicide Squad movie and one was a cliched Will Smith vehicle. All the cliched hero stuff near the end, right down to the brutally bad score just ruined it for me. And Joker was terrible.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Having Joker come to rescue Harley multiple times is a bad decision for both of their characters.

[Tenzhi]

While I mostly liked Waller, one scene seemed senselessly coldblooded...

[Vee]

I don't think you can have her too cold blooded.

[Tenzhi]

But you can have her be too senseless.

[Night-Hawk07]

I saw it yesterday. There was more I didn't like than did like. Hated this version of the Joker. Seemed like they took all these supervillains who could give the best heroes some trouble, and made them all tatted-up, bling-wearing, ghetto gangbangers. I'd take the Caesar Romero-Joker more seriously than the Jared Leto-Joker.