*Warning* Jared Leto Hate is below.
*Rated S for Spoilers~ If you haven't watched the movie yet: Don't bother. Please. Watch Daniel Radcliffe's Swiss Army Man and Moonlight instead! They are Oscar-worthy!*
(This has been floating in my drafts for like three days as well...oops)
This is random as hell, and it's not a book review (obviously), but I had to okay! I've been suffering and I have to let it out, so I'm imposing this uncalled rant onto you bc I'm bored and feeling ranty today!
~
After watching some of the extended videos that were released/leaked from the DVD a couple days ago, I have concluded that SS is complete garbage that should have never happened. You wanna see why?
I-
There are people who thought the acting in this was....was good?! The writing was so lame and wooden, I can't believe someone actually sat down and wrote this. Hold me! *Sobs*
*Composes myself*
I watched Suicide Squad a month (or maybe two) after it came out, because there's no movie that can get money from me when free streaming sites exist. The fuck? I'M BROKE! Any who, I simply "walked away" (I mean, closed the tab) from it not really moved, but...entertained enough? I was mildly entertained. Sort of. I'll be honest, I'm a lot less harder on movies than I am with books. Which I think can be seen as strange. I don't know, I just feel like two hours (maybe even one hour) of my life watching something, compared to a book that takes up serious time that I could be doing something that will benefit me: my homework, or watching that poor lizard trapped behind my sister's window because everyone is too afraid to save it (we're demons, I know, but somehow it has been there for two weeks and it still is alive!).
Here's MY thing: I love books, I do. But, there isn't a worse feeling after you've tried to convince yourself a book may get better, you finish it, and it turns out to be the biggest waste of time in your life. I have been tried too many times in the past, so now, I'm very picky with books. I don't have time to be setting myself up for failure, or disappointment, so I give up on shitty books a lot. Shitty movies though? I give them a legit running chance because I have a couple hours to kill. Procrastination is a bitch, but at least I will still have my soul after the bad experience. Sometimes, I actually get a kick out of horrendous movies (see: The Wicker Man, The Happening, Troll 2, The Room). Being a movie critic about every movie seems so extra to me. Until now. Cliche, I know, but the movie was so bad it needs to get dragged to filth.
UPDATE: I am the worsT person to watch movies with because if I have already watched it, I will watch YOU for your reaction the entire time (it gets old fast I've been told, so I have resorted to "sneak-watching"), remove all phones from the room, and will drag the movie as its playing if it's a cliche mess. I blame Suicide Squad for making me this way. It was the catalyst to this all.
Anyway, I wasn't completely blind when I first watched SS, of course. You know, somethings like the fact that Amanda Waller (an okay performance by Viola Davis) put these essentially human dudes--besides Killer Croc, (who is still useless in a plot like this and proved so in the movie, but that was also the movies fault.) and of course Diablo (he was the only one who had powers that were useful, but didn't use them?!)--against metahumans that are way out of their league, Joker being MIA for 98.9% of the movie and when he did appear I wanted him to go away, the Joker's whack henchmens, pointless anti-heroes, weak character development/introductions (and sometimes lack of thereof), and the infamous editing ordeal following the movie. Nonetheless, I still had hope that SS could have been amazing under different circumstances or if stuff wasn't cut.
Yeah. Ha. I was wrong, of course.
One of the things that turned me off was when Diablo called the SS his fucking family? That was weird and random as hell. He barely talked, was depressed the entire time, and they only knew each other for what? A couple of hours? Some couple of days? I'm guessing the little nit-picker in me disappeared for the time being and decided to enjoy what was given to me: Deadshot. He was the only sort of well done character, but I felt like they spent too much time on him when they could have gave more interesting characters an actual role in the movie and a fucking backstory! Katana and Slipknot didn't deserve this disrespect! With a different plot that made sense, they could have been so fucking rad!
Also, the way they defeated Enchantress was the biggest cop-out I've seen for a movie in a while. How the fuck does a bomb, and Deadshot shooting at it defeat basically a demigod witch's portal? Diablo was the only one who had an actual legit cool ass power and they killed his ass off! What the fuck?!
There was so many plot holes in this, it's hard to think of all of them without dying.
Anyway, I've been a fan of the TV shows for Batman since I was like eight, because of my sisters and cousins. I even dabbled in some comics in middle school. (*Sighs*) He was the most comic book hero I was familiar with and he was just my favorite by default and familiarity. Batman is just my childhood at this point lol. Basically, I kind of got off of anything DC related after TDKR (sort of). Because besides Batman, I really consider myself a casual fan...that knows a bit too much about Batman, but doesn't care about the majority of DC or Marvel (ew...I'm exaggerating, but idc), etc. Also, being a comic book fan is a bit time consuming, so I had to back off lol.
Looking at all the harsh criticism now makes complete sense. Suicide Squad is so bad. I don't think I can stress it enough. One thing that makes me want to gauge my eyes out is Jared Leto. Some of you may be a fan of his, but the dude has been an annoying shit stain for centuries, is overrated(I won't even get into the nastiness as his role of a stereotypical transgender woman in Dallas Buyer's Club, which literally just shitted on every trans woman's face. The dude was playing a caricature because he's a privileged cis straight white male), ugly in every way, cardboard personality, pretentious as fuck, whack as fuck, Mr. Nobody pissed me off to no end, and is a rapist. You guys can see how much I don't like him. I hardly say I hate people, but he's probably the most unlikable celebrity. At least to me.
Besides him being a cancer of a person, I was still actually pumped for his rendition of the Joker--believe it or not. More so, I just like the Joker...well, the concept of the Joker. He's the ultimate antagonist for Batman, we know this. However, I truly did hate him in the Batman animated series because how much of a piece of shit he was to Harley, but that was the point. Fuck him killing people, I felt bad for Harley a lot as a kid and I hated their relationship lmao. Whoever ships them are gross as fuck. I don't care, I'm judging you. Their relationship is toxic and abusive. It doesn't mater though bc Mark Hamill does a fantastic job at voice acting and it's just a known fact that he is the legendary and definitive Joker.
Moving on!
I thought the look sort of made sense, and in a way...worked. The trailers that were released a year ago got me pumped. I'll admit that. This isn't something I hated instantly, no--it just happened because he was garbage. I'm not exaggerating. He was actually dog shit. Leto isn't a terrible actor, he just isn't as good as people make him out to be. Literally point blank: Jared Leto doesn't play a good Joker because he doesn't understand the Joker. Jared Leto doesn't play a good Joker because I don't think he went into this project with the correct mindset. Leto's issue (to me) is that he sees each role as something to prove himself to people as an actor when it shouldn't. That only leads to overacting (which is a downright sin and blasphemy in its finest. I'm looking at you Uma Thurman), underacting, and the shit we got in SS.
I'm not going to go into Heath Ledger's Joker because obviously he got compared to him, and most people with brains know that his Leto's Joker was shit, should have never happened, or at least never show up in SS. The problem isn't even with the SS Joker's image. Sure, the multiple smile/mouth tattoos on him or lame, and the "hahaha's" are cringe-inducing, and the wardrobe is horrendous, and the "damaged" tattoo is incredibly corny, and the blatant tattoo of his own name across his stomach is downright despicable. BUT, it doesn't entirely make the character shit. Sure, the entirety of his look is inspired by scene kids from 2000s who breathed and bathed in Hot Topic, but it doesn't fully show why exactly I hate this Joker. The problem is the acting and the tone of this Joker isn't well done, and is simply put across as Harley's boyfriend...and that's it. He isn't threatening, compelling, cool, or even funny--he just is Jared Leto dressed in "gangster" clothes, shit makeup, and trying to do his best at a Heath Ledger Joker laugh and voice (that really is the only similarity).
Anyway, I won't make this a thing where I blatantly make this a Ledger Joker vs. Leto Joker. But Heath Ledger was and still is iconic, and this may have been too soon, but I may be biased. I do hate Leto. If they were going to make Joker appear in a film after The Dark Knight happened and snatched us bald, at least make sure the writing is solid, and the actor can pull it off. Put some respect on all the names of the actors, and voice actors who have contributed to an iconic villain. Dear god.
Of course, there are going to be people who claim that the director had six weeks to rewrite the script (which is a good excuse for this mess), they had to go re-edit things, yadda yadda yadda. There's too much words that I don't care to relay. But, genuinely, I don't think anyone making this film had a clue on what exactly they were doing, how they wanted this story to follow these characters, and how exactly they were going to stuff the Joker into this shit show of a movie. They just knew they had to make this movie because it was too late to back out and also the guaranteed dough that would come out of it. SS is the most disappointing, nonsensical, overacted, horrendously edited, corny bullshit I've ever seen. This goes for the Joker too.
My question is for the casting director: Why couldn't you get the guy from the first Purge to play Joker? He had the creepy smile, the aura, and something intriguing about him and I'm sure he would have worked better. However, that would never happen because this movie seemed to cast a lot of well-known names. Also, I'd feel bad for him because he most likely would be compared a lot to the last Joker everyone worships (we all know who). They could have just did away with The Joker entirely and the story wouldn't have been any worse, it probably would had been better off.
Anyway, aside from the throwaway characters that either died two seconds in, or were there just to look "cool" (*coughs* Katana, and half of the Suicide Squad). Dear god. I thought BvS was a huge headache (a headache that I honestly still enjoyed. IDC! If you watch it more than two times, it starts to grow on you...like mold. Besides Jessie Eisenberg's Joker--I mean, Lex Luthor--he was garbage as well), but this was so worse. At least the acting was decent in it? I guess. Batfleck was cool.
Another subject of topic is Harley Quin, or should I say, Margot Robbie.
Maggie Margot was so shit as Harleen I almost vomited. She did a far better job (it wasn't amazing, it just wasn't as bad) playing actual Harley, but as Harleen she didn't give the emotional delivery that should have been put through her dialogue. I didn't buy any of it. None of it was convincing, and none of it had depth. This is also why Leto's Joker sucks ass. Besides the fact that his annoying scene kid/punk /wannabe gangster aesthetic could have been executed better if it was actually given some soul. It's like his tattoos were suppose to tell the audience how "crazy" he was, and sort of stood in as their weak attempt at showing characterization. The "damaged" tattooed on his forehead, the stupid shitty smile on his hand that he USED to be even UGLIER (which for some reason he has tattooed twice on him?! Someone *Dylan O'Brien voice* SHOOT ME!), and the "haha's" stamped on his chest (which they pulled right off of TDK) made my skin crawl with cringe. This movie is only not as bad as Batman and Robin because of Viola Davis and Will Smith, who decided to star as himself cosplaying Deadshot. That's it.
I hope DC drags me next year because the mess that was SS was so sad. But the MOST saddest thing (I know, bare with me) was that they should have introduced these characters with their own movies. Harley/Joker should have been a movie by itself before SS, Katana is cool as shit imo and she should have gotten her own movie, same thing for Deadshot AF, Diablo would have been great to explore as well in his own film. Then, I think making this film with them all together would have been LIT. I don't think Killer Croc would be strong enough for his own film (I do like him) and Captain Boomerang is lame af, so no. They could have just been introduced in SS in a way that doesn't disrupt the story's flow. Really all of that would have been extra because if someone who knew how to write a good screenplay stepped up, this movie would have been better!
*Sighs* Christopher Nolan seems to be the only one who has done the DCEU universe some type of justice. Everyone one else are ugly rats. Suicide Squad is a great example.
In summary: This movie is disgustingly awful, and I hate everyone who took partake in it...Besides Will Smith and Viola Davis. It wasn't their fault, they just needed a pay check. Forgive them. *Sweats*
*Slinks off to go write some actual reviews...in a couple of days*