You might remember that in 2018 director James Gunn was fired by Disney due to them acquiescing to an alt-right smear campaign spurned on by Gunn’s vocal criticism of Trump. It was a big mess that Disney took a lot of deserved flack for and there was a massive campaign among fans and colleagues alike to reinstate him so he could finish his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. But during this time, DC stepped in and scooped him up to write and direct a sequel to their commercially successful but critically despised Suicide Squad. Gunn was only too happy to oblige. Eventually, Disney realized their mistake and hired him back, allowing him to finish his Suicide Squad movie and make the third Guardians film. It was great, and sent a cathartic message that the right-wing mob could not so easily suppress artists (as long as they were white and male).
Then the pandemic happened and this drama seemed to fade from memory. Like everything else, the film was pushed back. But at last in August 2021 we’re seeing the fruits of DC and Warner Bros’ foresight to take advantage of one of Disney’s most embarrassing screw-ups. It’s simply titled The Suicide Squad, which gives it freedom from the burden of a sequel signifier, but also connects it too closely to that first film. In similar confusion it is both a sequel and a reboot, as the establishing premise of the initial movie still exists as well as a small handful of characters, but otherwise it stresses no connection to the David Ayer disaster. Not everyone recognizes this distinction though, and it could be a factor in the films’ thus far disappointing turnout (though the HBO Max model of same-day digital release cannot be helping matters surely).
Nevertheless it should be emphasized The Suicide Squad is not Suicide Squad -to nobodies’ surprise, Gunn is a much better director than Ayer, and in fact this may be more purely a Gunn film than his Guardians movies (it’s not better than his Guardians movies by a considerable stretch, but it is more wholly his style). A part of that comes from the freedom clearly palpable in Gunn having an R-rating to work with -he gets to indulge in wild carnage and violence as much as he likes from the very first scene, in which a bunch of the promoted cast members of this film meet a premature end. He gets his bloodbath out of the way early though so he can focus in on the characters he likes. Unlike the vibe off that first movie, he actually does like these characters and wants his audience to as well, in spite of the low chance of survival that comes baked into the premise of dangerous supervillains being forced into deadly missions for the U.S. government.
But a very key thing about Gunn’s interpretation of that premise is that he doesn’t just use it as a jumping off point, but as a lens through which to examine and criticize the actions of the U.S. government, particularly as they pertain to foreign relations and interference in the democracies of developing nations. Also just the abuse of the incarcerated. Michael Rooker plays one such inmate forced into a suicide squad, made to witness a bloodbath due to how unprepared his team is, and when the panic sets in and he tries to flee, his handler casually kills him via the detonator implanted in his neck. It’s partly played for laughs, and indeed in some sequences Gunn struggles to strike the right tone between gory fun and sincerity –this is especially the case with a more major character death late in the film. His intent still comes through, but perhaps not as potently as it might.
Infiltrating the fictional South American island nation of Coro Maltese with the objective of capturing a mad scientist called The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) who is working with the oppressive local government, is a team led by Idirs Elba’s Bloodsport. He’s the most normal in an ensemble of Gunn’s favourite weirdos, including the doofus ultra-nationalist Peacemaker (John Cena), reverse-Pied Piper Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchoir), the anthropomorphic monster King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), and perhaps the silliest idea DC ever had for a villain, Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) –he throws polka-dots! Also inherited from the first film are Joel Kinnamen’s Rick Flagg and DC’s last bankable star character, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. Robbie of course is a natural in this part by now, yet still finds new ways to keep the character entertaining. Dastmalchian is about as much of a stand-out, brilliantly cast and probably the movies’ best character, while Capaldi is also a particular delight -the former Doctor Who now playing a classic kind of Doctor Who villain. Viola Davis even for her minimal screen-time, improves on her performance in the former film, as a much more cold-hearted antagonist, going hand in hand with a perfectly utilized John Cena, the only element of the film to hit that perfect medium of funny and deeply serious.
Peacemaker is a joke, until he very much isn’t -much like the far-right ideologues he is a caricature of. His dedication to “eating a hundred dicks for America” or “killing every man, woman, and child necessary in the name of peace” are easy to make fun of, until he shows that these are indeed his true colours. That arc of his character in which he goes from ludicrous to dangerous is reflected in Gunn’s structuring of the movie as well, which plays like an average though fun and occasionally wickedly funny superhero adventure, until it starts to really dig into its’ themes. Specifically around the truth of the mission and America’s undermining of a foreign government for their own ends with little consideration for the people suffering as a result –a routine pattern of American foreign policy. It’s one sequence in particular, Capaldi’s villain monologue, where the movie really clicks and the scope of what Gunn is doing becomes apparent.
Another thing that Gunn is doing though, that is in some small way challenging and bold of a comic book movie in this time, is accentuating the silliness of this reality. If Polka-Dot Man wasn’t enough, there are plenty of other goofy choices that Gunn makes, from his creative establishing texts to cartoon ephemera popping up around Harley during one of her big action sequences. The climax is pure comic book cheese of a kind we haven’t seen in a mainstream superhero movie in years, and it’s great! That mixture of outrageous inanity and equally outrageous spurts of violence makes for a fusion that seems to be Gunn’s bread and butter. And yet there’s a disconnect still. It might have to do with the ways in which Gunn employs his devices and his humour. More than one personal character beat is undermined by a joke, the personal arcs not being terribly strong to begin with. And for as much as it has a backbone in real-world geopolitics the movie is never able to truly reconcile that with the over-the-top nature of the rest of its’ reality. There’s a threshold to be reached for the authenticity of your movies’ world, and enacting a scene out of a Hot Shots movie doesn’t quite meet it.
The Suicide Squad is a good time though, and of course Gunn keeps it fresh through exciting action and set-pieces. It also continues the trend of DC movies having stronger and more dynamic visuals than their Marvel counterparts. Suicide Squad is not a movie that ever needed a sequel, but Gunn at least was a good fit for making the movie that that one should have been all along.
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