The day the first “Suicide Squad” trailer came out, I was pumped. Following the “Deadpool” release earlier this past February, “Suicide Squad” was the one to match. Due to the hype surrounding the “Suicide Squad” release, I rewatched the trailers at least twice, felt goosebumps rising, and my heart racing that there was a comic movie that was made unlike most. The hype around the movie considering the unique spin of Jared Leto’s Joker and new characters being brought to the movie screen such as Will Smith’s Deadshot and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn fell short of what was expected by audience viewers. There’s always that attraction someone has for a villain, because they aren’t someone you’re supposed to root for, but yet sometimes you can’t help but do so and this was the one movie where I felt I couldn’t be judged for doing so.
Since Disney and Marvel have become united, Marvel to me has lost it’s touch. It’s turned every superhero into some basic All-American stereotype, and after a while it has gotten a little old. Marvel outreached to kids and while I can admit that it’s great I can take my little brother to go watch these movies with me because of the rating, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should. Sure, Marvel, you were able to make more money but did the movie reach the intentions and purpose it was expected to?
Which brings me to DC Comics’ “Suicide Squad”, a movie that was originally R-Rated for good intentions. It’s a super-villain movie, and I wasn’t expecting any holdbacks on violence, cursing, or nudity and I was fully prepared. So when “Suicide Squad” ended up switching the ratings, I knew it wasn’t for the right reasons. Sure, maybe the movie could have done just fine without all the R-Rated material, but because they took out that material, we lost sight of the true characters and it made the movie confusing and hard to understand. They cut out scenes of the Joker, which was what I was most excited about and who I expected to be a main character, and halfway through the movie I forgot he was even a part of the movie.
Staggering away from the cookie-cutter superhero, "Deadpool" was the odd man standing compared to all the other Marvel movies made consecutively in the past few years. This is the success story that we can take away from an R Rating. Originally, Marvel wanted “Deadpool” to be PG-13 so it was just another way to make money and draw attention to a younger crowd, but in the end it was the right choice to keep it at it’s original rating. "Deadpool" to me had so many great reviews because it went off the beaten track, unlike The Avengers and X-Men, and it became something new and refreshing for adults to watch. Deadpool proved Marvel wrong and pulled in $132 million for the box office opening weekend and $363 million in total. Because "Deadpool" did something so different than the rest of the Marvel, it was easy to fall in love with the anti-hero.
Not all movies have to be watched by kids, sometimes the best movies are the ones for kids to wait to become adults so they can understand the power of the performance the actors play. Just because a movie can be PG-13, doesn’t mean it should be, sometimes it needs that little extra, and who cares about the extra millions? The movie was going to make a lot of money regardless, but it shouldn’t have become another cookie-cutter type.
Should have taken notes, “Suicide Squad."
