Suicide Squad.
An eclectic rogues gallery with conflicting personalities. Add in a pinch of saving the world, and a hefty serving of mortal peril. A recipe for disaster, indeed-- but also one of high entertainment value.
Ever since The CW’s "Arrow" first brought the Suicide Squad to life in the second half of season two, I was immediately taken with the concept it presented of forcing super villains to do America’s dirty work, and the chaos (and sometimes hilarity) that would ensue.
Seven months later, Warner Bros. announced that a Suicide Squad movie was in the works. When the cast was released, including Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie, I grew excited. It was clear they had every intention of making this movie successful.
And in January 2016, it was revealed that DC Comics would be relaunching its entire line of superhero series — including Suicide Squad. A scheduled revealed shortly after that the release of the comic reboot, titled Suicide Squad: Rebirth, lined up to come out the same day as the actual film’s premiere.
But as most of us know by now, the week of the Suicide Squad release, the film was blasted by critics and regarded as the latest installment in a failed superhero lineup. The comic, however, was hailed as solid and enjoyable. So where did the movie go wrong? And what did the movie do, if anything, that the comic should’ve taken notes on?
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT, BOTH MINOR AND MAJOR, FOR BOTH THE COMIC AND MOVIE. READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Although it’s a given that a comic is significantly shorter than a movie, Suicide Squad: Rebirth had a steady, quick pacing, introducing all of its villains in just three text panels on one splash page. It then immediately jumped into the Squad’s latest mission complete with wisecracks from Captain Boomerang, deadpan snark from Deadshot, and the usual insanity from Harley Quinn.
The movie had a fun, if repetitive, way of introducing characters, with Amanda Waller, the cold-blooded creator of the Suicide Squad- AKA Task Force X- describing each of the character’s abilities as flashbacks played, showing the abilities of each character as well as giving them each a brief origin story. However, the movie suffered from erratic pacing issues-- one minute, Enchantress was freeing her demonic brother as the latter turned into a horrific hodgepodge of corpses and metal who wasted no time in obliterating all the surrounding people and buildings. But for the next thirty to forty-five minutes, we had to watch each individual character make their way out of the prison cell, into the helicopter, and onto the battlefield, with seemingly random clips of the Joker that maybe-possibly relate to his eventual attempt to rescue Harley Quinn. It’s inconsistent, choppy, and confusing, and often left me scratching my head trying to remember where I was in the movie.
But most importantly, the comic reminded us who the characters really are-- villains. While the members of Task Force X in the film do engage in some light debauchery-- Harley steals a purse from an abandoned designer shop, the Squad help themselves to some drinks in a nearby empty bar, an escape is attempted, and so on and so forth. But a VERY important difference is made in the comic and movie, both involving Deadshot. In a scene near the end of the film, Amanda Waller orders Deadshot to shoot and kill the escaping Harley Quinn. However, Deadshot balks, and intentionally misses. The reasoning behind his refusal to kill (“I don’t kill women and children”) seems both forced and cliche, and more of a segue to focus on Diablo’s backstory (a sequence whose sole purpose is to give the viewers some attachment to the character so when he’s killed in the final act of the film it can elicit a cheap, emotional and predictable response). However, in the last couple of pages of Suicide Squad: Rebirth, Amanda Waller once again orders Deadshot to kill someone-- this time a scientist whom the Squad was assigned originally to rescue from the clutches of some super-powered goons. As soon as the scientist became a liability, Waller orders Deadshot to “take him." Deadshot shoots the scientist right in between his eyes without hesitation.
Ultimately, while the movie seems to forget who the bad guys are, the comic reminds us that these members of America’s top-secret task force are what they say they are: cold-blooded criminals.
