Suicide Squad isn’t great, but hopefully we’ll get a Harley Quinn movie

Watching Suicide Squad over the weekend took me back to my film school days, when we would watch edits of our classmates films and address story and continuity issues. If Suicide Squad screened in front of my professors, they would ask the same question: What’s the inciting incident?

To this David Ayer and Warner Bros. might say, “Uh, the Suicide Squad?”

To which my teacher’s would respond, “Not good enough.”

That’s the big problem with the movie, right off the bat. When Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) discusses the formation of this task force of criminals, she doesn’t really have a reason. I know this is pretty much the same in the comics, but shouldn’t some monster or evil entity do something that sparks the necessity of the Squad? I feel like, yes.

Instead Waller randomly forms the squad, I guess to fight supernatural menaces to come, and then Waller’s employee/slave, Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), releases her witch-y brother from a totem. He begins wrecking havoc across the city and Enchantress soon joins him.

Conveniently, Waller has just formed the Suicide Squad and can test them out against Enchantress and her bro.

The casting and the characters were the strongest part of the film, even if most of the character’s backstories were a little weak. As the story unfolds, the deadly villains of the Squad become less evil and more relatable. They’re just misunderstood outcasts, who have made mistakes like the rest of us. Mistakes, like killing a lot of people.

Humor goes a long way and those studio issued re-shoots to add more comedy to the film, probably helped. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshot (Will Smith), and Boomerang (Jai Courtney) make the movie entertaining enough that I could almost get past the story problems.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn was the real highlight of the movie. Finally we have a female “hero” who’s not boring or weak or lacking in confidence, but actually a great, captivating character. Honestly I would have been fine just watching her the whole movie, which is why she should get a movie of her own!

DC fans have had a long-time love for Harley Quinn. She’s an interesting, complex character who deserves to be fleshed out in her own right.

According to- um- the internet, rumors have been flying that an untitled DC Entertainment film set to be released in 2019, might just be a Harley Quinn movie. Fingers crossed!

Published by Elizabeth

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