Two ways ‘Suicide Squad’ could have easily been improved

Don’t get me wrong: Suicide Squad was a helluva lot of fun, with solid performances all around and Will Smith and Margo Robbie in particular earning their paychecks. But Suicide Squad is not a well-constructed film, and at times it’s so choppy and lost it’s almost hard to watch. I think two issues could have been fixed that would have changed that.

First, that awful beginning. We get introduced to Deadshot (Will Smith), then Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). Then Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, just one of the many terrific casting choices in Suicide Squad) meets with some military types to try to convince them to create her Suicide Squad, wherein she reintroduces both Deadshot and Quinn. Then she introduces other members of the squad, but doesn’t even mention Slipknot. As the squad members are pulled from their cages and assembled to get their embedded neck bombs – which will blow their heads off should they try to flee – we are re-introduced to Killer Croc and Diablo. Then, when it’s mission time, Slipknot, who hasn’t even been mentioned, shows up. But at the first opportunity to escape, he gives it a try, and since he’s the only member of the squad which has hardly been a part of the first 20 minutes of the film, we all know he’s going to get his head blown off, and sure enough, kaboom! Then Katana, who, much like Slipknot, isn’t mentioned for the first fourth of the film, joins the mission. She’s not a meta-human, she’s not American military, she’s very likely not even American, but she hops on the helicopter with a once sentence explanation that explains virtually nothing, and immediately she’s Rick Flagg’s right-hand man. It’s a freaking sloppy, redundant, train-wreck of an intro, something that seems like it is more the product of a 12-year-old who has been off his ADD meds for a few days than the creation of a respected writer (Training Day) and director (Fury) like David Ayers. If the rumors are true – rushed script, re-shoots, etc. – it sounds like Ayers was at the mercy of an unforgiving release calendar and a studio that’s already made a mess of Batman v. Superman and may be doing the same to Wonder Woman as I write this. The intro sets the tone for the entire film, and this one didn’t help develop character or story and just felt like a muddled effort to get Smith and Robbie extra screen time.

Second, fewer characters. This is where Marvel gets it right. Before the first Avengers film, we had Iron Man, Thor and Captain America in their own films while introducing Black Widow in Iron Man 2, as well as brief appearances by Agent Coulson and Nick Fury throughout those films, giving us at least a sense of what to expect from these characters. So when Marvel gathered those six with the Hulk and Hawkeye (who is even teased in the first Thor), you had a fully functioning unit from the jump off. DC, of course, couldn’t take the time to introduce at least a couple of these villains in the heroes’ movies, which means all the character development has to be done in Suicide Squad. And given that the characters driving this film are Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Rick Flagg (and, to a lesser extent, Diablo), that should have meant that Captain Boomerang, Katana, the Navy Seals and even the Joker received less screen time. Boomerang was redundant, another fighter like Killer Croc, except, because of his water skills, Croc was more valuable to this story. Katana, again, is just another fighter whose character is underdeveloped. Each could have been saved for the sequel. The Navy Seals don’t add enough to justify even the small amount of screen time they ate up. And the Joker, not being the main villain, would have been better served being a largely faceless presence asserting himself at various times throughout the film, only showing up for the jailbreak. Jared Leto’s performance is terrific, which is a serious problem, because I spent most of the film wishing the Suicide Squad was fighting he and his weirdo minions rather than the really underwhelming Enchantress, her less-powerful-than-he-looks brother and a bunch of rock-head foot soldiers. Leto stole the show when he was onscreen. Of course, if they had sidelined the Joker a bit, there may have been time to develop the relationship between Flag and the Enchantress/June Moone, Rick’s main squeeze and damsel in distress, making the Enchantress more interesting. Because the main characters here are Deadshot, Harley, Diablo and Flag (Joel Kinneman), and it’s their stories we should focus on. But because DC wants to sell action figures, we get an underdeveloped and unnecessary Boomerang. Because DC wants more diversity onscreen and wants to tap the Asian market, we get an underdeveloped and unnecessary Katana. Because DC wants to up the body count, we get all the superfluous Seals. And because of Leto’s dynamic performance and audience familiarity with his character, we get a terrific Joker who overwhelms a significant portion of the rest of the film, of which he really only is a small part. It smacks of poor planning on the part of DC, which isn’t a new or original criticism, but a vital one, particularly since DC is swimming in the wake of Marvel’s well-designed universe.

Rogers vs. Stark better than ‘Batman V Superman’

Why is Captain America: Civil War better than Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice? Here’s three reasons:

1. Civil War looks real. The big fight scene in Batman V Superman, where Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman go mano a mano with the Zod monster, looks like a video game. Not a good video game, either. I even laughed at one point, where Wonder Woman almost looked like she was glued onto the top of a scene, like a pre-schooler’s arts-and-crafts project. The beauty of the big fight scene in Civil War, where Team Cap and Team Stark go at it, is just how good it looks. Even when Ant-Man goes gigantic, the CGI is so well-rendered that it never takes you out of the moment. It’s not as if some of the Marvel movies haven’t had a similar problem to BvS – yes, Thor, I’m looking at you – but Civil War doesn’t fall prey to that lack of suspension of disbelief.
2. It’s all about the story. What was Superman’s storyline in Batman V Superman? The exact same damn story line from the first Superman movie: Should Superman use his power or not? Zod’s crew threatens Ma Kent in first movie to get at Superman; Lex Luthor threatens Ma Kent to get at Superman in the second movie. Pa Kent gives Clark advice in the first movie; his dead ass gets dragged out of the grave to give Clark the same advice in the second movie. You would think in a movie two-and-half hours plus long you could cut the redundant stuff. Batfleck wasn’t a Daredevil-size mess, but I wasn’t all that impressed what they did with the character beyond the big showdown battle with Superman. What was the point of Holly Hunter’s/Senator Finch’s story? I’m not sure, other than it made the movie longer. Plus, Gal Godot was not well used. Wonder Woman is played primarily as a flirt/foil for Batman, then wastes our time showing us the other DC heroes that aren’t in the movie in a scene that could have been cut to half the time it ran and tacked on as a prologue in the credits … ya know, kind of like Marvel? Civil War advances not only the stories of both Captain America and Iron Man as well as introducing Black Panther, it also gets at the main themes of the Marvel universe: Should the unending power of our heroes be checked by some sort of civilian/military/non-hero leadership? What is the cost of our heroes using those powers? What is the responsibility of heroes to those without powers? No redundancy here, just good writing and development.
3. The new characters. You know what I figured out from watching the brief introduction of Aquaman, the Flash and Cyborg? That I have no interest in seeing individual movies for any of them, probably not even when they join up and become the Justice League. It does look like Wonder Woman is going to be done right, so I’ll probably check that out. But there are valid reasons Aquaman is universally mocked – he won’t be all that interesting if the villain chooses to show up in, say, Arizona or the Sahara – and getting Khal Drogo to play him isn’t going to change my mind. If I cared about The Flash, I’d be watching the CW series, which I’m not. And my only knowledge of Cyborg comes from Teen Titans Go! with my son. Between that show and this brief introduction, my world is not being rocked. But look at Spider-Man and Black Panther in Civil War. I’ve never read anything involving Black Panther prior to seeing Civil War, but I’m stoked for that stand-alone. I thought Chadwick Boseman was good, and the little bit of back story provided makes me think I need to see the Panther as a main character. After four atrocious films and one average flick, it’s nice to see Spider-Man actually look like the goofy kid with super powers that we know from the comics. I thought the hype on Spidey was a bit over done leading up to the latest Captain America flick, but it turns out the hype was for real. Maybe it will actually be enough to wash the taste of Toby McGuire’s Peter Parker from my palate. A miracle, indeed.

The Disney-fication of the end of the world

The blandest love story ever told.

The Giver is about a future civilization that exists on a mesa above the clouds all its own, no one ever going beyond the borders. There are strict rules about the sort of things you’d expect – don’t lie – as well as some more odd demands – don’t talk about the past. Families exist, but they are no longer based on genetics and people are assigned to these units. Everyone takes a daily dose of drugs to essentially neuter them emotionally and sexually. All because of how awful things used to be. Awful how? No one knows. Well, except one guy. He’s about to share the information, possibly with everyone in the settlement. And that may or may not be a good thing.

Not a bad premise. And, according to my daughter and wife, it was a pretty good book. But the movie … not so much.

It’s not that it’s not very good. In its own, clean, superficial way, it’s not bad. But it comes off as apocalypse-lite, a Disney-fied version of what could have been a darker, more interesting film. I kind of kept waiting for Fred MacMurray and the shaggy dog to appear during the black-and-white scenes, it was so pristine, straight-forward and dumbed-down.

I think, in the end, that’s what really ruined it for me, how The Giver insulted my intelligence. At the tail end of the film, our hero – whose name I don’t remember and isn’t worth my time to look up – marches a baby across the desert, feeding the baby with a bottle that seemingly appears from nowhere, and then both dress warmly for the mountain trek with extra clothes that, I don’t know, they picked up at a Dick’s Sporting Goods while we were watching the action back at the settlement. It was egregious and ridiculous, undercutting the seriousness of the moment.

My advice? Skip it. We’re about to get big-screen doses of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner that will likely far exceed what The Giver has to offer.

Bad trailers=bad movies: 5 summer flicks I have no interest in seeing

5. Teminator: Genisys. I can see why the minds behind this thought it was a good idea, seeing the talent involved. But other than the John Connor twist – which is a pretty huge giveaway for a trailer – most of this looks like it could have been pulled straight out of the first few movies. Yes, you have a rich history to work with, but the last part of the Terminator franchise to escape from that shadow and be something fresh and interesting was the TV series, The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Add to that the problem of the last two Terminator movies having dulled my taste for the franchise, and not even Daenarys Targaryan as Sarah Connor is enough to make me reconsider this one.

4. Vacation. If I was a huge fan of the Vacation franchise, I probably would have ranked this higher, but I always preferred Chevy Chase in films such as Fletch, Foul Play and Caddyshack over his Clark Griswold performances. This film it looks like it could be worse than The Hangover II and The Zookeeper, combined.

3. Ant-Man. This is the lone time I have had zero interest in seeing flick that’s part of the Avengers’ Marvel universe. I thought Ant-Man was a bad idea when they announced it. Then Marvel kicked director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) off the project, and I really thought it was a bad idea. This trailer does nothing to change my mind. I’ve often thought that there are some things that just won’t translate well from comics, and I think this looks like example No. 1 of that theory. The truly unfortunate thing about all of this is I probably can’t avoid this film because of my daughter’s love of Paul Rudd, aka Bobby Newport from Parks & Recreation.

2. Poltergeist. How bad is this trailer? My 10-year-old, who occasionally will terrify himself so much that he’ll run the 7 feet from his bedroom to our living room at night just to not be in the dark, “scary” hallway, mocks this trailer every time we see it. Poltergeist just looks like another Insidious knock-off, now. An unimaginative, blatant, studio cash grab, nothing more.

1. Jurassic World. OK, so it isn’t just the trailer that makes this flick a no-go. Loved the first one, like a lotta folks, but the second one was awful. In the second Jurassic Park book, Michael Crichton envisions a chameleon-like dinosaur that is able to camouflage itself. When the movie hit theaters, I was excited to see what Steven Spielberg – the king of the big, fx-heavy summer blockbusters – would do with that. The answer: Nothing. And Stevie made up a new, significantly shittier ending. So I’m not getting burned again. This trailer, other than some new dinos, looks to be for a film that has nothing new to offer. Plus, if that one sex joke is the best they’ve given Chris Pratt to work with, the Jurassic minds are even more bereft of imagination than I ever would have expected.

‘Avengers’ films stand alone

You’d think, at some point, the world’s soldiers and military leaders would figure out that shooting bullets at the Hulk really doesn’t help. At all.

I won’t go in to the long and the short of Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s worth watching and better than the first. As I look at the films from the Marvel-verse – not counting the Sony flicks – the two Avengers films stand out from the pack. I think it comes down to two things:

JOSS WHEDON: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE. The mind behind a whole lotta great shows has made that work on the big screen. Whedon understands ensemble drama better than most in Hollywood right now. Avengers worked because it was about people with god-like powers figuring out how to relate on a human level. Ultron works because while there are relationships in place and certain concessions have been made (e.g. Captain America is now the acknowledged leader of The Avengers), the happy chatter and synchronized ass-kicking mask the fact that there’s still a general lack of trust among our heroes, which almost breaks apart the group from within. Whedon makes it look effortless. If it was, everyone would be doing it. And they’re not. I find it a little bit sad that Whedon won’t be behind the camera for the third/fourth Avengers flicks, but I look forward to seeing what else he does with his time (including a rumored project with Warren Ellis).

THE HULK. It’s sad that Ang Lee had to make such a horrible Hulk movie, and that Edward Norton just didn’t quite work in the Hulk re-boot, because Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is dying for a stand-alone. Ruffalo is a far better Banner than Eric Bana ever was, and he reveals a dark sense of humor lacking from Norton’s portrayal. The way Ruffalo has become sort of an ever-willing confidante and co-worker of Tony Stark has added dimension to the role, and having he and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow start to fall in love with each other was a minor stroke of brilliance, adding yet another ripple in the Hulk’s hard-luck story. Ruffalo’s less-than-jolly green giant also looms over both Avengers flicks, the violent chaos that none of the heroes can stop should it be unleashed, uncontrolled. The “other guy” is always there, in the back of everyone’s minds, a force that no one wants to think about, yet alone deal with. A lot of credit goes to Whedon here, of course, for writing the role, but Ruffalo makes it work in a way that Bana, Norton and even my childhood favorite, Bill Bixby, could not.

Apparently, ‘Arrow’ writers don’t know much about history

You think you can play Diggle like a punk?

“There’s never been an armed occupation in history that wasn’t overthrown in force.”
John Diggle, “Uprising,” Arrow

In a recent episode of Arrow, during a conversation with the rest of the green-hooded (at that point believed-to-be-dead) hero’s gang, resident badass Diggle utters the phrase above. It’s a pretty cool phrase, uttered by a character who is a military veteran and knows a little something about armed combat.

The only problem is it’s untrue. And I knew it immediately. How would I know this and the writers of Arrow wouldn’t? I’m not sure, because I don’t think it would have been hard to google it. Hell, it was the subject of an Academy Award-winning film. Give up?

I can sum it up in three words: Mahatma frigging Gandhi.

Yeah, a little bald dude in a toga who spent his free time making yarn on a loom, walking all over India and kicking the British Empire’s privileged, heavily armed ass the whole way back to Europe, minus the ass kicking. Gandhi wasn’t the only one involved, of course, but he fronted the movement and became a worldwide sensation when the only thing resembling a global media outlet was BBC radio.

That’s a pretty big oversight on the Arrow crew’s part. I’m betting there are other examples out there of civil disobedience working, although maybe not on the scale of what Gandhi and his fellow Indians pulled off.

Someone needed to step away from the script and fact check. And they didn’t. Because here’s the thing: A character like Diggle would know full well that the line he uttered was complete bullshit and never have uttered it in the first place.

Don’t play Diggle like a punk. And don’t play Arrow viewers like punks, either.

What’s so tough about movie No. 2?

Quicksilver was awesome, briefly – all too briefly – in “Days of Future Past.”

Unwieldy. Slow. And worst of all, boring.

I was really looking forward to Days of Future Past. I thought the X-Men relaunch was terrific, the mix of actors, going back to the 1960s. It was note perfect, a way to keep the familiar characters of the previous three X-Men films while charting a new course for the re-launch.

I felt the same way about The Incredible Spider-Man. The movie wasn’t quite as awesome as the X-Men relaunch, but the Andrew Garfield-Emma Stone chemistry was terrific, and the film really set itself apart from the disappointing/overrated Sam Raimi trilogy.

Then I watched the second movie in each of these series. This was the question in my mind the entire time I viewed both: What the hell happened?

With The Incredible Spider-Man 2, some of it was greed. They tried to jam too much in, mostly hoping to set up a Sinister Six spin-off. Apparently movie execs have short memories, forgetting that too many villains didn’t work in Spider-Man 3 and contributed to the need to reboot the franchise in the first place. Plus, the whole Peter probing into his parents past thing dragged … actually, I’m not even sure “dragged” is harsh enough to describe how slow and dull that slog was. A great ending tied it all together, but it wasn’t enough to save the film.

Watching X-Men: Days of Future Past last night, all I could wonder was “why”? Why is there a need to tie the new franchise to the old? To me, that was the brilliance of the re-boot. If the franchise just stayed in the 1960s and 1970s, that would have been a lot of fun. But I’m not sure why anyone behind the film thought that everything had to be tied together from the two different eras. We were introduced to a number of characters – Bishop and Blink, to name two – who we didn’t get to know at all, just flat, cardboard mutant soldiers to feed to the Sentinels. Then a great character is introduced – Quicksilver – who subsequently disappears for the latter two-thirds of the movie. We get Kitty Pride spending the entire movie with her hands on either side of Wolverine’s temple, plus Iceman, Professor X and Magneto standing there watching her do it. Plus, the interplay of Charles, Erik and Raven – which was the centering relationship in the first film – is portrayed as fractured but in reality is nearly non-existent in the sequel. Days of Future Past somehow managed to accomplish the feat of doing way too much while not accomplishing nearly enough.

This isn’t just to pick on these two movies. The Matrix, The Hangover, Dumb and Dumber, Jaws … the list of overwhelming follow-ups is overwhelming. It’s not that it can’t be done – Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight and Halloween II, to name a few – but that second film is the true creative test, and too many flunk. Can you extend this story? Is there enough there to merit moving ahead? How can you challenge familiar characters in new ways? Maybe I’m naive to think any of this matters when compared to the profit motive of the companies financing the films, but it should matter. A good story doesn’t just make for a quality film, it also sells. A bad story sells some, but it damages the opportunities down the road.

Focus on Tony Stark works when little else does in ‘Iron Man 3’

It’s hard to look people in the eye who paid theater prices to watch ‘Iron Man 3.’

One of my biggest complaints about the first season of The Blacklist was the hairstyle sported by Lizzy, federal agent and main character of the show.

I know, seems petty. And generally, I have a lack of concern about fashion. When I choose what to wear for the day, it comes down to two questions: 1) “Is it clean?”, and 2) “Have I worn it in the past five days?”. So for me to not only be criticizing a Hollywood fashion choice, but to also be so consistently distracted by it, was unusual and quite annoying. But that entire first season of The Blacklist, I was unable to take Lizzie’s character seriously because anytime guns were fired, I expected to see bullets bounce off her helmet hair. I’ve enjoyed season two quite a bit, and I think part of that is I’m not blinded by Lizzie’s do.

I thought of that as I watched Iron Man 3. When scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) appears asking Tony Stark to join his think tank, I kept expecting to see the a cartoonishly large, empty box in the background sporting the type “Stereotypical Nerdy Science Guy Hair and Glasses Kit by Acme” on the side (“I give it a thumbs up,” Wile E. Coyote). Then when Aldrich shows up again years later, this man who is secretly a global terrorist ends up coming off more as a some douche who really thinks wearing Axe body spray will actually result in large-breasted, smiley woman coming at you in waves like the Uruk-hai attacking Helm’s Deep. Plus, I instantly knew he was, at very least, in league with the Mandarin. You don’t undergo that sort of change unless you’re evil, like “I sing along with Katy Perry’s Fireworks while clubbing baby seals” evil.

That’s the legacy of Iron Man 3, for me: Just too much annoying bullshit. The big reveal, that The Mandarin is an actor, not an actual villain, doesn’t feel all that big. The Iron Man suits all fighting the bad guys in the climactic battle was pretty boring. Not once did I think Pepper was actually dead. And so it goes.

It’s frustrating. Iron Man might be the most fun of any of the Avengers, and when director/co-writer Shane Black focused on the new Tony Stark – still a bit of a self-involved cad, but with some heart and now a nervous condition – that worked. It was the super hero stuff that just wasn’t up to snuff. Disappointing.

All in on ‘Arrow’

If you’ve been a bad boy, you don’t want to see this coming at you in a dark alley.

I had a couple of buddies who are bigger comics geeks than me tell me that I really needed to check out Arrow. I hemmed and hawed for a while, as I am not a fan of many things D.C. outside of Batman.

But since I had periodic gaps while I was waiting for Game of Thrones discs from Netflix, I went and streamed the first two seasons of Arrow. As this went on over a period of a couple of months, I started to realize that I was letting GoT discs sit because I had to see the next episode of the adventures of Oliver McQueen and his pals.

Is it Game of Thrones quality? Hells naw. We’re talking the CW here, so let’s not get carried away. That’s not what Arrow is, nor what it aspires to be.

But when I compare it to another CW superhero drama, Smallville, there’s no comparison. Arrow is head-and-shoulders above the Man of Steel offering. Smallville never seemed to have a grasp of what the larger story should be over time, other than to drag out his origin story. Their “Oh shit, they’ve graduated high school … so now we have Smallville community college” moment was just one example of that ineptitude, as well as the abrupt evolution of Lana into a special being of her own, which was the point where I abandoned the show.

Arrow has a great overarching enemy – the League of Assassins – as well as a much more solid core group of actors than Smallville with Stephen Amell as the titular hero, David Ramsey as sidekick/war hero Diggle, Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity and even Willa Holland as McQueen’s sister Thea, who is starting to shed her the-next-Paris-Hilton persona into a true player among Starling City’s arrow-slinging heavyweights. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it does a nice job of layering the story, revealing key points only when absolutely necessary and taking the narrative to unexpected places.

The evolution of the individual storylines works, as well. Oliver’s transition from stone-cold killer avenging his dad to hero trying to save a city when he couldn’t save his best friend was natural and necessary. John Diggle struggles with the possibilities of what his injury or death might do to the woman he loves and his new child. And while Katie Cassidy’s lack of acting skills in anything other than crying sometimes hurts the character Laurel at times, the idea that she needs to quit being that simpering addict and take matters into her own hands has been one of the more interesting arcs of Season 3, as well as offering some potential for growth beyond that.

I look forward to seeing how Arrow proceeds from here. Here’s hoping they can keep this train on the rails.

On second thought: ‘Man of Steel’

Henry Cavill and co. set the bar high with “Man of Steel.”

What I thought of Man of Steel after my initial viewing: I was impressed, and that means something, because I cannot stand Superman. I never cared for the ’80’s movies, he was a total weenie in the 1970s cartoon I watched as a kid, I’ve avoided the comic books altogether and the few seasons of Smallville I watched were all over the place. Henry Cavill was a worthy son of Krypton, and I thought Michael Shannon was menacing, if a bit stiff, as Zod. I’ve never understood the fascination with Russell Crowe, but he was serviceable as Jor-El. Really enjoyed Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as the Kents.

What I think of Man of Steel after my latest viewing: My opinion has changed little, but I think what really sets Man of Steel apart for me is that, finally, we get to see the true destructive capacity of Superman. The 1980s flicks don’t have the technology to pull it off, the 1970s cartoon avoided any true violence and Smallville, again, was all over the place. In Man of Steel, Kal-El’s battle with Zod is essentially a fist fight, yet they tear apart an entire city. Smaller moments – when he’s first trying to fly and crashes into a mountaintop on the rough landing – show that, even unintentionally, Superman is a powerful force that can’t be contained, possibly even by Superman himself. We’ve seen some of that power in The Avengers/Marvel flicks, but the common thread is there really are no consequences to Iron Man’s, Captain America’s, Thor’s, etc. destructive actions. And while I have my concerns about Batman V. Superman, the idea that Superman’s power cannot be trusted and that Earth’s less-powerful superheroes may have to step up to face the threat of Kal-El is a rich vein to mine. If handled correctly, this is really DC’s opportunity to set itself apart from the Marvel steamroller.

Final thought: Even if Batman V. Superman is a tire fire – we’re throwing Batfleck with Aquaman into the mix, so my hopes are not high – I am interested to see where Zach Snyder and company go from here. Done right, the Superman crew could do what I would have perceived as the impossible less than a year ago: Upstage Marvel.