PSA for The Suicide Squad

[gwyn]

I just got back from seeing The Suicide Squad. It wasn't a movie that was even on my radar but minim_calibre invited me and I'm a sucker for an invitation to go to movies with min. It's deeply, deeply weird. This isn't casting shade on it necessarily, I think we both sort of spontaneously mentioned that on our own. It's also something that we agreed was maybe the best performance Idris Elba's given in years, which in itself is deeply deeply weird when you think about it.

But for anyone contemplating seeing it, I wanted to give you a heads up: The very first minute, a character violently kills a pretty little songbird. Within the next couple minutes, a humanoid weasel type creature dies. Partway through the movie, an entire captive flock of pet birds are killed in the most horrific way. The sort of villain creature is kind of a product of torture so frankly you almost kind of don't mind if it kills everyone, and they don't really redeem it. There's a rat sidekick for one of the main characters, and I spent the entire movie scared it was going to be killed even though it was just CGI, but fortunately it's one of the only ones who isn't offed, but I definitely felt like they wanted to keep us guessing and nervous about it.

It's also super, super gory. Like, if you have issues with gore, but you, say, loved Harley Quinn's movie, you might want to think twice about if you can stomach this one. I don't have issues with it but even min and I were like, wow, that was gory and violent. They kind of go out of their way to earn their hard R and be grotesque. They kill off a lot of the characters, so don't get super attached to everyone beyond the big name stars. There are also a few scenes of extreme body horror. That's a basic list.

So if those aren't super deal breakers for you, go with God, you know. I'm still figuring out what I thought--a lot of it really bugged me, and like all superpowered action movies it's 30 minutes too long and really noisy, but then they pulled out the team feels or the found family type shenanigans and I was like, well, crap. Also, Viola Davis, you know what I mean?

Did I hate it or like it? I don't know! So I would definitely be interested to hear what other people thought. Comments welcome, so spoiler warnings for them that hates 'em.

Also to add: rather hilariously, when the movie started the Disney logo came up and I was like wait what? And after a few seconds this narration began and I was like this is definitely not the right movie, and it seemed a few other people were murmuring about being confused about what movie they were in. And it became very clear that it was Jungle Cruise. It looked like a bunch of different people went out to tell them that they were showing the wrong movie, but there were a ton of people including us, who were looking at their phones going wait are we in the right auditorium? And it took them a good five minutes at least to stop the movie and then a few more minutes to put the right one in, and it was actually toward the end of the movie so a bunch of people were booing. I suppose it was sort of apropos and matched the tone of the experience.

Comments

[oracne]

Thanks for this review. It's helpful to me to be prepared for Sad Animal Death as well as character deaths.

[jenab]

Thanks for the review. From the warnings it will be a movie I will pass on.

[starlady]

Ugh, thanks for mentioning this, I really can't take bird or pet bird death (I have a pet bird). I'd been thinking of watching it so this is very good to know.

[kore]

I love MR's Harley Quinn but I don't think I will EVER be seeing this movie, unless I can rent it and just watch the Harley parts, lol. I've been seeing a lot of gushy reviews from (male) critics about how it's gory! and funny! and kills people off! and goes for the hard R! and those kinds of movies are never my thing. Animal harm is a full stop bright line no-fucking-go. So thank you!

(Altho Idris Elba....sigh....)

[hafital]

It was okay. I hate that all the bad guys were brown people, and even when they weren't bad they were killed (like the freedom fighters and then all the people in the city). That entire island nation was just completely expendable. That was gross. The rest is okay? I mean, loved the team mostly, good dynamics. Agree that it's gory like you say, needless violence, I'm okay with body horror. It's very James Gunn when he's not doing a Disney film. Honestly would have preferred if they just sent Harley alone to handle it all. At least she saved herself, which was my favorite part of the movie.

[gwyn]

My main computer died and I hadn't even realized you'd responded here! Sorry for the tardiness! But yeah, the fact that it was mostly brown people who died (including the people in the rebel camp, which was...well, a choice) when Starro was created by an evil white guy and it seems tortured by mostly white people was unpleasant, to say the least.

I too would have rather just had Harley going around taking care of business, maybe with a brief assist from Idris Elba. (I have never been into Kinnaman, but I read the Flag comics when I was young, and I was surprised at how much I liked the character in this. I think they resurrected the wrong guy, for sure.) It just seemed like anyone I liked got killed except Margot and Idris. And I love Viola, even if Amanda Waller is a kind of bad guy herself.)

[klia]

I'll admit, I was only tempted because of Idris, so this makes me kind of sad, but I can't stomach the kind of gratuitous animal harm you're talking about. I already get more than I can handle following bird/nature photographers on Twitter (many of whom, in the past year, for whatever bizarre reasons I can't fathom, have gotten really into posting predator-prey pics, which I dislike intensely). So, thanks for the heads up.

[gwyn]

Sorry for the super late reply, my computer died and I didn't realize people had replied! I'm really glad I could warn you away--it might be one of those movies you could watch with someone on TV and they could FF while you look away! Literally my first thought was "I should warn klia" after the movie.

[klia]

Oh, no, sorry about your computer!

You're right, I'll definitely look for it on cable in the future, so I can ff through the upsetting stuff.