(Extended Cut)

The original 2016 Suicide Squad has infamously been panned by both critics and audiences since it first released, especially after a lot of people were disappointed by Batman v Superman. It stars a group of villains, Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, El Diablo, Killer Croc, and Slipknot, who all team up under the leadership of Rick Flag, a colonel in the Special Forces who has been made the field leader of this “Suicide Squad,” created by government official Amanda Waller. Their whole creation is part of a secret organization called Task Force X, and their mission in this film is to, well, be good, I guess, by doing missions in exchange for shortened life sentences and certain benefits.

To start things off, I think it’s worth mentioning how much Deadshot, played by Will Smith, and Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie, carry this film. Deadshot is the only character that I actually cared about, as he was the only one that got a proper arc and proper development, and the only one who had something compelling about him, being his love and care for his daughter. Will Smith definitely gave the most nuanced performance of the film, and I think he nailed it in this role. Harley Quinn, on the other hand, might not have been as nuanced, but she stole the show anyway. Margot Robbie nailed this role even more so than Will Smith nailed Deadshot, and was simply just pitch-perfect casting. She perfectly embodies this role and is exactly what the character should be. This is a little off topic, but I would be completely fine with her being carried over into James Gunn’s new DCU.

There are also some really good action sequences throughout this film. David Ayer’s specialty seems to be action, from what I’ve heard, with movies like The Beekeeper and Fury, and this definitely shows here. They are well-choreographed and very high-energy, which fits the tone of the movie. The visuals are surprisingly really good, at least when it’s not super CGI-heavy, with good cinematography and a dark yet highly saturated color grading.

That is where my positives end. Like I sort of already said, Suicide Squad is infamously a mess of a movie. It had a lot of behind-the-scenes shenanigans that happened; the original cut was supposed to be a lot darker and more serious, with a more prominent score and more prominent character depth, but after the failure critically of Batman v Superman, the studio saw a movie like Deadpool, which was also edgy (even more so), and wanted to make a movie more like that to appeal to more people. This led to it getting completely chopped up in the editing room and in post-production, with a bunch of reshoots and stuff like that, all of which wasn’t originally intended.

The main problem here is the story. Not only are there not enough stakes, either with the story or the characters, but it is also quite hard to understand or really care about. You know as little about the mission as the main group of villains does, which is an interesting approach, but creates a detachment from the story. I was having a hard time understanding why they were even doing this mission until pretty deep into the runtime, so I just plainly didn’t care at all about what was happening.

The story and character development are also incredibly rushed, even though the movie should have had plenty of time to develop things properly. Aside from Deadshot, I didn’t care about anyone else, including Harley Quinn (despite Margot Robbie’s performance), as the film almost sort of felt like it forgot to give each of the characters any depth, and so the depth we got was forced in last minute. This includes the villain, Enchantress, or June (her human name), who gets very little screen time until the very end, and the screen time she does get comes abruptly and out of nowhere. She’s also just really weird when she’s in villain form, which makes her a bit obnoxious.

The third act is where things get even worse, though. The whole movie decides to turn into a fantasy and CGI fest, well, rather a slopfest, as the CGI is terrible. It feels incredibly out of place, mainly due to the transition from the second act, but also because of how little there was of a fantasy element in the film beforehand. I’ll say it for the last time, with the exception of Deadshot, all of the character arc payoffs are yet again forced, unearned, and not satisfying whatsoever. Really, anything that had to do with the majority of the characters and their development was the most obvious thing that showed how messed up this movie got in post-production.

Then there is the elephant in the room: Jared Leto’s Joker. Yeah, he’s incredibly weird and off-putting, and not in a good way, but out of all of the problems with this movie, I’d say he is at the very bottom of the list in terms of concerns.