“Monster nom nom?”

With Peacemaker season two essentially confirming this movie as canon in the new DCU (from what I’ve heard, at least), I decided to give it my third try. This was always one of the more acclaimed movies in the DCEU when it was released, received incredibly well by both critics and audiences, and I honestly haven’t understood really why ever since I first saw it, and I still don’t. It’s the only comic book movie misfire James Gunn has made in my opinion, at least for my own tastes, whereas even just his second weakest film I enjoy significantly more than this (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), and actually like quite a bit.

However, while this is Gunn’s worst effort that I’ve seen, funny enough, I think it’s easily his best looking one. Both the visual effects and cinematography are absolutely top notch, with practically flawless CGI and really outstanding colors. I really like that he brought a lot of the vibrancy of The Suicide Squad over to his Superman movie from last year, as I think it suits comic book movies really well. Obviously, I don’t want all comic book movies to look the same, but I do think that this style is perfect.

It’s also got some pretty good action choreography, which, while the action segments are a little fewer and farther between than one might expect, still stand out nonetheless. It’s rated R, and it doesn’t pull back any punches, with some of the gnarliest action you’ll see in a mainstream (“mainstream”) comic book film. Per usual with Gunn, there are a few really notable long takes that thoroughly impressed me, the probably standout one being with Harley Quinn. Each character has a unique skill set, which inevitably creates some fun moments too, even if some of them are a bit too over the top.

Yet another one of Gunn’s best talents is his comedic style - I know many would disagree - and that’s certainly not one of the problems with The Suicide Squad, either - at least until the end. It’s actually funny now that I think about it: most of Gunn’s best sensibilities are still present in this movie, despite me not liking it. Anyways, while there are some crass jokes here and there that I’m certainly not a fan of, most of the jokes land pretty well. This movie completely acknowledges how ridiculous it is, and it makes for some of Gunn’s best comedic bits he’s ever done. The opening action sequence is hilarious, Peacemaker is hilarious, and probably the standout character for me, King Shark (or Nanaue), made me laugh quite a few times.

Speaking of characters, I do have a negative side that probably overshadows the positive for me, but I’ll mention the pros first. Most of the Suicide Squad team is really fun to watch, only aided by the actors playing them clearly having a good time. Idris Elba’s Bloodsport is an awesome character that I want to see again sometime in the DCU, John Cena’s Peacemaker is an hilarious idiot, Sylvester Stallone’s (Rocky Balboa!) King Shark is a lovable, well, talking shark for crying out loud, and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is just as fun as always. Everyone else I can take or leave, however.

The downside to these characters is that I think the only word I can use to describe them is simply “cool,” and that’s really it. For as good as Gunn has proven he is at writing deep characters, even when the characters are as weird as a talking raccoon, these are easily his weakest. This team is all made up of very morally gray people that, yes, do get scenes to flesh them out, but, I feel like those scenes are so forced and thrown in. In both the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Superman, the big character moments all felt both integral to and part of the story, where here they mostly are just little “side scenes” or exposition dumps that could be taken out of the story entirely, and it would still end the same.

The stakes just aren’t there, either, because this movie is far too focused on comedy over anything else. Whenever a member gets killed off, it’s either for a joke or poorly done and unearned because the movie didn’t do a good enough job of getting me invested in anyone. This mission is inherently just not very interesting, either, which is weird because it’s essentially trying to redo a lot from the original Suicide Squad, where that even more clearly didn’t work. While the concept of a team full of villains with explosive devices in their heads that could trigger at any moment is very intriguing, it has unfortunately failed twice for me now.

Adding to that, the pacing is pretty all over the place. It feels so weird to call a James Gunn movie “boring,” as I can’t even imagine the people who don’t like him having that word come to mind first when they think of him, but I have to be honest, I’ve been very attentive to the clock all three times I’ve watched The Suicide Squad. It has a lot to do with the stakes, with the mission these people are going on not really feeling urgent enough, and the fact that this movie is over two hours long makes it even worse. There are a number of times where characters will stop and do something completely irrelevant to the main goal, the worst of which being a rescue mission that ends with a joke that makes it all feel like an even bigger waste of time. Amanda Waller is also yet again the one handling this mission, and she is established at the beginning as someone who will kill any members of the squad if they fail to do what they’re supposed to, yet she’s hardly in this movie at all once everything really gets started.

But the icing on the cake is the third act, which, despite me liking Gunn’s storytelling techniques the vast majority of the time, I think goes way, way too far. This is what I meant when I said the comedy works for the most part. The whole climax is essentially a big boss fight, which could be fun, but is full of the most ridiculous comedic moments in the film, and weirdly enough, really the only ones that very much don’t work for me. I was also taken out of it numerous times by a couple of segments that aren’t supposed to be taken literally, but more so metaphorically, and that’s one of the biggest aspects of this film that just went too far. The climax, to put it into more simple terms, has its seriousness undermined by stupid moments far too often.

The Suicide Squad is easily one of those films that I very much want to love, but don’t and unlikely never will.