Happy Friday the 13th, everyone. I celebrated by watching 2021's The Suicide Squad, or as I like to call it, the Golden Miracle. As we enter into a declining period on superhero films and studios grasp desperately at gimmicks, politics, and formula to strong-arm you into seeing increasingly dull radioactive dishwater, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad shines as a beacon. And I knew it from the trailer with the little dialogue about Peacemaker eating dicks on the beach for liberty. I knew from how much that little piece of dialogue accomplished: it was funny, it was impressively fucked up (thus contributing to the film's main concept), and it told you a lot about a specific character. I'd say a good 80% of the dialogue in the movie has those three qualities. James Gunn still isn't great at writing women and his political bias is certainly on display but neither of these things really detract from the film. There are terrific candy- coloured visuals, dynamic action sequences, an incredible quantity of good supporting performances, and a truly impressive final boss monster.
People are going to remember the giant starfish. That's going to leave its mark like all the generic skybeams could never do. Starro the Conqueror originated in the Justice League comics in 1960. He is absurd but he works on a genuinely Lovecraftian level, not the least because his creation was likely influenced by Lovecraft's own aliens.
I would still like a movie where the Suicide Squad has a genuinely amoral mission but this movie did so much better at actually playing with the concept than the 2016 film. That movie had one good character, Harley Quinn (Margo Robbie), and so, appropriately, she's one of the few who return for this one. The other returning characters are more interesting in Gunn's hands.
One of the weakest aspects of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies is that Gunn tends to make women all true-hearted saints, even when it's not appropriate, and he kind of does that here with Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), though her flashbacks with her father, played by Taika Waititi in an inspired cameo, are genuinely sweet. Harley Quinn forces Gunn to go out of his comfort zone and she is pretty funny and fucked up, more effective than she was in Birds of Prey but still somehow lacking the bite promised by the visuals in the 2016 film's trailers. Somehow that little hot-pants outfit just can't be eclipsed by everything else they try, even a gorgeous red gown she wears in this film when she wines and dines with the president of Corto Malto (Juan Diego Bolto). Quinn's shifting moral outlook in this movie look less like lazy writing, as it did in Birds of Prey, and more like someone whose mind genuinely just ploughs through the woods, reinterpreting reality as it races along, blissfully heedless of its own contradictions. This leads to an especially funny moment at the end where she confidently refers to Idris Elba's character by the wrong name.
Elba plays Bloodsport, a clear replacement for Will Smith's Deadshot character. But he's much better than Deadshot anyway. Again, Bloodsport is a solidly crafted character, again and again showing himself to be an unapologetic mercenary thief. His rapport with Peacemaker (John Cena) is terrific, especially in a scene where they take turns murdering a camp of soldiers.
Peacemaker is, one the one hand, a pretty stale left-wing caricature of a ringwinger. He's only a slightly scarier version of Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central persona. But he has some surprising nuance, enough that you actually kind of like him in moments like when King Shark (Sylvester Stallone) makes a little doll of him out of plastic explosive. Peacemaker waking up in the forest camp wearing only bright white briefs is an emblematic moment for him--he's unaware of how naked his messed up psychology is which paradoxically gives him a kind of attractive vulnerability. At the same time, it makes him a little scary because you're constantly reminded he's incapable of rational judgement. You could say that about a lot of characters in the movie.
Then there's King Shark, a brilliantly absurdist presence, and the Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), another wonderful recontextualisation of '60s imagery with deft psychological performance and writing. All that and Peter Capaldi in Malcolm Tucker mode, too. This movie is a refreshing feast.
The Suicide Squad premiered here in Japan to-day but I realised it would be about five dollars cheaper for me to just get the HBOMax subscription for a month. I'm kind of sorry I didn't get a chance to watch it with a Japanese audience, particularly considering what a sensitive subject suicide is in this country. But there probably are a few other things on HBOMax I could watch this month. I don't think I'm going to keep the subscription, though. Between Netflix, Disney+, The Criterion Channel, and Amazon Prime, I think I'm normally well off. But The Suicide Squad was the first time I remember being excited to see a comic book movie since Joker. Batman's rogue's gallery really is a gold mine.
Twitter Sonnet #1462
Pandora's scuba sequence opened chests.
Indulgent fish began to buy the reef.
A team of ghosts retained their worsts and bests.
The spirit patrons wonder where's the beef.
Suspicious vases clasp their flowers tight.
A better lunch across the office waits.
The second shoe was rich and worn to right.
A phony name inspired traps and baits.
A winning smile lost its way in grains.
Dividing wheat from rice we chose the maize.
A breakfast berry mixed potential stains.
The fruit of plants was bought in many ways.
Diverging tails originate from loops.
Our questions float as basil leaves in soups.
