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DC's "Suicide Squad" Casting Revealed

Arcman said:
Oh please, they all but made Deadshot a good guy here.

"You are evil." He says to Enchantress.

Good god, the amount of stupid hypocrisy there is ugh. Why did the people in charge try to make everyone on the squad sympathetic? That isn't the fucking point of them. This isn't GotG, and it shouldn't be.
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The whole point was that they weren't sympathetic. The whole movie is full of people that are ugly on the inside. They might be funny but in the end they are still sociopaths that kill people without blinking.
 
VolantRedX said:
The whole point was that they weren't sympathetic. The whole movie is full of people that are ugly on the inside. They might be funny but in the end they are still sociopaths that kill people without blinking.
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As if, the movie didn't sell me that at all. Like, if that were true, then Captain Boomerang wouldn't have came back. Diablo wouldn't say that the squad was his fucking family. Deadshot would have killed both Flagg and Waller the moment both had their backs turned to him and ran off.
 
VolantRedX said:
The whole point of his character was how those traits didn't make him a good person. He wasn't a heroic person or even a good person and what positive traits he did have were in the end not enough to redeem him as a person.
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Man that is not what I saw them trying to sell me at all. The movie was desperate to sell him as a good person despite all the murdering. He did it for his baby girl after all, and he fought the REAL bad guys, so how bad can he possibly be? Every single time the movie had the opportunity for Will Smith to make the wrong choice he went for the good one. All so he could get back to his daughter. That is the story of every goddamn hero with a daughter in movies, and you never see them shown as horrible monsters, and we didn't see it this time either.


VolantRedX said:
The whole point was that they weren't sympathetic. The whole movie is full of people that are ugly on the inside. They might be funny but in the end they are still sociopaths that kill people without blinking.
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They never did the actually evil thing after joining up, of course they were being run as sympathetic. They never actually betray the team, they form family bonds over the course of a couple hours, Harley gives up a chance to bring the Joker back from the dead to help her new 'family'! How in the world are they not being run as sympathetic anti-villains. Boomerang even had his best possible moment changed from him being a manipulative monster to him being a idiotic fuckup, just so that he would be easier to root for.
 
That was well, interesting.

The movie was not good, but the variance was so high that it almost doesn't matter in a way. Even very scathing reviews point to parts that they liked, and I think that depending on your tolerance for a variety of things your experience of the film can be very different.

The good:
-Margot Robbie was a very good Harley Quinn. The whole mix of funny, sweet, and outright harmful violence she inflicted sold the mood of the Joker well.
-I liked Leto overall. I know this is a crazy statement, but his presence in the film was almost understated. The movie was never about the Joker, and his actions were quite coherent. I think the menace of the Joker was well conveyed throughout, without him seeming implausibly important in a war of gods and monsters.
-Enchantress and her Brother felt like ancient god monsters. Overall I felt they were rather well done villains. There was a coherence, logic and theme to their threat and I enjoyed it.
-Waller was Annalise Keating and it was awesome.
-The film felt rooted in context. The world felt living and breathing, tied to things, the characters seemed to have internal lives and histories. For a film like this I think it accomplished a lot in claiming there is a DCCU that can be cared about.

The bad:
-Will Smith played Will Smith. This was almost certainly necessary, because the rest of the cast was some combination of taciturn, unpleasant, crazy and evil. Will Smith however was one of the least coherent characters in the story, with Deadshot whitewashed too little to matter but enough to be annoying and having far too many heroic impulses to make sense. I think if you had actually made this a fusion with Hancock or something and let him actually play the grumpy whitewashed Wolverine the movie would have improved dramatically.
-The editing was weird and so was the pacing. I think it worked in some ways, but was overall a huge net negative.
-The government agents did not sell that they were good enough at crazy herding to keep this together OOC. "If he dies, you die." How is that not an invitation for Harley to maim him and act innocent immediately after? When Waller was on screen it was even worse there.
-The final fight really didn't work. What, random bomb takes out a medium rank god? Will Smith's bracers did shit? The emotional arc really didn't sell that Harley liked these people specifically, so "you hurt my friends" sucked even though Harley walking up and cutting out a heart should have worked very well.
-It was just a mess overall. A lot of complicating factors wore it down. I think the movie was legitimately more than the sum of its parts, but a lot of those parts were just pulling it down.

I am interested in what the hell is coming next in the DCCU, but I am not excited by it. My feeling is that The CW got a huge budget for their made for TV movie and grabbed everyone who wasn't busy to do it.
 
Arcman said:
"You are evil." He says to Enchantress.

Good god, the amount of stupid hypocrisy there is ugh.
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Well, there's 'evil', where yeah, there's bad guys, but they're less outright evil so much as self-serving amoral jerks, with your punch clock gun for hire who "merely" kills people for a living, your psycho chick who just wants to have a good time and please her crazier man, your honorless bankrobbing scum, your monster man who lives like a movie monster; and then there's 'Evil', where Enchantress is destroying things for the sake of taking over the world so that she can force it to worship her as a goddess while transforming people into members of her mindless army of horrors.

Regardless of if you think there's a difference between them, I can easily see Deadshot thinking to himself and justifying that no matter how bad he may be, he's not nearly as Evil as Enchantress, with a capital 'E'. Hypocrisy or not, the line works for him.
 
mc2rpg said:
Man that is not what I saw them trying to sell me at all. The movie was desperate to sell him as a good person despite all the murdering. He did it for his baby girl after all, and he fought the REAL bad guys, so how bad can he possibly be? Every single time the movie had the opportunity for Will Smith to make the wrong choice he went for the good one. All so he could get back to his daughter. That is the story of every goddamn hero with a daughter in movies, and you never see them shown as horrible monsters, and we didn't see it this time either.
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Except he was a horrible parent to his child. He wasn't fit to raise her despite his love for her. On top of that he at several times talks about how much he likes killing people and he makes no effort to change. In the movies where the assassin tries to be a parent it's implied that they want at some point stop being criminals. Deadshot doesn't, he intends to raise his daughter in his criminal lifestyle. He even encourages her to think like an assassin in that scene when he teaches her math.

mc2rpg said:
They never did the actually evil thing after joining up, of course they were being run as sympathetic. They never actually betray the team, they form family bonds over the course of a couple hours, Harley gives up a chance to bring the Joker back from the dead to help her new 'family'! How in the world are they not being run as sympathetic anti-villains. Boomerang even had his best possible moment changed from him being a manipulative monster to him being a idiotic fuckup, just so that he would be easier to root for.
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If they were totally unsympathetic then the movie would be awful because we'd shown a bunch of assholes doing shitty things for no reason then refusing to do any good. What a shitty movie. The point of the movie is despite being assholes they're not fucking assholes.
 
VolantRedX said:
I love how the straw that broke the camel's back is one of the best parts in the movie. Will Smith carries a lot of the film by being so damn smooth.
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Exactly, the only reason to get Will Smith is for that Will Smith charisma. Personally, I think any problems with Deadshot are due to the writing because Deadshot isn't a hitman with a heart of gold, he's a charming hitman without a heart. Or at least that's my read of him. I mostly just know him from Gail Simone's Secret Six comic. Honestly, the killer doing dangerous missions for the sake of his kid sounds more like Catman.
 
VolantRedX said:
Except he was a horrible parent to his child. He wasn't fit to raise her despite his love for her.
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Unfortunately the only alternative presented is the mother who spends all day passed out drunk or high, and the new boyfriend that is implied to be a threat. Sure he may not be fit, but the film goes out of its way to say he is an acceptable father, even if only in comparison.

VolantRedX said:
If they were totally unsympathetic then the movie would be awful because we'd shown a bunch of assholes doing shitty things for no reason then refusing to do any good. What a shitty movie. The point of the movie is despite being assholes they're not fucking assholes.
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Alternatively the characters could be assholes doing shitty things for a purpose, and have a good movie. Instead of people that constantly do the right thing for the "family" that they made in a couple hours of fighting fungus monsters. What a shitty movie. The point of the movie should be that they are fucking assholes that are forced to do good, not to be jerks with a heart of gold.
 
DracoDracul said:
Exactly, the only reason to get Will Smith is for that Will Smith charisma. Personally, I think any problems with Deadshot are due to the writing because Deadshot isn't a hitman with a heart of gold, he's a charming hitman without a heart. Or at least that's my read of him. I mostly just know him from Gail Simone's Secret Six comic. Honestly, the killer doing dangerous missions for the sake of his kid sounds more like Catman.
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Except he doesn't have a heart of gold. He says outright to Harley. He doesn't feel any remorse for the killing. He cares about his daughter sure, but at the same time she's implied to be the only thing he has positive feelings for at all.

mc2rpg said:
Unfortunately the only alternative presented is the mother who spends all day passed out drunk or high, and the new boyfriend that is implied to be a threat. Sure he may not be fit, but the film goes out of its way to say he is an acceptable father, even if only in comparison.
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Except he's still a hardened killer that shows no desire to change. If he wanted to do right by his daughter he'd try and get her into foster care.

mc2rpg said:
Alternatively the characters could be assholes doing shitty things for a purpose, and have a good movie. Instead of people that constantly do the right thing for the "family" that they made in a couple hours of fighting fungus monsters. What a shitty movie. The point of the movie should be that they are fucking assholes that are forced to do good, not to be jerks with a heart of gold.
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If they were all assholes with no redeeming qualities why would you care about them or want them to live or die? Characters need at least some good so that you have a reason to care and want to see them succeed.
 
VolantRedX said:
If they were all assholes with no redeeming qualities why would you care about them or want them to live or die? Characters need at least some good so that you have a reason to care and want to see them succeed.
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That shouldn't be the case for the Suicide Squad. Again, this isn't GotG and the movie shouldn't be acting like a caricature of it.
 
Arcman said:
That shouldn't be the case for the Suicide Squad. Again, this isn't GotG and the movie shouldn't be acting like a caricature of it.
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If the Squad were totally unlikable then why would anyone get invested in them or the story? The difference between this and GotG is that in GotG they were petty crooks or people forced into being murderers. In this movie they're far worse people and not all that likable. However there is a vast gulf between "asshole" and "monster".
 
VolantRedX said:
If the Squad were totally unlikable then why would anyone get invested in them or the story? The difference between this and GotG is that in GotG they were petty crooks or people forced into being murderers. In this movie they're far worse people and not all that likable. However there is a vast gulf between "asshole" and "monster".
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The thing is, you can't have assholes like Harley Quinn spout about saving friends and El Diablo considering the Squad to be a second family when they only met like 6 hours ago with like, no time to get to know each other unless that bar where they poured each other drinks takes place in an alternate dimension where time flows hundreds of time slower so they can all share their life stories and do team building exercise for a year straight.
 
CuriousStranger said:
The thing is, you can't have assholes like Harley Quinn spout about saving friends and El Diablo considering the Squad to be a second family when they only met like 6 hours ago with like, no time to get to know each other unless that bar where they poured each other drinks takes place in an alternate dimension where time flows hundreds of time slower so they can all share their life stories and do team building exercise for a year straight.
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Yeah, that was poorly done, but given clips I've seen that bar scene was meant to be longer and there were meant to be more scenes where they work together. DC really needs a new editing staff.
 
VolantRedX said:
Yeah, that was poorly done, but given clips I've seen that bar scene was meant to be longer and there were meant to be more scenes where they work together. DC really needs a new editing staff.
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DC just needs to trust its directors instead of lashing out whenever a critic blinks at them.

For fuck's sake, half the trailer scenes were cut and they handed the editing job to a trailer company since they had such a good reception out of it.
 
VolantRedX said:
If the Squad were totally unlikable then why would anyone get invested in them or the story? The difference between this and GotG is that in GotG they were petty crooks or people forced into being murderers. In this movie they're far worse people and not all that likable. However there is a vast gulf between "asshole" and "monster".
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Easy, just make the squad fight something worse than they are. Don't have Waller a incompetent evil buffon. Make Flagg as the main protagonist, Katana as his second. Give them more character and amp up their heroic qualities a bit while still being on a lighter shade of gray. These are three characters that the audience can be invested in.

The Squad itself can be liked without white-washing them, it has been done before for cool evil villains. Like Vader for one. They should be portrayed as monsters and backstabbing psychopaths, just have them be badass while doing it.
 
Honestly this should have been less save the world and more, steal shit from other bad guys.

Something like Ocean's 11 only with a lot higher action count.

Something that's actually COVERT.

Because what the fuck was the point of sending in the squad? They're good at killing things? Motherfucker, if things are that bad, send in entire army battalions for the rescue. It seemed like the ultimate plan to take care of the bad guys was firepower up the ass, since the squad was only sent in for a search and rescue. If the plan is firepower, then just bomb the hell out of it.
 
Arcman said:
Easy, just make the squad fight something worse than they are. Don't have Waller a incompetent evil buffon. Make Flagg as the main protagonist, Katana as his second. Give them more character and amp up their heroic qualities a bit while still being on a lighter shade of gray. These are three characters that the audience can be invested in.

The Squad itself can be liked without white-washing them, it has been done before for cool evil villains. Like Vader for one. They should be portrayed as monsters and backstabbing psychopaths, just have them be badass while doing it.
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That'd be fine, if this was a GI Joe movie. It's not. It's the Suicide Squad movie. They're the ones that should be the focus and the core of the film.

CuriousStranger said:
Honestly this should have been less save the world and more, steal shit from other bad guys.

Something like Ocean's 11 only with a lot higher action count.

Something that's actually COVERT.

Because what the fuck was the point of sending in the squad? They're good at killing things? Motherfucker, if things are that bad, send in entire army battalions for the rescue. It seemed like the ultimate plan to take care of the bad guys was firepower up the ass, since the squad was only sent in for a search and rescue. If the plan is firepower, then just bomb the hell out of it.
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Their mission was to rescue Waller. They were never sent after the Encantress nor did Waller ever intend for that to be their mission. They decided to do that after realizing that after getting a little tipsy and deciding to do so because they had nothing better to do.
 
VolantRedX said:
Their mission was to rescue Waller. They were never sent after the Encantress nor did Waller ever intend for that to be their mission. They decided to do that after realizing that after getting a little tipsy and deciding to do so because they had nothing better to do.
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I know that the mission was to rescue Waller. I'm questioning why they were sent to rescue Waller.

The entire thing is labeled as a terrorist attack and shit is utterly fucked in Midway City. There is no one who would disapprove of sending in ALL THE SOLDIERS at that moment in time. Actual soldiers. Not just a Delta team or two.

For a search and rescue, there is nothing the Suicide Squad could have done that trained US military operators couldn't do.
 
CuriousStranger said:
I know that the mission was to rescue Waller. I'm questioning why they were sent to rescue Waller.

The entire thing is labeled as a terrorist attack and shit is utterly fucked in Midway City. There is no one who would disapprove of sending in ALL THE SOLDIERS at that moment in time. Actual soldiers. Not just a Delta team or two.

For a search and rescue, there is nothing the Suicide Squad could have done that trained US military operators couldn't do.
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You mean the soldiers that were killed by the dozens and couldn't stand up to even the few dozen of the monsters that the Squad killed with ease?
 
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