VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Because you should be caring about Batman or hell the Joker. Not some sidekick that's only famous because she's in a skin tight suit.
DC's "Suicide Squad" Casting Revealed
- Thread starter Jace911
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I just want to say:
Fuck having the Joker in this. He's an irredeemable caricature of a villain who exists only to destroy more interesting plots because the moment he appears everything becomes about him and his plans are basically "I KILL PEOPLE FOR THE LULZ." I think DC needs to just officially retire the Joker. Literally give their rights to someone who will never use it, ever, so they can stop suffering the curse of having the fucking Joker around to ruin everything when he can plausibly shove his engorged murder-boner into the material.
Fuck having the Joker in this. He's an irredeemable caricature of a villain who exists only to destroy more interesting plots because the moment he appears everything becomes about him and his plans are basically "I KILL PEOPLE FOR THE LULZ." I think DC needs to just officially retire the Joker. Literally give their rights to someone who will never use it, ever, so they can stop suffering the curse of having the fucking Joker around to ruin everything when he can plausibly shove his engorged murder-boner into the material.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Yeah why have the Joker appear in a film featuring Harely Quinn? It's not like he's central to her character and most people would literally never know who she is, thus needing some sort of origin story.
NonSequtur
a body
So no, you don't know what a foil is, nor can you explain what purpose she should serve in the narrative.
According to you, she exists so she's a clown who kills people. She needs the Joker as an origin story like she needs the clap.
More importantly-given Harley Quinn's design, she could probably be excised and the story would be better for it. The Suicide Squad is more interesting when you've got human motivations there, rather than "me so cray-cray."
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Harley Quinn isn't a foil to anyone. Joker is Batman's foil. She's just there to give the Joker someone to talk to so you can understand his thinking. Really that's why she was created for the cartoon. She was made solely to give the Joker someone to verbalize to.
Which narrative? The movie? I assume she's going to be the crazy high intensity character to play opposite Deadshot's calm professional killer.
Without the Joker she's just "female Joker" to most people. I'm not saying her tragic backstory is bad, I'm saying she's more fun as a psycho killer than as some woobie trying to make it in the real world. Her setting a child on fire in front of his parents is more interesting than her troubles holding down a 9 to 5 job. The trailer says these guys are the worst of the worst. Good, let them be the worst of the worst. Let them be a team of totally amoral sociopaths that happen to be doing good. I admit that's less nuanced but it shows just how fucked up supervillains really are.
NonSequtur
a body
It took, what, 4 posts for you to contradict yourself? Bravo.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
She is normally the Joker's sidekick, thus isn't a foil to anyone. Take that away and she must then act as the foil. Something I've never seen her do well. She's at best a worse version of the Joker and occasionally Poison Ivy's fuck buddy. At worst she's just cheap fanservice. I don't get why people like this character. She has nothing to her. She's never interesting on her own.
I think the Joker can be done well, but good god do I not want him in this. Hell, I'm more excited for a blurry camera phone capture of the Deadpool trailer than Suicide Squad. This film should be a dark, somewhat comedic (although not a comedy) story about a bunch of fairly harden criminals (who aren't necessarily completely dysfunctional) having to work together under The Wall (and I am put out they didn't cast a fatter actress for the role).
On Harley Quinn: the character is entirely wrapped up with the Joker and defined by him. You can't just cut him out of the backstory and have the same character. There are great stories about her moving past him (Injustice actually has a fun plot arc about this), but frankly neither of them should be in a Suicide Squad film. For once have a story about people who are villains because it paid, they enjoyed being outlaws, or had other reasonable psychological motives other than "rawr, kill the normies." Either crib from the original Ostrander run or the modern Secret Six and explore the cast's motivations for villainy alongside the action.
On Harley Quinn: the character is entirely wrapped up with the Joker and defined by him. You can't just cut him out of the backstory and have the same character. There are great stories about her moving past him (Injustice actually has a fun plot arc about this), but frankly neither of them should be in a Suicide Squad film. For once have a story about people who are villains because it paid, they enjoyed being outlaws, or had other reasonable psychological motives other than "rawr, kill the normies." Either crib from the original Ostrander run or the modern Secret Six and explore the cast's motivations for villainy alongside the action.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
IIRC he's mostly just a cameo to set up Harley.
Oh god, so fucking true. I am... I am just sick of the Joker, you know? DC just needs to go fucking find some new Batman villains, who don't go and take over all the material and require everything to go right for them and go "Knock knock. Who's there? Me killing people" as the main extent of their humour.
Like, the thing about him in the Dark Knight Returns is that he was genuinely different and new from everyone else in Gotham, and he was considerably different from all previous portrayals. Now people just copy that. You kind of lose the contrast if Batman spends more time fighting the same fucking crazy clown than he does fighting criminals who are in it for the money or some other objective.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Well written the Joker can be one of the most off-putting and intense characters in Batman. He's just not written real well.
Yeah, no. What you're arguing here is "In the hands of a good writer, he can be written well". Which is so profoundly trite that I am lost for words. It's a trite, meaningless argument because in the hands of a good writer, Bad Penny could be an incredibly strong, well-written character. Because it's coming from a good writer.
When everyone writes a character poorly, at some point you need to start asking questions if the flaw is in the character and it's just that some good writers can make them work.
(and even then, you'd need to give him a rest. You can't churn a character out endlessly, or things get saturated, especially when they're meant to be different from all the other villains. @MJ12 Commando is right. DC would do very well to enforce a 5 year moratorium on the Joker to fucking well force writers to innovate)
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Most of the time the Joker works pretty well.
...How often do you think he shows up in comics? It can often be months or years between stories where he's a major feature. Batman does fight other villains all the damn time.
El_Shamro
Master of...Something...
- Location
- Boston?
I got around to watching the trailer. Thoughts:
- Waller should have been fatter, though this one's an improvement over the one in the Arrow TV show.
- Given that this seems to take cues from the New 52 run, they should have cast Will Smith as Black Spider, especially if they kept his role close to that in the comics.
- Killer Croc looks like shit. Seriously, he looks more like the Goombas from the Mario Bros movie than the Batman villain. Again, since they seem to be taking cues from the New 52, swap him out for King Shark. That way, you still get your big, animal-themed bruiser, and you might be able to spin him into a darker analogue to one of the characters from Guardians of the Galaxy for bonus points.
- El Diablo looks pretty cool. Spot-on. He better not be as lame as he was in the comics.
- Harley looks more like some junkie who got high during a rave and wandered into a police station than the character, and her voice is missing the accent (wasn't that something that was promised to the fans early-on?). I am disappoint.
- Joker was inevitable, given Harley's inclusion. I'd be fine with his role being limited to what it was recently in the comics.
- But Joker's appearance is shitty. He comes off more as what would happen if an Indie film student decided he was "fictionkin" with the Joker. Then watched people imitate Heath Ledger on YouTube for inspiration. Then dropped out of his film school. That wasn't accredited.
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If you want to go with an aquatic themed villain for DC, you go with King Shark and spend your one swear on the King Shark Song
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
She's not exactly svelte. I never did get the issue here.
Deadshot is more popular.
...yeah that is a good point. I hope it's an unfinished effect in the trailer.
I never even heard of this guy.
She matches her more recent depictions.
I don't care what anyone else says, I think it looks incredible. Really insane. This Joker seems less a massive ploter and more just a killing machine.
trob030490
Professor Kokonoe
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- she/her
I recommend the recentish cartoon Beware the Batman. Other than Ras eventually from what I saw, which was admittedly only season 1 and I really mean to watch season 2 because season 1 was quite good, none of the villains were standards. No Joker, Two-Face, Riddler, Catwoman, Penguin, etc. None of those.
Even Ras only came in later after the league of assassins had mostly been working on orders from other characters as the main antagonists in those arcs. It also had an atypical Batman characterization that was quite refreshing and very entertaining and a very different Alfred. And a partner in Katana, rather than the usual side kick stuff.
Basically, imagine Batman as a very very driven high functioning autistic kid that was raised by a snarky and not all that old former MI6 agent with the logical extensions of that being the character we get. He's kind of amazing to watch.
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VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Not having them seems lame as hell.
trob030490
Professor Kokonoe
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- she/her
It had a bunch of new interesting villains to explore instead of the same played out dryed up characters that have been pulled out again and again for decades.
Granted, some of them evoked various villains sort of in their relationship with Batman and Katana, but at least they were trying to do something that hasn't been done in visual media again and again and again.
And if you do bring back those characters, do something new with them. Like, if you're not going to do what Batman TAS did with Mr Freeze's character in terms of doing something innovative with the character, don't even try, because it'll just be more of the same.
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VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Why? That seems like leaving Jedus and the Romans out of a story about Jesus. You sort of need them in there somewhere.
I'm just going to quote someone from earlier.
No one wants new things. They say they do, but they're lying. They want the same thing over and over again.
Claudette Savagely
Ball of flies
- Location
- (and made of) Parts Unknown
I can assure you that you're quite wrong, at least as far as I am concerned.
e: with respect to Batman and his rogues, certainly.
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