Tuesdays are $5.00 movie days at Bay Park Cinema just a couple miles up the road from us. So Ben & I went to see Suicide Squad after he was done at work. If I had been smart, I'd have stopped to buy tickets on my way to pick him up. Both the 9:50 and the 10:15 showings were sold out when we showed up about 9:40. We got tickets to the 10:45 show and went home for a bit.
Suicide Squad was all right. It was exciting. There was some really cool imagery. A few laughs. The soundtrack was awesome. Unfortunately, there were too many main characters and not enough story to go around. It would probably have been great as a series. You know, spend an hour or two fleshing out each character's story with a common thread pulling them all to the final epic confrontation. As is, there were some characters that just seemed extraneous. Some story elements that, because they were never developed well and didn't add anything to the climax, could have been skipped altogether. Such as Captain Boomerang or the whole Joker story line. They could have taken those out, used the time to develop other characters and made it a better movie.
If you're looking for some mindless action ... well, you could probably find better. But if you're running out of movies that got good reviews, this one isn't all bad.
3 days ago
Hey Jack, :-)
ReplyDeleteI, myself, **FINALLY** got around to watching "Suicide Squad" this past week. I've been meaning to get in to the movie for a while, but time and circumstance had thwarted me at every attempt. But, my youngest daughter came up to visit, so we went to the movies. :-)
You pretty much hit the nail on the head: Not nearly the dumpster fire it was made out to be by the critics, but it was rather paint-by-numbers. The soundtrack was a little on the nose at times, but I'll forgive 'em since they were good songs (although, "Guardians of the Galaxy" had a superior soundtrack, IMHO).
Speaking of "Guardians of the Galaxy", it did feel like they were trying to retro-fit some of their carefree humor and charm into the movie, and it worked in places, but there were also a few spots where it was neither fish-nor-fowl. Mostly entertaining enough, though.
I'm still processing if I like Jared Leto's version of the Joker or not. I can appreciate the different take, but as you noted, I don't think he was given enough to do in the movie to show how different a take it was going to be (much to Leto's disappointment).
Although, with the release of "Batman V Superman" featuring an extra half-hour of movie put back in, I'm hoping this doesn't start a trend of releasing a movie that is only **MOSTLY** done to the theaters, and the one they really meant to release when the DVD/Blu-Ray comes out. It's always bothered me when they even don't include a scene from a trailer in the movie, and this would be a TERRIBLE trend in the wrong direction on steroids.
Oh, and a LOT of facial tattoos. Hmmm, I know I'm becoming the grumpy old man yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, but I hope that's a trend that my kids don't run with... ;-D