Suicide Squad: Reason #238 Why You Shouldn’t Trust Movie Trailers

What happened between Comic Con 2015 and Opening Weekend 2016?

Before you proceed, re-watch (or watch if you haven’t seen it) the above teaser trailer for Comic Con 2015 which leaked out and forced Warner Brothers to release it officially. Then, after you do that read this article from The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters.

I’m going to be referencing both throughout this article.

After near misses (or outright misses depending on your point of view) with Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman (we’ll ignore the wretched Green Lantern as it’s not part of the DC Extended Universe or DCEU, DC’s version of Marvel Studios’ Cinematic Universe), Warner Brothers badly needed a runaway commercial and critical hit with Suicide Squad to stave off the narrative that had begun encircling the studio and its DC Entertainment wing that it just doesn’t have the magic touch Marvel Studios has.

Suicide Squad may yet achieve the former (too soon to say) but the latter is an outright impossibility at this point.

If you’re a comic book fan like me (though more in the Marvel world than DC), your reaction to the Comic Con trailer was probably along the lines of mine. I was stunned. I didn’t know what I was going to get with Suicide Squad but I wasn’t expecting something that dark, intense, and thrilling. I had been positively underwhelmed by the Batman v Superman trailers, which wound up serving as a harbinger of sorts when the movie did come out and came out a lot flatter than it should have (I discussed my reaction to that film in depth here). Batman v Superman may have under performed but I still held out hope for Suicide Squad based on that Comic Con trailer.

Then word seeped out in the Hollywood press that Batman v Superman had spooked Warner into reshoots on Suicide Squad to lighten the tone (something that was denied). That rattled me because that Comic Con trailer looked perfect so why mess with a formula that seemed to resonate so well with viewers?

Well Suicide Squad is out now and in my opinion it’s another whiff at reaching iconic status by Warner. The film is okay. But then so were Man of Steel and Batman v Superman in my book. What was hinted at (I won’t use the word “promised”) by the Comic Con trailer never really materializes after the first third of the film. The film is disjointed, seemingly going in two directions at the same time: very serious and light comedy. After setting things up pretty well introducing the individual squad members (save for the short shrift it gives to the complex origin of the Harley Quinn/Joker relationship…a point I will be returning to later), the movie boxes itself in, trapped in a narrative that is short on exposition and character development save for a few key exceptions (Deadshot, Quinn, Amanda Waller, and El Diablo) and bogs down in a series of oxygen starving firefights.

It is a given that in ensemble pieces certain characters are going to get shorter shrift than others…especially when the film in question clocks in at a ridiculously short two hours and three minutes. I say “ridiculously short” precisely because it was an ensemble piece and those by necessity tend to run longer than your standard Hollywood film. Captain America: Civil War and both Avengers films ran over two and a half hours and they needed every minute of it (Age of Ultron probably needed a few more).

Because this film is so short, when it ideally needed to be longer, the unevenness of the character development is pretty glaring. This fact is underscored by the Rick Flag/June Moone romance. We’re told they’re in love but aside from a few frames of kissing, that’s the sum total of the information provided to the viewer.

If there is one Achilles’ heel to Suicide Squad it is the treatment of the Moone/Enchantress characters. The former is essentially a non-entity on screen. The latter is supposed to be the central villain but her character is right up there with the worst Thor movie villains not named Loki in terms of cookie cutter, paint by numbers, Hollywood style character development. The viewer isn’t given the chance to get to know Moone so they can’t possibly empathize with her predicament and her evil alter ego is a stiff bore.

This really matters for the film because everything that transpires in Suicide Squad depends in one way or another upon those two. Since the romance between Moone and Flag is essentially the romantic equivalent of vaporware as far as the viewer is concerned we aren’t afforded the opportunity to buy Flag’s determination to save her. As such, Flag comes across as emasculated. The Enchantress? You want the viewer to root against the villain because of their character. You want them to meet their end because of their character. Me? I wanted The Enchantress to meet her end so that she’d be off the screen. I have to lay blame on this to the horribly miscast Cara Delevingne. I won’t give a grade on her portrayal of June Moone because we just don’t see enough of Moone to be able to honestly rate that performance but her portrayal of The Enchantress is wooden at best. There’s almost no charisma to speak of. Comic film villainy needs charisma and we get precious little out of The Enchantress until the final minutes before her death and what we do get isn’t very convincing.

Without those key elements which are central to the story firing correctly, the thing that holds the film together winds up being the visual firefight set pieces and the banter between the squad. I mean, what else is there for the viewer to sink their teeth into? It’s not the exposition because that more or less ended after the first third of the film and the character introductions. The firefight sequences are pretty good but after the second one I started yearning for some narrative. The bar scene was fine albeit lacking in authenticity. The script just doesn’t give a reason for most of those characters continuing on with their mission, save Flag, and I already explained why his motivation was short circuited on screen by the dearth of supporting evidence we (don’t) see. Deadshot wanting to get back to his daughter is strong motivation but totally unbelievable. How a guy can be as smart as him and think the authorities would actually release him if they succeeded — I just can’t square the two.

I wasn’t happy with the Quinn/Joker relationship. Anyone who has any knowledge of the books knows it isn’t a romance — at least not the kind portrayed in this film. Its an abusive relationship with each having wanted to or tried to kill the other several times. Indeed, if you believe the rumors, some abusive aspects were cut or changed in the film, along with other things like the Flag/Moone romance and some character backstory.

I’m not even sure whether Suicide Squad was the right film to introduce this Quinn/Joker pairing. Quinn’s fall to insanity, like her relationship with Joker, was far more nuanced and complex than was portrayed here. It’s obvious some of that relationship got cut because we saw pieces of it in the Comic Con trailer and other trailers…pieces which are not present here. The trailer makes it look like the Joker is forcing Harleen Quinzel to endure electro shock treatment against her will. The film makes it look like she wants it.

So we are presented with a catch-22 in Suicide Squad. On the one hand if the film does go into the necessary detail of the Quinn/Joker relationship, it would totally hijack the film away from what little plot there is. On the other hand if the film doesn’t go there, people like me are unhappy at the superficiality of it all. There really is no good play for Warner here. The smarter move would have been to have the two introduced in a Batman film where the smaller main cast size would have given the characters room to breathe. That option was apparently a non-starter for Warner.

Some people will chafe at how little Joker does in this film. It’s more than a cameo but hardly the role that’s going to generate Oscar buzz. I’m fine with that. Joker’s presence here is more central to giving Quinn’s character some meat than it is to the main plot. Nor will I quibble with how this Joker gets played as more of a gangsta than the homicidal loose cannon he is in the modern DC books…well since The Killing Joke anyways.

By the way, I am agnostic when it comes to comparing how the Joker has been portrayed over the decades. As far as I’m concerned nobody has successfully nailed the character. Everyone talks about Heath Ledger’s performance, but as good as his performance was, that Joker was a toned down version of the one we know and love in the books.

The banter between the squad itself is okay. The best lines are reserved for Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, and Will Smith. But there aren’t enough of them. This group is made up of the kind of over the top characters that should have been taking verbal shots all film long and yet they only seem to come out in spurts. That is if you can hear them. If you thought Bane was inaudible in Dark Knight Rises wait until you mis-hear Killer Croc. I only understood half of his paltry oration.

As Robbie, Davis, and Smith got most of the best lines, they turned in the best performances. Smith in particular really stands out. Between this film, I, Robot, and Hancock (I know, I know — not great films) Smith can now credibly lay claim to the mantle Clint Eastwood relinquished two decades ago as the actor who gives the best reaction shots in film.

But as good as Robbie, Davis, and Smith are the best they can do is prop up a film that is soooo dependent upon action set pieces and a handful of one liners to keep things going rather than the anemic plot that borders on boring. Suicide Squad doesn’t suck and Robbie, Davis, and Smith are big reasons why it doesn’t suck. But Suicide Squad isn’t the film it should have been, isn’t the film we deserved, and isn’t what what we thought we were going to get from that Comic Con trailer.

So what happened? Why did a film that showed such promise in its first trailer veer into this?

That Hollywood Reporter article I linked to at the top of this story points a disturbing finger at Warner Brothers.

A source with knowledge of events says Warners executives, nervous from the start, grew more anxious after they were blindsided and deeply rattled by the tepid response to BvS. “Kevin was really pissed about damage to the brand,” says one executive close to the studio. A key concern for Warners executives was that Suicide Squad didn’t deliver on the fun, edgy tone promised in the strong teaser trailer for the film. So while Ayer pursued his original vision, Warners set about working on a different cut, with an assist from Trailer Park, the company that had made the teaser.

By the time the film was done, multiple editors had been brought into the process, though only John Gilroy is credited. (A source says he left by the end of the process and that the final editor was Michael Tronick.) “When you have big tentpoles and time pressure, you pull in resources from every which way you can,” says this source. “You can’t do it the way it used to be, with one editor and one assistant editor.”

In May, Ayer’s more somber version and a lighter, studio-favored version were tested with audiences in Northern California. “If there are multiple opinions that aren’t in sync, you go down multiple tracks — two tracks at least,” says an insider. “That was the case here for a period of time, always trying to get to a place where you have consensus.” Those associated with the film insist Ayer agreed to and participated in the process. Once feedback on the two versions was analyzed, it became clear it was possible to get to “a very common-ground place.” (The studio-favored version with more characters introduced early in the film and jazzed-up graphics won.) Getting to that place of consensus, however, required millions of dollars’ worth of additional photography.

Studio meddling is never a good sign, but even if Warner changed Ayer’s movie around I don’t think that automatically means we have identified the root cause of the problem. My belief in this is based on the fact that one aspect of Warner’s changes; the shifting of character introductions to the beginning, wound up being one of the best parts of the film. That change seems to have worked. Other changes, whatever they may have been, may not have worked. It’s hard to say since we haven’t seen, and never will see, Ayer’s version of the film. I know, I know…Ayer has said this is his film. That’s like saying Spartacus was Stanley Kubrick’s film…

But massive editing and reshoots didn’t deliver the complete picture Warner had hoped for. If the rumored cuts are true, it means the Flag/Moone romance was essentially left on the cutting room floor and that definitely hurt the film as it needlessly castrated Flag’s character. The editing also made Batman’s appearances feel rather shoe horned in. I won’t include The Flash’s cameo because that was all it was ever intended to be; just a tease. The script itself may be an issue here. It is well known that Warner rushed this film into production and the script wasn’t in its final form as the movie started shooting. The script is what made The Enchantress what she was (boring). The casting for that role didn’t do the character any favors either.

We will never really know exactly why what was hinted at in the Comic Con trailer never made it all the way to the final film. Maybe the trailer itself was the anomaly and Suicide Squad was always going to miss its mark?

Never trust a trailer.

When I wrote about Batman v Superman I said that based on all the controversy about casting and the director and the so-so trailers for the film that it was always going to be Suicide Squad that would be the key film that would either make or break the DCEU for Warner. I was wrong…in as much as I didn’t anticipate the possibility that Suicide Squad would be good enough to not suck but not bad enough to cripple the DCEU.

And yet that is precisely the case. Instead of a breakout film for the DCEU Warner gets its third “meh” film in a row. Good enough to draw in the die hard fans and deliver a respectable box office (presumably the box office will be respectable…somewhere in the 5–800 million range) but not good enough to deliver stellar box office with strong word of mouth critical backing.

That task now falls to Wonder Woman. After three misses, the stakes are now unbelievably high for Warner because the film after that is the first Justice League film. If Wonder Woman should falter the way Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Suicide Squad have, it will damage Justice League.

I was going to say the Comic Con trailer for Wonder Woman looked great but then so did Suicide Squad’s.

The DC fans have grown impatient and they are lashing out…at the critics. Their immediate target has been Rotten Tomatoes where the critical ranking for Suicide Squad is languishing at 30%. Now, I think 30% is low based on my impression of the film but not implausibly low. Nevertheless, someone started an online petition to get Rotten Tomatoes shut down because of that ranking. I find the argument behind the petition both ridiculous and illuminating.

It is ridiculous because there is no inherent Warner/DC bias at play as far as the critics are concerned. To be sure there is a tiny minority of critics out there that just don’t gravitate to comic book films. Period. Hell, there were some negative reviews for Captain America: Civil War and that film will probably go down as the big box office hit of 2016 backed by strong word of mouth and critical opinion.

Overall, the critics tend to like films that are good and not like films that aren’t. People, when discussing the success of Marvel Studios, talk up Iron Man and The Avengers (and now Civil War which is almost an Avengers film) but they conveniently forget that Marvel has had its share of so-so critically reviewed MCU films and the less said about The Incredible Hulk the better. Say what you want but so far Warner hasn’t turned in a Hulk sized disaster.

There may be some schadenfreude at work though — not because of an anti-DC bias but because when a studio keeps churning out films which are supposed to be critical blockbusters and aren’t…that tends to be something writers look out for with a more clinical eye when the next tentpole film comes out. There can be a “piling on” tendency taking place when looking at a studio under those circumstances and I do believe Warner is experiencing some of that now.

There is one thing that puts a stop to all that though. Warner and DC need to step up and deliver an Iron Man or an Avengers. That hasn’t happened yet (and three films in it’s not unreasonable to question whether it ever will). So the comparisons will continue until it does.

But I find the petition illuminating because it is representative of something. Fear.

The fear is that after middling DC film after middling DC film Warner throws in the towel. Marvel fans have been rewarded. DC fans want theirs too. A series of so-so films threatens the future of the DCEU. No wonder the fans are angry. They want their films and Warner is not helping matters any.

I think that fear is a bit premature. Warner is already officially committed to at least the first Justice League film which is currently shooting (and realistically the next film or two after). The earliest it could conceivably pull the plug would be if Justice League fails to deliver.

This DCEU ship can still be righted. But time is growing short. And it’s shorter than it was a week ago thanks to Suicide Squad.