Rated ‘M’ for Mature: “The Suicide Squad”
A Brief Inspection of the R-Rated Superhero Movie
With the release of The Suicide Squad, there is a new entry in the canon of R-rated caped crusades garnering love from fans and critics alike. James Gunn, most known for the celebrated Guardians of the Galaxy movies, is reaching back into his splatter flick roots to invigorate another franchise — this time to elevate it from dreary PG-13 roots into a vibrant and comical gore-fest. Much has already been made of the blockbuster’s irreverence and uniqueness, and indeed the content here is more violent, even grim than any Warner or DC effort, particularly in their respective shared continuity eras.
With that said, the praise feels a bit overstated to me, as The Suicide Squad feels mostly within the bounds of previous R-rated comic adaptations, an exaggeration of the form as opposed to something new and singular. Namely, the graphic violence reminds of Dredd — in my view a bit of an underrated and unheralded gem — and a couple of recent Fox efforts, Logan and Deadpool. As a comedy, The Suicide Squad is much closer to the lattermost comparison, but it stands to mention that the extent of the blood and guts make the former two look downright sanitary by comparison.
What all four of these movies share beyond their ratings is the way each deconstructs and even mocks their fellow entries in the rapidly expanding market of superhero movies. Deadpool is specifically parodic, laced in nearly every moment with metahuman meta humor designed to poke holes in the genre’s self-serious artifice at the machine gun rate of star Reynolds’ joke delivery. While not as overtly satirical, both Dredd and Logan also partake in this: if The Suicide Squad represents an exaggeration of comic violence, Dredd and Logan function as distorted reflections of it.
In Logan, the most dramatically driven of these four, the bloodshed is coupled with a longstanding continuity — one which remains elusive to the DCEU, in spite of ongoing and concerted efforts —to paint a portrait of the extreme cost of violence, especially over time. In Dredd, everything is presented on a tilt. Of the R-rated superhero movies I’ve seen, few have been more all-in on the concept of an actioner that is unforgiving, mean-spirited and cruel. In both cases, the added viscera also comes in tandem with an attempt to take the comic sources and truly push them into a more adult territory.
The comedic tenor of Deadpool contrasts heavily with that sentiment, but it gets by on its sense of humor which is driven by its main character. Obviously, that refers to his wisecracking demeanor, but it’s also reflected in his physical nature. Deadpool as a character scans closer to Daffy Duck than to Batman, specifically because half the gags are oriented around him getting his bill blown backwards and then walking it off. Both it and The Suicide Squad are walking a tight line of trying to convert cartoon violence into real people, complete with internal organs, both of which tend to skitter past my personal taste to the immense delight of others.
Where both actually fumble is in their emotional sincerity, which rankle with their overall ironic sensibilities and approach to action. In Deadpool, this comes in the form of a(n eventually fridged) love interest, and in The Suicide Squad it comes in the form of a Taika Waititi jump scare where he explains a paraphrased thesis of Ratatouille — anyone can save the world. The sentiment of each film represents their respective attempts to make themselves more adult by leaning in on maturity, and the reason it doesn’t work is because neither movie has even a remote desire to be mature about their brutality. For some better at compartmentalization, the moments may work in isolation, but each play for affect contrasts awkwardly with dozens of grotesque moments that are never tonally reconciled.
In R-rated action movies, the basic concept of empathy must come in tandem with an evolved sensibility regarding the sanctity of human life and the true consequences of any given action. As mentioned, Logan handles this by being a more reserved drama in addition to beinga stabby romp. It recontextualizes its own violence, and the violence of previous X-Men movies, by simply showing you the impact. Logan wants to hide away from it, we can see his body corroding because of it. Even if that film elicits a cheer, it begins and ends in a way that conclusively tell you while fighting may be necessary, it’s almost never worth it. If the film were contented to be sadistic, many of its human themes and emotional beats would fall flat. Instead, they resonate because of how keenly and savagely it tears at its own mythology.
The Suicide Squad, obviously, was never intended to be like that film, yet I find its character moments completely at odds amidst its relentless killing spree. Naturally, the movie that comes and stays in mind is Dredd. In Dredd, nothing is sincere, and nothing is sweet. The characters and their interiors matter, but in the words of the Judges themselves, the world of its story is a “meat grinder,” and there are no nice memories of dead fathers coated in rats to keep you warm. Like Logan, Dredd has a remarkably consistent attitude towards its violent action, although one which is less direct in wagging its finger at you or the characters.
What works uniquely well about Dredd is that it is a cruel story in a cruel world. Set in the dystopian nightmare of Mega City One, everything is built from the ground up to be a provocative lens on comics as a whole, whether referring to the movie or its source, 2000 A.D. In that material, there aren’t nice perspective characters, no moment where anything softens. Judge Dredd is the system, and he’ll kill you just exactly the same as the crime boss. That is the style of approach that makes a “villain team-up” story work, where the vicious and bloodthirsty dawn a cape and call themselves heroes. When the nastiest people are given the state-sponsored right to kill political dissidents, each other or whoever gets in the way of the mission, the tissue-soft approach makes little sense. Even the bootstrapped anti-American sentiment works better if you cut loose and let the evil characters just be wantonly evil, unflaggingly amoral.
These four seem to present the best picture of the future of the form as well as a couple of its high watermarks. Each new entry in the canon will face the same basic hurdle of deciding how to contextualize its depictions violence in a way that either complements or rebukes the concept of maturity. For The Suicide Squad, it’s somewhere in the middle — a sophomoric provocation that, for my money, mixes a bit too much sweet in the sour to fully nail the balance. An even more uncompromised sadistic bent may have been the ticket for me, something to take it into darker and more satirical territory. But even with my mild reception, it will be fascinating to see how it functions as a building block of such films going forward. The comic book movie era is here to stay, and I’m eager to see how these R-rated variants will continue to push the boundaries of what’s on the page.
