Not a Review of “Suicide Squad”

So the other week, we watched the DC Comics superhero film Suicide Squad:

Now, I know what you’re thinking: You’re thinking, “You say we watched it when you really mean you watched it, right?” But no! Shockingly enough, my wife also watched Suicide Squad, or at least, quasi-watched it. There were two reasons for this:

• She was working on something on her laptop on the sofa, so she was primarily focused on that, and only occasionally had to subject herself to Suicide Squad; and
• Will Smith was in it.

Me: “Are you actually watching this?”
Wife: “I’m mostly working.”
Me: “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Wife: “Not really. Before there were a couple of weirdos, and now there’s Will Smith, and that’s why I’m looking at it.”

The longtime reader may by now have discerned that in a lot of cases, my wife doesn’t watch movies; she watches characters. So it’s a pretty good bed that she will pay at least partial attention to any movie that features, say, Vin Diesel playing Riddick, or Dwayne Johnson playing himself (come on, you know he always does), or Will Smith playing anything, or, of course, Tony Stark playing Tony Stark*.

Wife: “I kind of have trouble with the idea of Will Smith as a bad guy, because he always seems like a good guy.”
Me: “Well, you know, he kills people for money, so he’s a bad guy, but in the context of this movie, he’s not a bad bad guy.”

Although I enjoyed Suicide Squad**, it’s one of those movies where the trailer is much, much better than the film, sort of like how, with The Wild Wild West, nothing in the movie was anywhere near as good as the video for Will Smith’s theme song. One thing I definitely didn’t care for was Suicide Squad‘s version of the Joker.

Wife: “Have you already seen this movie?”
Me: “No, why?”
Wife: “Because you keep complaining that you don’t like the Joker, so I thought maybe you had already seen it.”
Me: “Oh I’ve seen plenty of Jokers, and I’ve seen enough to know I prefer the others. This one is like a pimp***.”

There was plenty of action, of course, but most of the good stuff is there in the trailer. Part of the problem was that there were simply too many characters and most of them didn’t have much in the way of personality.**** It probably would have been a better movie if it had just focused on Will Smith’s***** Deadshot, Jai Courtney’s drunken, rainbow-colored-unicorn-doll-stealing Captain Boomerang******, and Margot Robbie’s short-shorts-wearing, baseball-bat-wielding lunatic Harley Quinn.

Wife: “Don’t you think she must be cold?”
Me: “Who, Harley*******?”
Wife: “Yes. She’s running around in the rain in her underwear. Everybody else has leather jackets and body armor.”
Me: “Maybe it’s warm rain.”
Wife: “Maybe they airbrushed out all the goosebumps.”

Apparently DC Comics realized this too, a bit belatedly, as Harley Quinn got her own spin-off movie, Birds of Prey (which is, of course, already in my queue) as well as top billing in the direct Suicide Squad sequel.

Me: “They gave Harley Quinn her own movie after this, you know.”
Wife: “I thought you were going to say they gave her her own pair of pants.”

Suicide Squad didn’t put my wife to sleep, exactly, but after about 45 minutes she was finished working on her laptop and then it was time for bed. Shockingly enough, she didn’t feel like staying up for another hour or so to see the end of it. We did finish it a few days later, though, and she stayed awake for the rest of the film. But I’m pretty sure that was just because of the foot rub she was getting, and not because she found the movie so very riveting.

* RIP
** Shocker.
*** Just looking at his teeth made my teeth hurt.
**** I know, I know, Infinity War and Endgame both had way more characters than Suicide Squad. But they were better characters.
***** Of, as previously noted, Wild Wild West fame infamy.
****** Yes, Captain Boomerang's power is ... throwing boomerangs. These are the folks that, in the DC Universe, are brought together to stop somebody who's essentially a less personable version of Gozer the Gozerian.
******* Obviously.