When generic CG swirly stuff forms in the sky and starts to destroy Earth, it’s down to a posse of B-list DC villains to put a stop to it. The government has forced them to work together because competent heroes like Batman and Wonder Woman are on holiday in Bora Bora. I suppose director David Ayer could have incorporated them, but the chances are their darker tone wouldn’t have suited Suicide Squad’s marketing campaign, which took its inspiration from Avril Lavigne’s arse spray.
Despite being advertised as an electric pink and pukey green-bespattered grungefest, I wasn’t surprised when the film turned out to be considerably darker, with only the occasional flecks of tubercular spittle. That’s because Suicide Squad, quite famously, underwent reshoots to lighten its mood. During this process, the filmmakers sift through their box of shapes and colours, looking for combinations that are likely to captivate intellectually enslaved audiences. I witnessed this working first hand as a man sitting next to me, who appeared to be enjoying himself, eventually poured his nachos over his head and then laughed like a lunatic.
Suicide Squad was obviously made by a tank of manatees. They came up with the ideas for this film by mooing under water, while the scriptwriters worked as interpreters. Between them, they constructed a story that has a hip-thrusting witch as the bad guy, and a Joker that makes fleeting cameos, like your mum’s hunky Italian ‘friend’.
The best thing about Jared Leto’s Joker (who actually owns a strip club and wears more jewellery than fucking Liberace) is that he makes Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn look comparatively Oscar-worthy. She’s the only positive in this film and it definitely has nothing to do with her wearing virtually non-existent shorts. Meanwhile, Will Smith does an incredible impression of Will Smith, and characters like Captain Boomerang, Diablo and Killer Croc sit on the sidelines knitting jumpers.
To top it off, Suicide Squad is structured and paced exactly like Batman v Superman, which is to say one of the manatees had a stroke halfway through an idea, resulting in the story and action being exhausted in the first twenty minutes. As I sat there for the remainder of film, incessantly twitching at the use of hundreds of pop songs as backing tracks, I started to question why I was still in the cinema. It’s almost as if all this computer-generated colour, directed by unimaginative sea cows is completely meaningless.