The recent hype surrounding the release of DC Comics’ latest film, Suicide Squad, has been overwhelming. Expectations were sky high; everyone was asking, “could this be the DC film that finally tops Marvel?” It seemed there was a possibility of those dreams coming true. After all, the trailers made it seem as if it would check off all the boxes on a typical fan’s wish-list: action-packed, funny, fast-paced, dark (even a little creepy), and sexy.
That being said, I have some bad news for y’all. The reviews are rolling in, and they’re far from complimentary. Rather, they’re absolutely savage, ripping apart director David Ayer (responsible also for Fury, Sabotage, and End of Watch) and deeming his film a steaming pile of cinematic garbage that only earned a 33 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. In addition to the apparent fact that the movie is just poorly made, dull, and anticlimactic, critics are also calling it sexist. Ah, sexism. Our favorite! Refreshingly, it’s not going unnoticed for once. Hot tea has been spilled.
Check out some of these comically relentless reviews that address the film’s blatant sexism, and imagine those sassy clapping emojis as you read them.
Vanity Fair: “Suicide Squad is bad. Not fun bad. Not redeemable bad. Not the kind of bad that is the unfortunate result of artists honorably striving for something ambitious and falling short. Suicide Squad is just bad. It’s ugly and boring, a toxic combination that means the film’s highly fetishized violence doesn’t even have the exciting tingle of the wicked or the taboo. (Oh, how the movie wants to be both of those things.) It’s simply a dull chore steeped in flaccid machismo, a shapeless, poorly edited trudge that adds some mildly appalling sexism and even a soupçon of racism to its abundant, hideously timed gun worship. But, perhaps worst of all, Suicide Squad is ultimately too shoddy and forgettable to even register as revolting. At least revolting would have been something.”
Buzzfeed: “…The women can’t control themselves and they’re always dragging down the men around them…Harley Quinn is an embodiment of all the conflicting things this frankly disastrous new movie, choppily written and directed by David Ayer, is attempting to do. She’s meant to be fun in her I’m so cra-azy way, but she’s also a woman in an abusive relationship the movie has no idea how to handle…She’s been shaped into an intensely sexualized mascot for a film that yearns for edginess, but can’t get over the rounded curves of its female lead…Quinn is meant to be Suicide Squad’s dark heart. Instead, she’s been made into its damaged dolly jerk-off material.”
Collider: “Suicide Squad is one of the most poorly put together films I have ever seen…[It] has a deeply troubling relationship with its female characters. June Moone is a quivering mess and when the Enchantress takes over she’s an undulating, scantily clad, talking set piece; Katana lets Flag speak for her even though we later learn she can speak English just fine; and then there’s Harley…She’s reduced down to a comical sexpot who hits things with a baseball bat.”
The Telegraph: “Fans were reassured that the forthcoming Suicide Squad movie would be the emergency valve by which the studio would squirt some fun back into the enterprise. Warner Bros. even commissioned reshoots, reportedly as recently as April and costing in excess of $10 million, to add more action and humour. Even by a generous count, that works out at a sum in the high six figures per memorable action sequence, or million bucks gross per gag that actually lands—although eardrum-puncturingly bad dialogue, scowling self-pity, covert pornography and scrappy CGI are apparently a lot more affordable.
IndieWire: “And then—bringing up the rear in more ways than one—there’s Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Margot Robbie), aka Harley Quinn. Volatile, rambunctious, and sexualized to such an extreme that she feels like she wandered out of the film’s XXX parody (there are more shots of her ass than there are of several of the film’s supporting characters), Robbie’s take on the iconic sidekick is a spellbinding bit of bubblegum savagery, a caricature of male fetishism. Given how the Joker treats her, she’s potentially also a poor representation of psychological abuse, but “Suicide Squad” is far too coy to cop to that idea.”
Y-i-k-e-s. If, after such reviews, you still have interest in seeing this movie…It’s in theaters August 5.
Images via Suicide Squad/Warner Bros.
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