Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Suicide Squad
149 Plays3 years ago
The Suicide Squad improved on pretty much every aspect of the original film, but we still found plenty to go back-and-forth on in this episode. Adam Lance Garcia returns to Superhero Cinephiles and he brought Steele Filipek as a date.
NOTE: Steele's audio couldn't be heard in an earlier upload. That's been fixed now and you should be able to hear the episode without a problem.
---
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/superherocinephiles/message
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Audible and Featured Titles
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, fellow superhero cenophiles. Did you know that almost 30% of adults say they haven't read a book in the past year? Primary reason why is a lack of time. Well, Audible's here to help with the gift of found time. Thanks to Audible, you can listen to audiobooks like Marvel Comics, The Untold Story, or Slugfest inside the epic 50-year battle between Marvel and DC.
00:00:19
Speaker
Read up on the history of superheroes in comics and movies with Grant Morrison's Supergods. You can also check out Vanguard, my original superhero novel series, or try The Vrilagenda or The Adventures of Fortune McCall, both of which were written by our duly departed host emeritus, Derek Ferguson.
Audible Membership Benefits
00:00:35
Speaker
Whatever you're looking for, Audible has thousands of titles that you can consume while commuting, exercising, cooking, or just relaxing at home. And not only audiobooks, an Audible membership also gives you access to tons of content like podcasts, theatrical performances, and exclusive Audible originals that you won't find anywhere else. To give you a taste of what you can get, Audible is partnered with this show to provide listeners with a free 30-day trial.
00:00:59
Speaker
All you have to do is go to audibletrial.com slash SuperCinemapod and with your free trial you get one free audiobook and two free Audible Originals. In fact, you get to keep those titles even if you cancel before the trial is over. So what are you waiting for?
Humor and Disguise Discussion
00:01:13
Speaker
Head on over to audibletrial.com slash SuperCinemapod and start your free trial today.
00:01:32
Speaker
I wear disguise. Oh, you're going to wear disguise. See? Hey, he's learning Spanish. And what kind of disguise? Fake mustache. Yeah, fake mustache isn't gonna cut at me. There's gonna be a lot of soldiers watching out in time. They discover us there. Let's pray they do not renew all be died. If they do, that'll leave the palace vulnerable.
Introduction of Guests and Their Backgrounds
00:02:05
Speaker
Luna and the other generals will be left without protection. You're a good man, Colonel Phine. You still look exactly like yourself. It's the worst fake mustache I've ever seen. But if you had fooled us, we'd have to kill you. You shark-shaped bloke with a mustache creeping up on us like that.
00:02:41
Speaker
He always wants to be near you. I think he senses good in you. Yeah, there's no good in me.
00:02:50
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. And today we've got a special type of episode today. This is the first time we've got multiple guest hosts. First, we got Adam Lance Garcia back and he decided to bring a date, which is Steele Philipack. So how are you guys doing today? Good. The fact that you refer to Steele as my date is such an accurate explain. So accurate. I think he and I talk to each other more than we talk to our significant others.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We haven't met a few words. And you know, Adam's there when I when I need to speak them. So yeah, absolutely. He has called me his work wife before, even though we don't work together, except on our side. Everything else. Yeah, right. So why don't we let the people tell the viewers a little bit about your listeners a little bit about yourselves. Adam, you've been on before. So how about you go first?
00:03:45
Speaker
Sure. My day job is I'm a creative producer at Conde Nast. It is a very dumb job. I interview celebrities about movies and TV.
00:03:59
Speaker
I shoot you not my day job as I watch movies and then I write questions. And then I talk to the celebrities about it. And then it does millions of views because not anything of that I do, but because it's, you know, because the talent is like, oh my God, it's Tom Hiddleston.
00:04:17
Speaker
Uh, so that's my day job and the, uh, my side projects are I'm a writer. I'm a novelist. I've published several, uh, Queen Lama novels. Uh, I'm an audio drama producer. Uh, I'm also a comic book writer. Uh, there's a lot of things, uh, that I can't yet talk about, but I'm very excited. But the reason I'm here to talk is actually about an audio drama production that, uh, two audio drama productions that steel and I are working on for the better part of two years, six years.
00:04:42
Speaker
Go ahead. OK, so before we get into that, Steele, why don't you introduce yourself, and then we'll talk a little bit about what you guys are doing together.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. My name is Steel Phillip Peck. I'm a writer extraordinaire. I've written screenplays, pilots, comic books, video games. My role as executive editor at Starlight Runner Entertainment. I've helped to design story worlds for Microsoft, for Halo, Sony, for Spider-Man, Men in Black as well. I've worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, Tron, as well as smaller projects such as
00:05:18
Speaker
bands and sociopolitical campaigns.
00:05:21
Speaker
So I kind of run the gamut all around the kind of the media sphere. I also have two podcasts out right now, one that Adam kind of mentioned, one that might be intriguing to those who are story world fans. It's called Building a Better Story World. If you ever wanted to learn how to build a mythology, build a story world that have lasting success, I give people tips and tricks and prompts and exercises and case studies to showcase how you too can build out a story world's large and small
00:05:50
Speaker
And I've got a comic book coming out in August and called Arcane, an ongoing YA Lovecraft horror story about a kid dealing with a secret world that he suddenly opened up to.
00:06:02
Speaker
Oh, very cool. Who's who's publishing that? That's coming from Cosmic Lion Productions out in California. They're a boutique publisher. This is going to be their first ongoing series. Very cool group there. Eli is the publisher, the head of the production. He took me on because it's an ongoing thing.
00:06:23
Speaker
And they tend to kind of, their idiom is looking at the indie comics of the 80s and early 90s. My book, very heavily influenced by Saga of the Swamp Thing, and to a degree, other such properties like Ninja Turtles and Cerebus and things that came out. So it kind of fit that idiom very, very well.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so we're gearing up for a publishing run and a digital run.
Creative Projects: Radio Room and Influences
00:06:47
Speaker
We're about three issues this year, probably. There are already 12 in the can, so it's going to be an ongoing series. Wow, very cool. I'm still jealous. I want to do more comic book work. I'm trying to get my art skills up to snuff so I can start doing it myself a lot more.
00:07:01
Speaker
Now's the time, man. It's the revolution of vertical scrolling, such as Top Us and Webtoon, digital comics, crowdsourcing. It's a new golden age for comics. The traditional model is shifting, so some of the brick and mortar stores obviously are hurting, particularly with the pandemic.
00:07:22
Speaker
But creators are finding more control, more freedom, more fans. They're pretty much like everything with this kind of direct service economy. You can kind of give people what they want directly and kind of cut out the middleman as much as possible. Yeah, it's just a matter of getting my art skills up to the point where I feel like they're ready to start working on a comic.
00:07:42
Speaker
Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Perry, I mean, don't understand. It's like you're like you've done a lot of really great stuff as a writer and sort of help build your brand in ways that I'm so jealous of. I've seen your numbers and, you know, I've yet to hit that. So I understand yourself. I appreciate that. Yeah. The writing side I'm I'm doing good at. It's just I got to get the art side up there just because, yeah, but getting the getting the funds together for for for artists is the is the top nut to crack.
00:08:11
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Anyway, so tell us about what you guys are working on together before we jump into the movie today.
00:08:19
Speaker
Sure. What we are working on is something called Radio Room, which is a audio drama podcast we have. We did a one season about two, three years ago. And over the last year, a couple of years, we've been gearing up to the second season, which will feature the second season of Steel's series queen of the Sapphire Sea and the first season of the licensed property, the Green Llama, which is a comic
00:08:45
Speaker
and pop series that I've been writing for almost 10 years, which makes me realize how old I am. But it's based in the classic radio drama and the classic stories that came out 72 years ago.
00:09:01
Speaker
You know, it's very, you know, if you like the shadow, if you like kind of Batman the Animated Series, that's kind of our take on it. You know, Adam's really the lead on this. I'm helping to facilitate with that. But it's kind of like a, in the same way that Batman the Animated Series kind of, you know, had this very specific time out of time.
00:09:24
Speaker
uh you know approach we're doing the same thing with this audio drama not trying to recreate the original audio dramas trying to bring the more modern sensibility to it while still you know uh making sure that the piece stays true and you know making sure the historicity is as close as possible we're setting it after world war two
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, to that point, like it is one of those things where Steele and I had a lot of conversations about how we want to approach it. A lot of folks, when they try to recreate radio shows from the 1940s, like the Green Llama, they lean very heavily into recreating the sound and recreating the style of those pieces. Right. And both in terms of my own taste as a writer and my own taste as a listener, I went with what I sort of
00:10:08
Speaker
argued to arguably call like a the Indiana Jones approach, which is how do we create a radio drama that feels as if we're listening to it in the 1940s? Like what if we're a kid, we're listening to an audio radio drama about the green llama, the shadow, what, what have you like? What would that feel like? And how can we create that feeling today? So we did, it's a bit more of a more cinematic than
00:10:34
Speaker
a radio show from the 1940s would feel, but it's, you know, obviously cinematic to the degree that one can be with an audio drama. But that also, and that seems sort of approaches transferred over to the Queens of the Sapphire Sea. We try to create, was it like to listen and see these big blockbuster movies, but in audio form?
00:10:55
Speaker
Uh, I, you know, I, I consider her to talk about the green lava for hours, but I really, and I'm not just saying this because I'm basically bound to him, but, uh, but I love queens of the South fire sea as a series because it reminds me of like tailspin grill. I was just thinking about tailspin yesterday, actually. That's
00:11:14
Speaker
And that show was, I was thinking about it yesterday because it's on Disney Plus now. And I didn't realize it at the time, but, you know, I was just thinking about it yesterday. I'm like, you know, Tilspin, that was my first introduction to pulp stuff. Yeah, totally. It's very pulpy. Also like, it was Tales of the Golden Monkey, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. It's high flying adventure. But what's really great about it is
00:11:39
Speaker
It's light on its feet. It's very dialogue driven. I love writing those characters. Belle Bernasse, who's the lead in her nephew, excuse me, niece, Madeleine, are just so much fun to write. There's a firecracker quality to them.
00:12:00
Speaker
And the cool thing about audio dramas in general, specifically with the Queens of the South Fire Sea is like, we can go anywhere. We can do anything. The budget really is limited to our abilities as a writer and our skills of our editor. Right, what kind of sound effects you can create and all that. Exactly.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a huge thing. So it's it's it started off as a passion project several years ago now. And it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. So I can, again, I'm not just saying that because he's here, because I probably would say it to him if he wasn't here, if he wasn't here, but yeah.
00:12:40
Speaker
But so if you're interested, if anybody who's listening is interested, you can find Queens right now at queens.buzzsprout.com. We're re-releasing the first season on a new channel. So if you want to get catched up, it's going to be going through the first seven episodes before launching into season two in September. So that'll be four episodes of that. The best way to describe it for me is that if you love Porcoroso, you love Miyazaki, you love those adventure serials.
00:13:07
Speaker
As it said, uh, tailspin and golden monkey and Indiana Jones, it very much has that kind of feel. Uh, and, uh, we're going to be doing that for four episodes, then the green llama for eight episodes, and then going back to Queens to round out the season for another four episodes. Uh, so you can, uh, you can start there and then, uh, the green llama will be launching in November.
00:13:28
Speaker
Very cool. And yeah, I was going to say quickly, just to like, if you are familiar with my Green Llama works, this is a sequel series to those novels, though it is written to be a fresh onboard. There's references, some slight spoilers about what happens at the end of the novel
DC Films and Anti-Hero Trends
00:13:44
Speaker
that I'm currently writing, but those are vague enough that you can dive into this series with fresh eyes or ears and sort of get a sense of this ongoing narrative that I've been doing for,
00:13:58
Speaker
a third of my life, a fourth of my life at this point. I just want to note.
00:14:04
Speaker
what you were saying about, you know, finding a way to kind of modernize it, but still preserve that classic sensibility, whereas, and you're that's been one of my, you know, just to go on a bit of a tangent, that's been one of my criticisms of new pulp and all that is people try to make it like it was in the 1930s, instead of saying like, okay, well, here's what worked in the 1930s, how do we make it work to people today, right? Not just doing it the way they did it back then, because
00:14:29
Speaker
You know, it's not the 1930s anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And I know you and I have had discussions on that in the past, but that's like there's a reason why there are some authors who are very good authors, new authors, but they've sort of stayed in a certain sort of section. And then you have other cats like Rob Hart, is a good example, who started a new poll at Airship 27 and is now like writing
00:14:56
Speaker
the sellers because he tried to push that forward. So yeah, it's, um, yeah, I forgot what the point I was going to make. So let's just finish it. Well, you know, it's, it's hard because you do want to maintain truth to what came before, because if you lose that, uh, you know, then what, what are you really doing it for? You know, you, you're wanting to harken back to it, but at the same time you, if you, all you do is just recreate what has come from before it becomes very,
00:15:22
Speaker
stay it very, very much the same over and over again, and it loses its potency after a time. And, you know, there, and there is a, there is a spectrum upon which this stuff exists. And there is, you know, it's not like, you know, it's just, you know, you succeed, you fail it, or somewhere in between, there is, you know, kind of a range for, for that to exist. You know, there are people who put out stuff, you know, that is really just a recreation of old stuff. And there are people who try to reinvent the wheel.
00:15:48
Speaker
And that can all exist, but I think that there does have to be a kind of looking to the sensibility, looking to the essence of the property, looking to the essence of the genre, the tropes, and finding new ways to invigorate that and finding ways to engage yourself as a creator. Because when it's four o'clock in the morning and you're still hammering away at your property because it's the only time you have before you go to your day job, you have to have some passion for it. Otherwise, you're just gonna let it slip.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah. Which is a really good segue actually. I was actually going to say the exact same thing. Yeah. I was, I didn't, I did not plan it this way, but it worked out very nicely. Uh, so that is a, that is kind of the perfect segue to, to the movie we're talking about today. And that is the suicide squad, you know, James Gunn's newest, uh, first foray into the DCEU. And, um, well, let's, uh, let's start off first off. Um, how familiar are you guys with the suicide squad comics?
00:16:46
Speaker
a little bit. I'm gesturing like this. And like I said, I realize I'm on video, but this is a podcast. I know of them. I'm a little more familiar than Adam. It was, you know, the characters they're in and, you know, the team itself, you know, and particularly Waller, you know, was a character that came back over and over again, Harley Quinn, obviously.
00:17:11
Speaker
in some of the characters, particularly from the first film, I had watched, I read rather solo and occasionally an anti-hero team books and whatnot. So I am familiar with it. It was never near the top of my list. I was very much a Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman.
00:17:29
Speaker
uh kind of uh a kind of reader uh until I got into indie comics and then I kind of shifted so that never quite met my taste but I did read them more than say like I never really got into uh the Fantastic Four or the Avengers when I was a kid I did read more uh the Suicide Squad and Suicide Squad adjacent properties as I was uh growing up. I first um I started reading the Ostrander stuff um a few years back and um
00:17:54
Speaker
I read most of it, I haven't read all of it yet, but yeah, it really appealed to me in a large part, like I always loved the concept of it, right? Like the, you know, The Dirty Dozen is one of my favorite movies. So that whole concept of like using supervillains as this like, you know, black ops squad, I always thought that was a really cool concept. And also it works very well to explain how supervillains keep getting out of prison so easily.
00:18:20
Speaker
Right, because they participated in these missions and then they get out like that was kind of Ostrander's idea to begin with. It's like, well, how do we explain that supervillains are always going in and out of prison. It's like, well, they do these jobs for Amanda Waller and then she puts years off their sentence and then they get released early. So I thought that was really, it was a really clever way to kind of work that in. Yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
And then the, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, the basic idea is really inspired. And it's one of those things where you really sit back and like, why did it take so long for this idea to actually A, get made in the comics and B, also get adapted into films. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:02
Speaker
I think it's really developed, it's really kind of exploded because there's this kind of cottage industry of similar stuff that's out and about. Doom Patrol, which is, I wouldn't call it ancient, but predates a lot of the content from Suicide Squad. The Boys is another example of something more modern that has found success.
00:19:23
Speaker
you know, obviously a Deadpool, you know, is like the granddaddy of this space within the last decade. And, you know, there is this appeal to having these anti-heroes, particularly in a, you know, pop culture zeitgeist where it's superheroes all the time. And you also have a DC cinematic universe, which has, I wouldn't call them amoral, but certainly darker figures as heroes. And they're a little more,
00:19:51
Speaker
a little more controversial than some of the figures from the Marvel series. And so you have people who are just thirsting for
Adapting the DC Extended Universe Strategy
00:19:59
Speaker
you know, anti-heroes or villains who completely shed that exterior, you know, and say, well, I don't care what you think about me. I'm gonna, you know, do what I gotta do. And, you know, if I gotta, you know, if I gotta, you know, somehow, you know, kill this president or take down this undead whore and I'll get 10 years knocked off my sentence well, then, you know, I'll do that. Because I've got a daughter, I've got a habit, I've got, you know, I've got $50 million waiting for me in the desert that I gotta get back to.
00:20:29
Speaker
You could listen to, last time Adam was on the show when we talked about Snyder's Justice League to hear about him, we thought about a lot of those characters. Yeah, that's, and I think that's an interesting thing like, and that's what I'm, one of the things I'm excited about talking about this film specifically is it is really interesting to see how the DCEU basically was a dumpster fire, and they never really abandoned it.
00:20:53
Speaker
and sort of have sort of like, they've reshaped it over time. So something that I find, if not always successful, a little bit more, I find it sort of more interesting. I'm more excited about some upcoming DCEU films. Cause I'm like, I don't know what to fricking expect at this point because the core of this world is just like so malformed and they're clearly making it up as they go. And they're just like, let's see what works.
00:21:23
Speaker
So you have circumstances where like, you know, I don't necessarily love Birds of Prey, but I'm like, oh, that's a really, I just, this is a different film than I expected, you know? I really enjoyed the Suicide Squad because it's like, oh, this is James Gunn's take on this. And like, there's a lot of liberties that he was able to take that he probably wouldn't be able to take in a Marvel film. Just because the DC is just like, ah, make something, make it work.
00:21:51
Speaker
Well, you know, I think that that kind of speaks to the difference. You know, it is a double edged sword when you get. Yeah. Everybody loves Marvel, you know, and I say that obviously not everybody loves Marvel, but, you know, those movies come out and even the failures, quote unquote, like Black Widow still do OK.
00:22:06
Speaker
And there is this kind of temperate quality because Kevin Feige is at the head and he has this vision and he kind of brings people in line, not the least of which is James Gunn, who I like as a filmmaker. But you can see a lot more of I'll call them eccentricities in the Suicide Squad versus something like Guardians of the Galaxy, where he has a guiding hand.
00:22:27
Speaker
to kind of keep him on a course. So, you know, and as Adam said, you get a little more of the quote unquote, a cure if you can call it that in the Hollywood system, you know, there's still a massive amount of Hollywood influence there and just nothing else than because it's Warner Brothers. But, you know, you have Snyder making his own thing with his vision of that world. You have James Wan with Aquaman.
00:22:52
Speaker
You've got Wonder Woman, you've got Shazam, you've got these figures that are very, very disparate. And yet there is a kind of method to the madness there, very much buying into the ethos of DC Comics, which has always been gods among them. They're these figures with immense powers and also dealing with the frailties and flaws
00:23:14
Speaker
of such a thing, you know, dealing with the ramifications of being Superman, you know, almost literally being a god on earth, having more money than anybody else, and more power a la Batman, or as Wonder Woman, who was once again a personification of a god, you know?
Subverting Superhero Tropes in Film
00:23:31
Speaker
So I do think that that works out here, even in the Suicide Squad, which isn't quite like that, but you still get, you get Gunn's flavor, and you still get that kind of, that kind of spin from the DC universe.
00:23:43
Speaker
Well, something else you mentioned that I wanted to quickly touch on is what what steel was talking about with the whole idea of these anti heroes, these like, you know, more R rated type characters in like superhero settings. The the interesting thing is that we've had them before, but we are seeing them done in a very different way now, like, you know, we had so, for example, Swamp Thing or The Crow or
00:24:05
Speaker
Um, Logan Evans, like the most, the most recent example, uh, the Punisher, obviously, where you did the Netflix characters on Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, where you had these, you know, these more adult oriented superhero properties, but they were very, they toned down the superhero aspects a lot. I mean, like even Watchmen to a large extent did that. They had toned down the superhero elements a lot. But what will you see since Deadpool?
00:24:29
Speaker
And what the boys has then done and now the Suicide Squad does is that they really embrace the superhero elements of that and put it in this.
00:24:38
Speaker
in this very dark setting. So you've got like, you know, the scene that was jumping out to me, rewatching this movie last night was, you know, Peacemaker, you got John Cena in this, you know, bright blue and red costume with this ridiculous helmet on his head, you know, murdering the fuck out of people. And it's just, it's so, it's so divorced from what you expect. And it's just such an interesting way to see that in such a new type of setting.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think it's oh, sorry, Adam. No, no, you go ahead. Your voice is better than mine anyway. You know, I think it is. It's leaning into the power fantasy that is being portrayed. I think that's also, you know, to get a little cerebral and apologize for it. You know, if you look at the you look at the trajectory of superhero films, they start, you know, obviously Batman and Superman in the 70s and 80s, but
00:25:36
Speaker
you know, the Blade, the X-Men, and Spider-Man really kick it off in the late 90s. Blade is a little more of an anti-hero, but the X-Men and Spider-Man very much show a belief in authority figures, a belief that these people can, you know, guide us and protect us. And that begins to shift the more we get into the arts and then the 2010s.
00:25:58
Speaker
as people begin to show a disdain for authority, begin to try and question authority figures, be that the federal government, be that the police, be that whoever. And so it flips the script. You were suddenly giving the outlaws the power, giving them
00:26:15
Speaker
uh the the chance well that you know the champions uh tried it and they couldn't make it work so let's give it another shot uh let's give somebody else a shot and see what they can do with it and there's a lot of fun to be had because you know superman's great if handled in the right hands but he's always kind of a boy scout and you know and it's kind of fun to write somebody who's outside the lot allows us to you know
00:26:38
Speaker
live our id. There's a reason why Logan, why Wolverine is such a popular character compared to various other members of the X-Men. And when they try to tame him in comic books and shows, he kind of loses his edge. I'm not going to say he becomes boring. I really like Logan and Wolverine as a character, but
00:26:57
Speaker
you know, the edge needs to kind of be there to really sell that. And that's what these series are, you know, embracing sometimes to a fault, you know, you know, the first Suicide Squad movie was not well received. No, really? Well, you know, I'm trying to be politic here. I've worked with people who've worked on the film. And, you know, but it made a lot of money because people were really interested in this in this vision.
00:27:22
Speaker
And that's gonna be the interesting thing when we see this. Generally, this has received a better critical response from fans and from critics themselves, but is, as we're kind of aware, not performing at the box office in such a way as to be pleasing. And there's gonna have to be a deeper dive as to why that is, what the disparity is with that. I've got a few ideas we can talk about that in a little bit, but I wanna give Adam the chance to speak too.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, which is always a mistake. I think the thing is, like one thing that you did bring up Perry was about how they sort of lean into the superhero, the comic bookness of it all. And that is something that I've been really speaking directly to the DCEU was that it did feel like they sort of
00:28:12
Speaker
Initially tiptoed around the superheroness of it all they sort of felt like it were marvels over here being like leaning 100% 110% into the idea of the comic book superhero, like how do we keep it grounded let's let's sort of lean into that dark night aspect of it and bring it forward with Superman and build out from that sort of
00:28:30
Speaker
aesthetic. And, you know, it's been interesting to see how this series has evolved, that they've realized that the audiences are for, partially because of Marvel, just because, but also because of like the way pop culture has evolved over the last 20, 30 years, beginning with Blade, that people are open to the idea of like, oh, like someone can dress like a polka dot man, and I can actually get some pathos from that character. Like, oh, I can have a, you know,
00:28:59
Speaker
a talking tree that only says I am Groot, and people will respond to that character. So I think it's a combination of just like,
00:29:08
Speaker
to all the points that Steel Ray is about like anti-heroes and people being open to that idea, but it's also, there's this cultural shift of like, well, I can accept something ridiculous. Like they, I think there's a long time that they, a lot of film studios were scared of the superhereness of it all. I mean, look at the way that the X-Men were designed in 2000, compared to like what we're seeing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what we're even seeing in the DCU, you know, it's, it's,
00:29:35
Speaker
It's that sort of cultural shift where people worry that, will the audience take these characters seriously? The only way we can do that is to sort of strip them of the goofiness of it, the Batman-ness of it all, the 60s Adam West Batman-ness of it all. And I think we're sort of like, because of a number of reasons, we've sort of found that middle ground.
00:30:00
Speaker
And it seems like this is a lesson DC keeps having to relearn over and over again. Well, because if you look at when you're saying that, I was thinking back to some of the other things, and you kind of see this trend repeating itself over and over again. Like, you know, if you go back all the way to Smallville, started out very grounded. And as the series went on, they start, they embrace the superhero aspects a lot more. Gotham to a lesser extent as well. The
00:30:24
Speaker
you know the CW shows did that first like at first and you know you look at that first season of Arrow and it was very much it's like so terrified of the fact that it's a superhero show and then after Avengers hits big you know all of a sudden we've got Flash and Supergirl and the multiverse and all this stuff and and now you see kind of a similar in Titans as well like the first season was like started off very much this grounded type thing and now they're running around in the costumes and
Analysis of 'The Suicide Squad' Characters and Story
00:30:49
Speaker
And then now in the DCEU, it's a similar type of thing happening as well. So it seems like this is a lesson. They just have to keep relearning over and over. Yeah, you know, I think budget has a lot to do with that. You know, I mean, you look you look at that first X-Men film very well received at the time. You look at it now, it has aged not quite as as well as some of the other films from that Ditto, the first Spider-Man film. I loved both of those films when I was growing up.
00:31:13
Speaker
It's not a knock against them, but you look at the Green Goblin costume in that first Spider-Man, and you compare it to, say, Nanui in this, and you can pull off so much more that would have seemed goofy, ridiculous, more than way, way, way too expensive. I mean, that was the knock against James Cameron's version of Spider-Man, why it never could really get off the ground despite the pedigree that he brought with it, because
00:31:39
Speaker
They were budgeting $200, $300 million. Now those kinds of movies with $200, $300 million in 1990s first. And also that was just unheard of. Now there is a little more of a stomach for that kind of thing. And you can do a lot with not as much. Look to what the Mandalorian can pull off with those backgrounds and with very
00:32:03
Speaker
proper ideas of how to make something bigger or seem more grand while keeping things under control. If there's a criticism that I'm gonna bring to this new Suicide Squad film, it is very, very high in budget. And it's definitely a comedy. And that's to me how it works. It works as a comedy. I'm not saying that it doesn't work as an action film, but this seems to be a comedy first superhero.
00:32:30
Speaker
quote unquote second. And, you know, comedies are very hard to translate across large, you know, swaths of audience across the international market where so much of it relies on, you know, language or search circumstances that don't necessarily translate well.
00:32:46
Speaker
Uh, and you can, you know, and that's not a knock against the film. It's just that it's going to be harder to pull that off witness, um, the sequel to blade runner, which I loved, uh, but you had a gigantic budget and there was almost no chance it would ever make its money back. It was a sequel to a film from the eighties with no real bankable star. You know, Ryan Gosling is great. I love Harrison Ford, but they haven't, you know, Harrison Ford hasn't opened a movie really well since
00:33:10
Speaker
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Ryan Gosling is not that kind of leading actor. Very expensive, very weird subject material. Science fiction, it didn't quite make it work. And I think that's one of the reasons why Suicide Squad is kind of struggling a little bit right now. Because the first one is not a comedy. It's an action movie. And this one is a comedy.
00:33:28
Speaker
especially when you think about Blade Runner, like that was a, you know, it was the original one was a failure at the box office and it was only it's and it became a cult favorite in the years since. So so it's kind of hard. It's kind of weird in that sense to do a big budget sequel to a cult movie. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I think we're going to see the same thing with the Suicide Squad. You know, there are some pragmatic things, you know, why it's not necessarily, you know, hitting it in the theaters just due to the pandemic, due to things like that.
00:33:58
Speaker
the fact that people are watching it on HBO Max and whatnot. But I think it's going to, it will find its footing. It is the kind of film I watched it. And then I didn't watch it again in completion, but I went back to several moments that I really liked and watched those chunks.
00:34:15
Speaker
And I think that that makes it worthwhile for a service like HBO Max because it's something that you want to have. And maybe you don't watch everything, you know, from beginning to end, but kind of like, you know, your favorite episode of The Office or your favorite episode of The Simpsons or Friends or whatever, you go back and watch 20 minutes of it, have a good time and then kind of go back about your day. Right. One of the things going to the how it's doing and all that, I think the pandemic and also the simultaneous streaming release plays a big part in that because. Oh, yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
because this is out in Japan in the theaters now as well. But if this had only come out in the theaters, I don't think I would have been able to see it yet. I think I would have had to wait just because I've got a seven month old. We can't really get a sitter here. And my wife would wanna see it too. And so being able to watch it on HBO Max has just made it so much easier. I may have tried to find a way to go see it in the theater, but now that it's here at home, I'm just gonna stay home and watch it instead.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I think there's also like, there is something to be said about the pandemic has shifted. I think that was already happening. It accelerated the watch from home sort of aspect. Can I say this is someone who goes to the theater basically once a week, just because where I go is the Alamo Traft House. They're very good about social distancing and like you have to wear a mask. You feel very safe there. So I go there like at least once a week because
00:35:40
Speaker
you know, I love movies. But like, there's been an ongoing trend of like, well, why do I need to go someplace? My TV is huge. My sound system is huge is great. I can do this from home and not have to worry. So it accelerated something that was already happening. I think that we're seeing a
00:36:01
Speaker
a shift in what kind of things are going to get made. I think that you'll still see the big temples for theaters, but I think they'll be a little bit more not too diligent, a little more cautious about what they spend their money on. And to still point earlier, like or make things like The Mandalorian,
00:36:21
Speaker
with the volume, which completely changes the game. Like the volume in and of itself is something that I am shocked works as well as it does. Cause if you told me like, oh yeah, actually I do remember a friend of mine,
00:36:36
Speaker
told me about it when it was in production and like they're using mirrors or something. I don't know how they're doing it. It's, you know, like the way they just, no one knew how to describe it, but, uh, this giant like led screens completely allows them to shoot anywhere anytime, you know, they can do a pickup for a complete location. Like, Oh, we need a closeup of this guy. We never got it. Let's just bring him in, stand in front of the screen. There you go. It's, it's absolutely insane. So I think there's a lot of things that were, I'm really curious to see how.
00:37:07
Speaker
film production and the kind of films that we get shift once we move it post this pandemic, whenever that would be 2035.
00:37:17
Speaker
We're talking a lot about the pragmatic, the production, but I want to hear what you two think about the story and in comparison to the first. I think, unless I'm mistaken, I think we all believe that this is a step up. Oh, yes. And I would agree, but I would like to hear, not just in comparison, but I trust both of your opinion.
00:37:41
Speaker
but also as a standalone film. I think it works as a film. I don't think it necessarily works as a standalone film. I think you kind of have to go in, not necessarily knowing who the Suicide Squad is. It does do an okay job of that, but being versed in the superhero genre and kind of understanding the tropes and the subversions of those tropes. So much of the humor for me comes from the subversion of those tropes. They're about to break into the jail to rescue Harley Quinn.
00:38:08
Speaker
she's right there. You think Harley Quinn is going to go off on this crazy adventure with this one figure, and not to spoil too much, and then she just shoots him dead. There are these things that kind of happen, and the whole opening, the first 10 minutes is a big subversion of your expectations.
00:38:27
Speaker
As soon as I saw Michael Rooker, I'm like, where is this going? And it completely went somewhere different. And I thought that was fun. From a story structure, it does tend to slow things down a little bit. Once it got to the characters that we were going to focus on, I felt that it
00:38:44
Speaker
worked better. It didn't have, for me, as much time to develop those characters. That's something I felt that Guardians of the Galaxy did do a better job of. We get to see Star-Lord first. We understand his pathos, what's going on with his mother, what happened. You know, the fish out of water, you see him transform. And then we get to see each of these characters in their own space and then come together. And you don't really need that for the Suicide Squad because it is a true sequel. You know, it's a soft reboot of the original.
00:39:13
Speaker
But we get several characters from that first one to come back in. And I don't think it quite pulls it off. I still enjoy the film very much. Guardians of the Galaxy is just such a fun film. And I could rewatch that. One of my favorite fun films of the last 20 years, and I'm not saying
00:39:32
Speaker
You know, it's the best film of those last 20 years, but I just really, really enjoy watching it and having a fun time. And I'll probably, you know, I enjoy this one too. I just don't think white hits that mark. Yeah. I think the barometer I use is my wife watches it because she's, you know, she likes superhero movies. She knows nothing about the comics though. And so if she can watch it and she can follow it, that's a pretty good way for me to judge like how well it's doing. It's doing its job, especially because English is not her first language, so.
00:40:00
Speaker
So if it can get across to her and she can understand it fairly well, like that's a pretty good indicator for me of, and that helps me avoid like my own blind spots on it. And with this one, we had, I think we had watched the original one, but she had very little memory of it.
00:40:16
Speaker
Right. Like even afterwards, she was like, did we watch the original? She's like, I feel like maybe we did, but I don't really remember. And so she didn't really have much attachment to the original. She didn't really know. She didn't really remember any of the characters from the original other than Harley Quinn. And that's more because we watch Birds of Prey.
00:40:33
Speaker
And so when we watched this, she was right along, well, she was right along from the jump. Like she was able to follow it, you know, perfectly jump into the situation. She was able to pick up on what was happening. Everything flowed very easily for her. So I use that as kind of my, my, my, my barometer is like, how well is this doing to reach the audience? And I think in that sense, it does kind of work as, as a standalone. It rewards you if you've watched the original, right? And like you were saying with that idea of subverting expectations,
00:41:03
Speaker
You have three of the major cast members from the original right in that opening scene right you got the you got Rick flag there you've got Captain boomerang you've got Harley, and they're part of that initial wave that's just used the distraction and then.
00:41:17
Speaker
Boom, Captain Boomerang gets his head cut off. And it's just like, and then Rick and Harley obviously survive, but still it does still subvert that expectation of what you thought was gonna happen. And then you're introduced to this completely different cast of new characters.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that you guys both brought up that I really enjoyed the film a lot. I think more so than my girlfriend who wanted to go see it because it's a James Gunn film because she really enjoys the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Those are her favorite MCU films, bar none. Yeah, same with my wife.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah. Volume two is her favorite of the entire MCU period. And I tend to agree with that. But so we went to go see it as a James Gunn film. And so, you know, she enjoyed it, but not definitely not as much as I did. I think it did. The things I really liked about it is every character that survives, even the characters that don't survive a lot, they all have arcs. And I think that's something that I have come to really appreciate the more I've the more
00:42:27
Speaker
I don't want to say content because I feel dirty or him. I say like the more films I've consumed, the more books I've read, the more work I've written. I really like that every character has a definable arc, you know, or even if it's like not much of an arc, you're like, well, that's consistent with the character. Like I don't think Peacemaker has much of an arc, but it tracks with his character.
00:42:50
Speaker
So I really appreciated that. I liked that I was able to get a sense of each individual character throughout the entire story. And I was able to track those arcs and their stories throughout each. Whereas I didn't think the original Suicide Squad did a decent job of that. I think the original job, I forget who it was that they kill off in the first couple of minutes and you're like, I don't even know who that was. I can't remember the character's name.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Whereas like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas like you got a good sense of like all the characters who died off in that first opening sequence like in that little bit of time you understood who they were. I do feel like like the film loses some steam in the second act.
00:43:37
Speaker
does sort of find itself again. But even then, even in that period of time where it's like, takes a bit of a dip, you're like, well, I'm with these characters, I'm with these, these, these absurd moments that are subverting expectations that are going against the expectations are the grain of this genre.
00:43:54
Speaker
But to the other point that you guys brought up, it's like this, if you know about superheroes and the cliches that is addressing the expectations that it's subverting, and that's a larger thing where, you know, Perry, your wife isn't a native English speaker, but you have shown her, I'm sure, a ton of superhero films. Oh, yeah. She's seen pretty much all of them by this point.
00:44:18
Speaker
Exactly. So she's sort of already like she has that sort of bedrock of that sort of meta narrative. So, you know, Melissa Marie, my girlfriend, she has that sort of a bedrock of that because she lives with me and, you know, grow up around comic books. She's a bit she's a bit more critical of the movie in general. But it is an interesting point that still basically brought up. It's like, does the movie completely works on its own? I think it works on its own.
00:44:49
Speaker
fairly well, but, you know, yeah, you would need to, you do need to know a little bit about the suicide squad. Initially, you need to know a little bit about superheroes in general to understand sort of the tropes that it's addressing. And that's,
00:45:04
Speaker
The point I'm going to is like there's so many things that are happening now, both within franchises and within narratives in general, that they're assuming the audience already knows to the detriment of the stories they're telling. I think I know you are.
00:45:22
Speaker
Harry now you you you and I have sort of disagreed on that Marvel for a while now like you you're a big fan of it I'm much more cynical on it. And I think something that I've sort of one of my biggest criticisms with Marvel is and and actually, you know, that's not like he's Marvel I'll use Star Wars because that's something that I love and I'm very being very critical of now.
00:45:42
Speaker
the latest season of The Bad Batch, for example, is a series that was, to my mind, aggressively mediocre, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There are, there's, I think there's a lot of spaces for aggressively mediocre stories. Like it is sometimes it's nice that a show is just fine. I just, this is, oh, I'll put it on. My biggest criticism about the series though, is that it leaned very heavily on
00:46:06
Speaker
the audience's pre-existing knowledge of the Star Wars universe, that, oh, hey, you know that character? They're back. Hey, you know that place? It's back. You know, this, this, this, where it didn't do the job within the actual context of the story to make these characters
00:46:22
Speaker
to make these places, to make these events matter to a new viewer. And I'm seeing that more and more, not just in Star Wars, I'm seeing it in Marvel. And to Seale's point, it is sort of baked into the Suicide Squad, where it's assuming that the audience has already read the books. It has already seen the movie beforehand, that it sometimes, they'll,
00:46:46
Speaker
not do the necessary work in the individual episode, in the individual movie, to make the story matter to the audiences if they've never come in and seen the film before. It's like, you know,
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, like I will, it's weird. Like I thought that like a good example, a good example of like it working, even though it shouldn't have worked. Justice League is a better example. The Snyder Cut works on its own as a film better than Batman versus Superman. Does that make sense?
00:47:16
Speaker
because it sets up everything in the first couple of minutes. You understand who these characters are, why they matter, and it does the work throughout the story, even though I do not think it's a good story, even though I do not think it would necessarily work, but it works better than Batman versus Superman to keep us in the DCEU, because you dive into Batman versus Superman, like, who the fuck are these people? What do they want? Why do they want things? It assumes that you know who Batman is. It assumes that you know who Superman is. But anyway, I'm gonna stop my tangent.
00:47:44
Speaker
No, no, I agree with you. You know, it's it's hard because the movie isn't between a rock and a hard place. Yeah. You know, if it's just a new if it just completely ignores the other Suicide Squad movie, which does have its defenders, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the film, but many people are made made a lot of money at the box office and it did drop off. But there are a lot of people who like that.
00:48:07
Speaker
in the same way that there are a lot of people who like Justice League, you know, or the Snyder Cut and a film that I'm mixed on. And so I think that, you know, if they just do another take on it, we saw what happened with that with the Amazing Spider-Man with Sony.
00:48:25
Speaker
where they just kick started it again and kind of did everything the same but different and that was the big criticism. One of the reasons why my company was brought in to look at that in Amazing Spider-Man 2, like what were the criticisms, it was the repetitive nature of what was being shown. So they can't really do that. So they do kind of, they're kind of forced into
00:48:43
Speaker
a soft reboot. So I think that this film does as best as it could in that circumstance. I wish that this had been the first movie in the series and that it had played some things slightly differently, but I don't think, but that's not the real world. I think that this did the best that it could
00:49:03
Speaker
with its material. And I'm sorry, we've been monopolizing Perry, but what are your thoughts? No, I think you guys make good points. I don't know, maybe I'm just, I'm probably biased because I come from more from the comic book background where, especially like when I came into comics, it was like the 90s where there was no hand holding at all, right? You just get dropped right in and it's like, figure it out. And yeah, and I don't know, part of me likes that we don't have to be told
00:49:33
Speaker
for the umpteenth time that Uncle Ben died, or that we don't have to be shown, you know, Martha Wayne's pearls falling in slow motion for the umpteenth time, you know, and that might just be selfish on my part, just because I know all that stuff already. So, and I fully acknowledge that, but I do kind of like that aspect that it's just, it's trusting the audience more to just kind of figure it out for themselves.
Thematic Elements and Realism in 'The Suicide Squad'
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I mean, there's a balance for that. Yeah. Sorry. That works with Spider-Verse. You know, it opens up, you know, the story and it repeats that as a gag multiple times throughout and it works, you know, and you have other elements, you know, other episodes and films and shows that make it work like that.
00:50:16
Speaker
I'm not a huge fan of Knives Out, but I think it does a great job of establishing, there's this figure, this, you know, Kentucky Fried Colonel who goes around solving crimes and it just kind of like, you know, you just kind of thrown into the mix and you're expected to kind of get along with what's going on. I like that. I don't think it's a problem with this film. I just, you know, I wish for a better world, you know, is what we all.
00:50:38
Speaker
And I think to that point, it's like, it's in we sort of touched upon this earlier, like it is finding that balance, like there's a spectrum to these things. And you sort of talked about it with how you adapt like pulp stories and things like that. But it is, there's a spectrum like how much do you trust the audience? And how effectively do you convey
00:50:59
Speaker
the audience's existing knowledge into your story. I think, for example, Spider-Man Homecoming is one of my favorite MCU films, because I think it does have that decent balance of, you know, you know the backstory with Spider-Man. It knows you know the backstory of Spider-Man, but it does end up just like the touches of, hey, this is what happened.
00:51:23
Speaker
in this version of the story that you're sort of like, OK, so yes, Uncle Ben died. That's kind of cleared by based on everything. What happened when, like, you know, like talking with the spider, like with Ned, you're like, OK, I got it. I got I think the Suicide Squad does a decent job of overall at least establishing who these characters are in this universe.
00:51:50
Speaker
It's a, to this point, I think it is, it's, you're, he's wishing for a better world. Um, but I think the suicide squad is a good example of like, it does hug the balance fairly well. Yeah. This could have been very mean-spirited, you know, and there's a lot, a lot of dark humor in this film.
00:52:07
Speaker
And it is what it is. It's a rated R superhero film, a super villain film. And it doesn't make any excuses for that. And that all works. But there's not no pathos. Some of other of Gunn's works, I'm thinking of Slither, it can get very, very dark. And there's nothing wrong with those films. But I think when you're trying to work within an established universe, that's a very dicey proposition.
00:52:35
Speaker
to work with because you can get depressing and people don't necessarily want to watch those films over and over again. The example I always use is like Chinatown is an amazing movie, very, very dark. It works very, very well as a singular piece of art that is a statement to make about the world.
00:52:52
Speaker
uh it does not work as a story universe there's a reason why the two jakes which is a perfectly serviceable film you know just doesn't feel right why it didn't succeed why there wasn't that third movie that was promised because that's not the style of it this does a good job of bringing levity to balance that darkness out to it and make it a fun watch and you know continue this on uh continuing on the legacy of the first film
00:53:19
Speaker
the DC universe in general. And some of these figures that they're hoping, obviously, are hoping they're going to explode in a way that they can exploit in a certain fashion.
00:53:30
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that I, let's go back to another point. Like it does, I left the suicide squad, like probably more excited about the DCU than I was at the beginning of the year. And I'm someone who actually likes one woman, 84. So that's another conversation for another time. I know, I know. That was Derek and I did an episode on that before he passed. You can go back and listen to that.
00:53:54
Speaker
But it feels like the DCEU is becoming more cohesive in its diversity, if that makes sense.
00:54:08
Speaker
You know, even though I went into this movie and it came out of me like this feels like a James Gunn movie this feels like a really not a pure but a very like a very James Gunn film, but still felt like a James Gunn film in the DC EU. You know, I love Shazam and while that it's not a perfect film a lot of my love of that.
00:54:27
Speaker
is tied to things that are completely disconnected with the movie itself. It still feels like a DCEU film. It feels connected to that in its own way, but it's still, it's weird. Like I kind of feel like the DCEU has become, for better or for worse, like they're like, Hey, you know,
00:54:49
Speaker
this artist and this comic you just go nuts in it like do whatever you want just make sure that there's enough touches to sort of connect it to the wider universe, but like I like that I'm seeing this more distinct artistic style within this larger universe I and I think.
00:55:07
Speaker
You know, in context it's made the Snyder stuff a little bit more palatable or palatable I was actually I can never measure which one it is. But, yeah, but basically like because it's like you have like these broad strokes and they all sort of like do tie into a larger piece, even though I think like this not a film.
00:55:26
Speaker
I still think that like it's like I can I can see Henry Cavill Superman existing in the Suicide Squad universe and I can see the Suicide Squad existing in the Shazam universe and Wonder Woman. I can see them all sort of like interlocking without necessarily losing that specific flavor that I got in the Suicide Squad that I got in the Wonder Woman films or Shazam or Aquaman or whatever.
00:55:52
Speaker
One thing too, I thought that this film did really well. And this goes back to something Steele had mentioned was about the fact that this is a supervillain movie. Whereas I felt the first one, there was too much of an attempt, I think, to try and rationalize their actings. There are too much of an attempt to make them be like, to moralize them in some ways. Like there's a lot of focus on the fact that, you know, Deadshot's doing this for his daughter and all that. Whereas in this movie, they're unapologetically supervillains.
00:56:21
Speaker
Yeah, they're they're saving this country from a giant star monster, but they're still doing it because it's more out of their own self interest than anything else.
00:56:32
Speaker
but note how that works. Because we find out, I'm not going to spoil too much if it hasn't listened, but the big bad that they're going for that they have to deal with, there's a twist that comes along with that, that speaks to authority and lack of authority, lack of respect for authority. And that makes, and that allows for a twist on it that kind of works. So one of the things that Sony was trying to get off the ground for a while was a Sinister Six film.
00:57:02
Speaker
You know, they could never quite pull it off. And there are reasons for that that we can get to into offline. But one of the things that they recognized if it was going to work, that the sinister six very much like the Suicide Squad would have they would have to embody these villainous qualities and they'd have to go up against a force that is even worse than they are. And so I think that that's where you get the that's where you can kind of get a little bit behind these supervillains in this because they are villains, you know,
00:57:28
Speaker
But, you know, they're selfish and they're crazy, but they seem like broken China dolls in a way. There's a little bit of pity for them, whereas there isn't really pity for the other villains, the other figures in this. And that allows these super villains to... It allows us to live vicariously through these super villains, you know, in a way that might not have been possible earlier or in a different universe or in a different format.
00:57:55
Speaker
And just sometimes something, and then I'll let it toss it over to Adam. Sorry, just I want to get this thought out before I forget it. But one thing you mentioned there is about that twist too. One of the things I thought that that twisted really well is it made up for a problem with the first Suicide Squad movie where the first Suicide Squad movie, the threat doesn't exist unless Waller forms the Suicide Squad.
00:58:19
Speaker
That's the only reason the threat exists in the first place is because she formed this team. Whereas this time, you've got a similar situation where it is this problem that has kind of been created by her, but it's more about cleaning up her messes as opposed to it being directly tied to the creation of the Suicide Squad. And I thought that was a much better way to do it. Sorry, Adam, go ahead.
00:58:43
Speaker
Oh, I was going to say that, like, I'm still shocked that because it's in the trailer, so that that Starro is a thing that I saw on a movie screen. Like, I'm shocked that, like, especially the way that it's portrayed and actually like, and that's one of the things I thought was really well done.
00:59:00
Speaker
even even Starro had an arc, which I didn't really expect and I don't want to get too much into the spoilers again, it's in the trailer. So it's not like I'm, you know, spoiling that but there's aspects to
00:59:16
Speaker
his character or their character or its character that it's really really interesting that like goes to like absurd like there's certain visuals that are just ridiculous looking like I like the way it's hilarious and then it's horrifying and then it's like nightmare like nightmarish and then it's
00:59:40
Speaker
like just heartbreaking. There's like, there's one line at towards the end that Starro says, it's like, ooh, ooh, that's just put everything in a different context. I think that's like, one thing I just, I really liked about the movie overall is that
00:59:56
Speaker
You know, you go through a lot of emotions per scene. Steele and I were talking about a script that I had written and not just what worked about that, what I think worked about this film is that every scene, you know, you can sort of track each character's purpose, where they're going, why they're doing, what they're going through.
01:00:17
Speaker
Not always, but for the most part, like, and again, I'm sort of repeating myself, like every character has an arc, even Starro has an arc. Everything, you know, you're able to sort of have all these different flavors in this one story. And I think that's like the, I'm speaking around a lot of ideas because I'm trying to get them all up my head, but basically,
01:00:39
Speaker
I think what I loved about the film in general is that it's told all the different flavors one can have in a superhero film. You know, it was never just one thing. Yes, it's a comedy, but it had a lot of pathos and moments of real humanity in there.
01:00:56
Speaker
It had something to say, but also it was irreverent. It took itself very seriously and never took itself seriously at all. Does it always work? Not always, but I really liked that I was able to see that in a multi-million dollar studio-backed superhero film. I think that a lot of my criticisms with
01:01:21
Speaker
a lot of Marvel films, you know, you kind of know what's gonna happen in them for the most part. Like, you know that the guys are gonna win. You know that like, you can sort of like, and Blackwood is a good example of like, you kind of knew like, all right, it's an hour and 40 minutes, here comes the big action scene and sure enough it happens. Is it well put together? Yes, it's, you know, it's very visually stunning. But what I liked about the Suicide Squad is that, you know, even though it's like an hour and 45 minutes, here comes the big action sequence.
01:01:51
Speaker
I've lost half the characters, they've all died or the way we got there was interesting and the emotions and the stakes have all been sort of built to that moment in a way that I don't think a lot of large productions like this are able to do. Like even like just Jungle Cruise, which was fine. It's a lot of fun. But like at the same time, it's like when that big action sequence happens, it didn't have the sort of emotionality that Suicide Squad had.
01:02:20
Speaker
Well, you know, I mean, speaking of Jungle Cruise, like, you know, I did not feel that the Suicide Squad had as much theme and depth as you thought, Adam, although I did think it was much better than the first one. I felt that there was there. But, you know, compare Jungle Cruise to Jumanji, the two Jumanji films, which I was I wouldn't say was blown away, but I had zero expectations going into those films.
01:02:45
Speaker
And I think that that's why I liked him. And I think also for this, you know, I try not to watch trailers unless everybody's talking about them, particularly for comedies because, you know, it just ruins so many of the gags. And that's so much of the fun of the comedy is the unexpected quality to it.
01:03:01
Speaker
And if you kind of show those moments, you know, it does kind of, you know, I wouldn't say it ruins it, but, you know, I want to be surprised. So I was not expecting Sorrow to show up. And, you know, that figure, you know, features into two DC things that I loved growing up, Justice League, the Paul Dini version and Batman Beyond, two big figures in those works. And so I was like, oh,
01:03:25
Speaker
This is cool. You know, I get to see it. And, you know, I could have it. The movie definitely shifts once the focus is put on that. And I'm not going to say that it's worse for it because I loved seeing it. I love that figure. But that could have been its own movie. There's a lot that's going on in this picture. And I think, you know, it's not like the first Suicide Squad where it's like, let's throw everything into this and see what works. And none of it works together.
01:03:54
Speaker
uh that that's cruel you know there are there are some secrets to it i think work and i think that well smith's performance is as good as it could be in that particular thing but it's it's very stilted because they did so many reshoots and they cobbled it together out of this cut and it just they don't it doesn't get moving until like 50 minutes into the film whereas this one like it just moves and you know it's the almost the almost the opposite problem where there's yeah where there's so much stuff and there's so much going on and it's all kind of tightly wound and
01:04:22
Speaker
I could have used a moment or two to slow down or to refocus a little bit because, you know, we have some characters that are killed off fairly quickly. And that's that's the gag. That's why it works because it's a comedy. And I think had they done this seriously, I think it would have been just as much a failure as the first one in terms of critical response. It works because it allows the comedy to the very dark comedy to come out.
01:04:48
Speaker
I just think that some of that thematic stuff, some of that depth gets lost along the way because there's so much there. One of the things Adam was talking about with Staro and how it, because yeah, same thing with me. I'd never expected to see Staro that way in a movie. I thought at best you would have like what they did in the animated series and what they did in Morrison's JLA run where it was just like,
01:05:16
Speaker
these like spores that attach to the face like they have here but I never thought you'd see like the giant 1960s sorrow right that just seemed too ridiculous but and this is but this is something that James Gunn has done before right he did it with the Celestials in the first Guardians of the Galaxy when everybody said that's impossible and I look ridiculous and then he throws them in
01:05:35
Speaker
um you know even just the very existence of rocket and group too that's again something that it would say was too ridiculous and James Gunn's like no we've got a raccoon he's got a machine gun and his best friend's a giant tree and that's just the way it is um so I I mean I think that's one of the things I really admire about Gunn is just that his confidence in him being able to sell these concepts that are so ridiculous
01:05:59
Speaker
when you look at them on paper. And I think that was something that he did really well in in both the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and in this one as well. I think that's a lot of his trauma sensibilities coming to the fore because that that's kind of like the ethos of that studio, right? It's just like, yeah, it's ridiculous, but we're going to do it anyway. You have to own it, you know, and that's if you own it, 95 percent of the way there, you know, it's you don't get it. You know, it doesn't work. It has to be involved with it.
01:06:26
Speaker
And I think that is the critical failure of a lot of like the films that sort of like always kind of fall short. I'm trying to think of a good example, but I think.
01:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's like Gunn is 100% behind this crazy idea whenever he does it. I think a good example is Black Widow, because that's the one that is fresh in my mind. What didn't work for me in that movie was that it was 95% or like 90% behind this idea of what if the Americans had to deal with the fallout of their crimes, but it's Black Widow.
01:07:04
Speaker
like it felt like there was like they were like inching towards that and they're like well no we have to like we can't go that far we have to pull back a bit um you know in the same thing like within batman versus superman it's just like what if we have like this really dark version of superman and batman fight but they don't really go the full way in some ways because they're just like well he's still superman he's still batman um well and something we we talked about before is that the fact that
01:07:34
Speaker
what you thought, especially that Batman and Superman, Batman V Superman was supposed to be, would be Batman going after Superman for causing all this death and destruction, and then Batman's just as bad.
01:07:45
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah yeah which would have formed an interesting moral quandary even though if it seems like it's kind of twisted but it still would have made more thematic sense that way um but but i'll use another example too and that's the the later x-men movies because you know you look at the original trilogy
01:08:05
Speaker
It was when studios were gun shy about superheroes. I understand that. So they got to make them more grounded. They put them all in black leather and all that. But then you get to Days of Future Past, which feels like it should have been made in a pre Avengers world. As much as I like that movie, it does feel like it's kind of anachronistic.
01:08:24
Speaker
And then you get to Apocalypse where at the end, which was not that good, but then you get to the end of Apocalypse and it seems like they've embraced the superhero aspect. And then you get to Dark Phoenix and they're back to, you know, all black jumpsuits. And it's like, again, there's this continual fear of going too far into the superhero aspect of it.
Character Development: Harley Quinn and Bloodsport
01:08:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Another good example is, and still I've talked about this, but like it is sort of like with Star Wars, it's, you know,
01:08:51
Speaker
they go with The Last Jedi, which is, I unequivocally love, and they're just like, let's just go full throttle and do this thing. And then they can release The Rise of Skywalker, and J.J. Abrams is like, but what if we don't? And I think there's a lot of other stuff on that that I can talk about offline, but I think that's another good example of just not fully committing to an idea, whereas Gunn is very good at fully committing to whatever absurd idea that he's doing.
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, I would echo that statement. I'm much more critical of the Last Jedi than Adam is. I don't hate it. I just, it's not my cup of tea. But once you own that, you kind of have to own it. And that's where some of, you know, where this, we're kind of bringing this back to the DCCU, you know, there is this vision that Zack Steiner got to establish for this era of DC content and
01:09:45
Speaker
the best content has leaned into that and to some degree or another. Obviously Wonder Woman Shazam and Aquaman do it not as you know not as dark as those other visions that Snyder's putting out or
01:09:59
Speaker
that matter Suicide Squad or the Suicide Squad. But there is that kind of, that darkness, these people have this amazing power and they are reliant upon, there's a huge amount of responsibility for them to act fairly. And there are dark undertones to that where you don't get that level of
01:10:22
Speaker
darkness in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The most you get is potentially something like Ant-Man, which is a heist movie. It's about as anti-hero as you can get. To a degree, Black Panther, which is about the responsibility of nations and kings and rulers, a civil war, but
01:10:43
Speaker
It's not ever dark like some of these DC films are. And I think that that's why this film works, why the other films work, even though I'm not a fan necessarily of the Man of Steel, of Batman versus Superman, of Justice League. There are aspects to them that I like, but I'll also be frank, I'm not a huge fan of the Avengers movies. So, once again, they're not my cup of tea. I much prefer the smaller stories of
01:11:13
Speaker
If you can call a gigantic Hollywood film a smaller story of homecoming far from home of Ant-Man of some of these in the early works when you kept Captain America and Thor and to a degree that first Iron Man film which is still a pretty big film.
01:11:31
Speaker
uh you know i i don't know you know it just this this kind you know i like this this works it's fun i know i've been critical of this film uh a couple times and point it out but i don't want it to come across like i didn't like the film this is a solid b plus for me very very enjoyable a great watch i'll probably re-watch it once or twice you know i've seen black widow once i'll probably never see it again it just i don't need to it didn't disappoint me it was just like okay that was fun
01:11:57
Speaker
in the same way that I'm probably never going to watch Thor 2 again, whereas I rewatch Thor Ragnarok, you know, once a year, just because it's so fun, you know, and that's kind of what I was hoping for from this. And that's what I got, which I did not necessarily get from the first Suicide Squad film. It wasn't fun for me. Oh, yeah. Any specifics in terms of characters or performances that kind of stood out to you guys?
01:12:21
Speaker
Oh man, I really, I just really love the central cast. Like I think they did a great job with Idris Elba's character. It was Deadshot right now. That was the first one. That was Bloodsport. He was originally supposed to be Deadshot, but then they decided to make him Bloodsport instead in case Will Smith ever wants to come back.
01:12:41
Speaker
which I think is both the right production idea and the right narrative reasons. I think you pretty much needed a hard, it's a soft reboot, but it's a hard soft reboot if that makes sense. Yeah. I really, I just, like even Ratcatcher, I loved the connection he and he had with Ratcatcher. I really liked Polkadot Man. I thought that was really surprisingly funny and oftentimes kind of hard to watch story. I think that's the biggest thing.
01:13:11
Speaker
I was really surprised by how well Gunn does an ensemble piece. And I think that is something that like, you know, if there's anyone who is the right person to do a film like The Suicide Squad, it was James Gunn because of what we do with Guardians of the Galaxy. But yeah, I think
01:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I connected with every single character, even if I didn't love them, like Peacemaker, I was always excited when he was on screen, because he's funny and it's weird. And even like, yeah, so this, it's more of a story point. Like, I just think that like,
01:13:48
Speaker
the ensemble was so strong that you were invested. Like honestly, like I think even though Harley kind of felt like sort of tangential to the story, she had a really interesting storyline. I just really liked it. I loved the new cast. I thought it was a really surprisingly touching story. I'm like, yeah, so yeah.
01:14:08
Speaker
Uh, you know, I could watch Aegis Elba read a newspaper. He was the, he was the one thing that I really, really unequivocally liked about, um, uh, the dark tower, uh, film. Uh, you know, I like him in it. Uh, the rest of the film is okay.
01:14:23
Speaker
Uh, to be, you know, um, merciful. Uh, and I think that, you know, and, and everybody else, like John Cena was great. This was, this was a role that was perfect for him. Uh, you know, the, the, you know, the various other figures that the, the villains were all good with, with that exception of the generally Simone, you know, kind of, kind of a stock character, I would have liked a little bit of a different thing bordering on stereotypical.
01:14:48
Speaker
Uh, you know, um, and I wouldn't disagree if you, if one would argue that, uh, the one thing, you know, I still, I love Margot Robbie. Uh, my Tonya was one of my top films in the year when it came out. She was amazing in that role. She's done a lot of really, really good cinema.
01:15:04
Speaker
her take on Harley. It's not bad. It's beginning to wear a little thin for me. I still enjoyed her in this. There are lots of really interesting twists and plots with her, but I've never been as in love with Harley Quinn as so many other people are.
01:15:19
Speaker
um and you know just the kind of like the psycho rocker girl uh the take that she has is fun but it's kind of like when you when you watch it you know an episode or television that you love like the third or fourth time like haha it's funny but imagine if you had to watch it again and again and again it would lose some of its charm
01:15:37
Speaker
It still works here. But I, you know, if you told me, oh, there's going to be another Harley Quinn movie out two years from now, I'm like, I'm not sure I need another one of those, you know, unless unless it does, unless it takes another twist, unless it develops. She does have an arc and there is some good stuff with her and Margot Robbie does a good job again. But it.
01:15:58
Speaker
you know, after seeing her in Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey and this, I'm not getting the evolution that I'm necessarily getting with some other figures in various cinematic universes. Once again, not a criticism, does great, but I think that this is probably my last ride where I will just take it as it comes. I think there needs to be something more there.
01:16:23
Speaker
Well, count me. I thought I was the only one. So I'm actually kind of glad you said that. But I never understood the fascination everybody had with Harley Quinn, like, you know, even when she was in.
01:16:32
Speaker
in the animated series and all that. I'm just like, okay, she's the Joker's henchwoman. That's cool. But I never understood why she was such this character that fans were just crazy about. And to your part, as fun as it is, the Harley Quinn animated series, it does kind of have that same kind of thing where after a while it does get a little bit old and where
01:16:55
Speaker
And it's fun. It's still fun to watch. But when you but if you binge it all at once, like I did, because when I got HBO Max, all both seasons were on there. It did get old by the time I got together that second season. And I think one of the things that I think all these movies prove, not only this one, but also the first Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey,
01:17:17
Speaker
is that Harley works best in I think this kind of setting when she's got these other characters to play off. When you make her the central character, and I enjoyed Birds of Prey for what it was, but I think one of the biggest problems of that is that you're trying to make Harley the central character and I just don't think she's got enough growth and she's just not interesting enough to really kind of carry the movie on her own. But when you ever in something like this where she's playing off Bloodsport, where she's playing off
01:17:46
Speaker
King Shark where she's playing off all these other characters. She's much more interesting and she's much better as that foil character.
01:17:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I see that because I do think that like she's definitely having an arc of sort of overcoming this toxic relationship, which I think for me has been like, even though I'm not like, you know, I don't love Harley Quinn. I love, I really, I do like what Margot Robbie does with the role overall. And I enjoy the Harley Quinn TV show. I've always, I've liked the character, but I've never loved the character like a lot of other fans do. But I think the aspect that I've always enjoyed about her has been the sort of,
01:18:23
Speaker
seeing that evolution of in a toxic relationship, the mad love storyline and then moving beyond that and freeing herself. And I like that we're seeing aspects of that in Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey, the Suicide Squad, we're seeing that arc.
01:18:40
Speaker
but it kind of has to go further to Steel's point in that next thing. Is it cooking up with Poison Ivy? Is it another Suicide Squad film? Because I think she does work better in context to others. I think having her, I don't necessarily, unless it's like basically her versus the Joker,
01:19:04
Speaker
I don't know what her next story is. Yeah, you know, I would see a I would see the right poison ivy Harley Quinn film. I know I just said it's kind of where I'm at, but that would be interesting. You know, I liked those episodes of Batman, the animated series, and there have been several successful comic runs that picked that duo.
Maintaining Character Interest Through Mystery
01:19:22
Speaker
You know, it's hard for a character like that because, you know, she like much like the Joker, she is chaotic. You know, you know, she is
01:19:30
Speaker
uh you know the figure that the the wild card that you know kind of destabilize this thing which works in a group but can become low also random uh if kind of focused upon and so if you have that as an antagonistic figure it works very well because you know batman is all about it's almost fascistic order you know you have these very wealthy very controlling corporate interests that control the excesses of the rabble
01:19:55
Speaker
uh and then you have the chaotic joker figure and his you know and and to that and uh harley quinn you know destabilizing that you know it's the part of the dark knight that works the best for me you know those two forces babbling back and forth and so and harley works very well in that um
01:20:12
Speaker
But once you break her out of that, once that toxic relationship is broken, once you're giving that character an arc that moves beyond that, there does have to be the next step. But it's hard because what you like about, what people like about her is that she is that chaotic, you know, broken individual. And so once you fix that, that's the end.
01:20:30
Speaker
um you know it's you know it very much you know why like you know you know but why you can't really have logan kind of figure everything out about his past because once you do is arcs over and where's the rage where is the chaos where is the animal where's the beast uh anymore and then well now he's just solved it so and it's the same thing with you know with harley quinn she needs to be the beast she needs to be that chaotic figure but the only way for her to have that arc is for her to have some kind of fulfillment
01:21:00
Speaker
I'm sure a capable writer, a capable team could do that. But I think it's gonna be a little, have the cake and eat it too. They want her to be this character who does hopscotch coming in and being weird and making crazy love to this figure she just met. And then all the craziness that happens thereafter. And at the same time, trying to be regular, but that's not who she is. I don't know.
01:21:28
Speaker
I mean, one of the things too, I also, sorry, go ahead, Adam. No, I was gonna say that it still does touch upon something that he and I have talked about a bit where like with every franchise, there has to be, what is it, the Misty Mountains? The distant mountains, yes. The distant mountains, yeah. There always has to be some aspect that is never completely discovered, whether that be like Harley, like whether it be Harley Quinn's like losing her chaos, because that's sort of what her arc is. She is eventually gonna become something more
01:21:58
Speaker
more or less, not normal, but like less chaotic. But you never you should never really see that in the same way that you should never really see Logan learn everything about past the same way that you should never really learn about, you know, the origins of the Sith or, you know, you shouldn't have every answer because that is part of the appeal, not knowing and not seeing and like, are they she's always she's always going to be going towards that direction.
01:22:28
Speaker
but she should never really get there. And that sort of, you know, there comes a point where you're like, when is the time do you say stop? When do you end with this character? When you like say like, all right, we're gonna just let her kind of go off on her journey right off onto the sunset and just know that there are other adventures that we may or may not ever see. Yeah,
Voice Performances and Lesser-Known Characters
01:22:48
Speaker
yeah.
01:22:48
Speaker
Also, I wanted to mention too, I loved King Shark in this movie. I thought Stallone did an amazing job. And also, I love that James Gunn is able to bring in these big actors to just do these voice roles. He gets Vin Diesel to come in and record three lines over and over again. And he gets Bradley Cooper to do Rocket in a voice that's not at all like Bradley Cooper's voice.
01:23:13
Speaker
And then he gets Stallone to come in and just add, I don't know, something about that voice and just like the mannerisms. Like I loved everything about King Shark in this movie. Like every time he was on screen, I could not look away.
01:23:26
Speaker
Yeah. You know, so much better than Killer Croc. I love Killer Croc. I love the darkness of that figure. You know, the great, great episodes of Batman, the animated series with them, great episode, great issues of the comic with them. You know, very interesting take in Arkham Asylum. I really liked, you know, the level with with him and that. Oh, yeah. And and also just his presence in that world is great, like this, you know, kind of unseen horror that breaks out.
01:23:54
Speaker
And I don't, I didn't, there wasn't a lot there. You don't need a lot for a character like that. And I think that King, I think that not only, you know, really does kind of bring this to, you know, to something else, you know, there is a character here that is just enough, just enough to be fun without being, you know, without having to have every character have such a depth of, you know, experience. You do kind of need these side figures here and there to kind of, you know, lighten up the mood.
01:24:24
Speaker
Well, also, I think he's a perfect example of just embracing the absurd of this world. He's like, oh, I'm going to wear a fake mustache. And it's just like that is the perfect kind of absurdity that you can see from this. And I always kind of wanted to see him slap on a fake mustache and try to go into town.
01:24:43
Speaker
Polkadot Man 2 really likes that. Talk about taking an obscure character that really doesn't have a lot and doing a little bit of something. And it just shows you don't need to do a ton. I won't ruin the gag for those who haven't seen it, but when we see through his eyes for that first time, just a great moment that's funny, but it's funny because it has that, it's not touching, but it has that ring of truth to it that makes his character kind of work.
01:25:12
Speaker
It's also it's funny, but it's also terrifying at the same time. Oh yeah, and then later on when we see it again, you know when he's in the club, you know, absolutely.
01:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's something else that I really appreciated about just the movie in general, because after we left, Melissa Murray asked me like, so was this, is that his origin from the book comics? And I'm like, yeah, I don't really know. We looked on Wikipedia and it wasn't. I really appreciated, I really, really appreciated like the liberty they had. And this is sort of kind of true about both Marvel and DC that they understand that it's, you know,
01:25:48
Speaker
you can have you don't need to be 100% to the comics to make a good comic book story you can like and I read it like with polka dot man and uh there's a couple I like rack catch or two like they're all just really original takes on these characters that you know tying it back to the beginning of our story like
01:26:09
Speaker
It sort of straddles that line of like understanding and touching on what came before and what makes us love of these characters while never really losing it, like while still pushing it in a new direction.
01:26:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to do that with more established figures, unless you have something like a Batman, where there's this expectation that very much like James Bond, the next actor, the next iteration, there's gonna be something different with it. It's the next look at it. So you can have the Burton Batmans, you can have the 66 Batman, you can have the Nolan Batmans, you can have the Affleck Batman, we're gonna have
01:26:49
Speaker
the Pattinson Batman. We're going to have all these different figures, the animated series, you know, all that jazz. Raven the Bull Batman. Yeah, but yeah, right, exactly. And, you know, and when you have an obscure character, there's a little more license to kind of do something a little different. Speaking of Batman, you know, with with Mr. Freeze, you know, it's a very central figure to the Batman mythos now. But when he was brought back in that Paul Dini written episode, I believe won an Emmy.
01:27:18
Speaker
or at least nominated for it. Yeah. You know, it brought a pathos and an origin that was interesting, that was outside the bounds of that character from before, and it made it work. And, you know, the Pokémon Man for me was the... It wasn't the reason I liked this movie, but, you know, it didn't hurt, you know, that there was something there that was a lot of fun. If it had just been Suicide Squad again without those figures, if it was, you know, Harley Quinn and a couple of others, you know, whatever,
01:27:46
Speaker
I get it. It's a hard line to balance. You do need to give the fans what they want. And I think you get a little more license with a character like the polka dot man, where if you mess them up, no one really cares. Right. Yeah, that's fair. That is fair. Yeah. Also, I want to give a you know, I want to also mention Joel Kinnaman because, you know, his performance is Rick Flag and the first movie was nothing special. That character was
01:28:08
Speaker
you know, pretty much just a waste of screen time. But I really enjoyed him in this movie. I thought they, I thought, and I love that Gunn actually gave him something to work with, actually gave him, you know, this ethical conflict to work through beyond what little we get in the first movie. And I thought it was, I was really impressed with him in this movie. I don't know how much you guys felt about him. I honestly, until I started watching this, I had completely forgotten about his character.
01:28:39
Speaker
Not like it's not insane because he was like a central character to the first film. Like his whole thing was like he had to go save his girlfriend. Right. Who's never mentioned again. I just honestly yeah and you know and then I was watching like oh right right yeah and it's like you know it's like a memory from high school that you I would say you press like once again he wasn't
01:29:00
Speaker
And it's not like, oh my God, Sofia Coppola in Godfather Part 3, you know, but it was just, you know, completely went over me. You know, there are parts of that movie when I look back and I'm like, oh, right. They introduced characters multiple times and that opening is so stilted and there is in that ending. And, you know, and I just, you know, but he kind of slipped through. Whereas this, you know, there was, you know,
01:29:22
Speaker
a more fleshed out character, you know, he's quote unquote, the boring one of the group. And yet, you know, there was a lot going on there. You know, that great reveal, when he's in the camp, you know, after everything that's just happened, you know, oh, yeah, a lot of understated humor from his figure, or, you know, maybe not humor, but he is straight madness.
01:29:44
Speaker
to do a degree because he's not exactly a straight man, you know, but compared to the absurdity of everything does allow for a little bit for that to exist. There is a POV character so that, you know, it's not so ridiculous. My favorite aspect of that is when they're trying, they're actually in the plan to rescue Harley and then she just comes around the corner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Importance of POV Characters and Performances
01:30:07
Speaker
I also would say one thing that I will say this is more of a criticism like, and we touched upon a bit earlier like the reason why I think the Guardians of the Galaxy films, the least the first one work is stronger than this is because you had a POV character or at least a central character in Peter Quill Star-Lord.
01:30:24
Speaker
You don't really have that in this movie. You sort of have it with with Idris Elba's character, but he's not really introduced until like 20, 30 minutes in. And then you have to kind of rewind the movie back to like explain why this character works. So it becomes a bit more delayed. You're like, all right, why do I care about this person? And like, why do I care about these people? Whereas Guardians of the Galaxy from the get go and still you sort of said this, like you just you know who to identify with and why you care.
01:30:54
Speaker
um that i yeah i it like is one of those things where like i wouldn't change the suicide squad especially in terms of its structure um i do like that opening sequence a lot because i mean i kind of knew them like there's no way like i was like they're all dying like this is like that's the thing like they're all like all these characters are going to die that's the joke like i got it and like i really enjoyed how it was done and the way it played out i thought that was so
01:31:22
Speaker
Despite the fact that like I knew kind of what was going to happen. I was like, Oh, that that was surprisingly well done. You just you because of that, you do lose a good 20 minutes of knowing who your main characters and not to say that that is a necessarily bad thing. You know, we don't meet Luke Skywalker until like 20 minutes into A New Hope is a lot of films that you don't really meet.
01:31:45
Speaker
the main character until late in the movie. But I just think because it's an ensemble piece, you don't have that sort of identifier to sort of lead you through until late in the game.
01:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I also really loved that they brought Viola Davis back. I thought, you know, for the longest time, CCH Pounder was my ideal Amanda Waller. Like ever since I saw her on The Shield, I'm like, oh, that's Amanda Waller. And then she voiced him in the animated series and I'm like, oh, that makes perfect sense. So I was kind of disappointed when they didn't, you know, actually cast her when they made the first Suicide Squad movie. But then, I mean,
01:32:25
Speaker
But at that same time, I had watched some of how to get away with murder. So when I heard it was Viola Davis, I'm like, oh, that's a good choice. And I think she was one of the best things about the first movie. And and she really leaned into the role in this one. Like you really get a sense for how just like ruthless Amanda Waller is in this movie. And I thought she did an amazing job is that. Yeah, I can't disagree. You know,
01:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah No, no criticism there, you know very dark figure You need you need that figure to embody the twist that happens and you need that figure to allow for these other Ridiculous super villains. She's she's the real villain, you know
01:33:07
Speaker
What's from Megamind, you know, another movie about a villain that works, you know, it's for me, you know, what's the difference between a villain and a supervillain supervillains have style? You know, there's this eccentricity and there's no eccentricity to Waller. You know, she she is a whole hearted killer that will do whatever it takes to achieve her ends. And that's that's who she is. That's the character taken right off the page, taken right off of other adaptations. Yeah.
01:33:34
Speaker
Okay, any other things you guys wanted to mention about this movie before we close up? I'm really excited for the next film, The Trilogy, Suicide Squad.
01:33:43
Speaker
A Suicide Squad. A Suicide Squad. Son of a Suicide Squad.
Future of the DCEU and Box Office Impact
01:33:49
Speaker
So does it. I actually, I tweeted that like right after the movie came out, like the title came out and I was like, really excited for the trilogy, Suicide Squad, whatever year, the Suicide Squad 2021, Us Suicide Squad like 2025 and James Gunn liked it. So I'm like, all right, I can retire. And I didn't, and I kept on tweeting. Like, yeah, so no, I'm,
01:34:11
Speaker
I think my biggest thing I've mentioned before, I'm surprisingly excited about the future of the DCEU. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. I don't know if it's necessarily gonna work, but I kind of like, if we get more things like this, where they let directors play in their sandbox and sort of give their sort of like their feel of it,
01:34:38
Speaker
I yeah, I'm really I cuz I think it's like, I don't know where it's gonna go like, like, they've already shown dark side, sort of, like, where do they go from here? I don't fucking know. And I kind of like that. I like being surprised. I like I like not knowing what's gonna happen next.
01:34:54
Speaker
I'm interested to see how this film survives in the landscape. It had an okay opening and then it really quickly died in terms of box office, but there is still this kind of percolation and buzz of people talking about it, liking about it, sharing memes, doing this thing.
01:35:12
Speaker
And I hope it can survive. I feel that this is a perfectly decent film, a very fun film. Do I think that like, is it so strong that I can't wait for another Suicide Squad movie? I don't think so. I don't see where this could go necessarily, but I felt that way before and people have surprised me with the ways things can turn out.
01:35:38
Speaker
So maybe, but I do want to see how this builds into trajectory. Will it become this cult hit, beloved by critics? Maybe not beloved, but depending upon whether you look at Rotten Tomatoes, where it's 93% fresh, or Metacritic, which is 72%, which is good, but not amazing.
01:35:56
Speaker
Uh, you know, where, where is it really going to fall into all of these things? Like as much as I love Shazam, it's kind of, you know, lost a little bit of that kind of gleam to it. Like when people first saw it, um, you know, whereas surprisingly Aquaman is still around. Um, yeah.
01:36:12
Speaker
Which I thought was going to be kind of a little more like Captain Marvel. We'll see what happens with Captain Marvel 2, but that first one it did a billion dollars at the box office and then like six months later people had kind of stopped talking about it and kind of forgotten about it.
01:36:27
Speaker
I expected that to be Aquaman and yet people are still talking about that film, you know. I wonder how much that just to do with how much other stuff was happening because you had Captain Marvel and then right after that you had Endgame. Whereas Aquaman there was like nothing else around it. That's perfect, that's a fair observation, yeah.
01:36:45
Speaker
And I think also something like, again, somebody who like, I love Shazam, again, for reasons that almost have nothing to do with the movie. But I think like it does feel, does it have the idiosyncrasy, idiosyncrasy?
01:37:01
Speaker
tell me out here, steal someone. Idiosyncracies. Idiosyncracies, thank you. Idiosyncracies of like Aquaman or even the Suicide Squad have, like where you look at those films, like the James Swann films, the James Gunn films, like there's some weird shit in those movies that you're like, that only could have happened in an Aquaman film, that only could have happened. And I think the sort of like the meme-ification of movies for better or for worse is what
01:37:27
Speaker
helps these things last like to the Blade Runner, but all the reason why Blade Runner is so such a cool thing. It's like it didn't do well at the box office, but it was unique. It's a unique movie. It's not there's nothing else like it. There really is no other film like the Suicide Squad. And that's weird saying that because it's a sequel to Suicide Squad. There's no really other film like Aquaman, whereas Shazam, which again, I love it.
01:37:53
Speaker
not that different from other films of that sort of genre of kid have give had magic power to fight bad, you know, it's again, it's the
01:38:07
Speaker
We'll see. Yeah, that's what I hope the wrong lesson isn't taken from this. And knowing that it's Warner Brothers and knowing that it's Hollywood, unfortunately, that's more likely than not. But what I don't want to see happen is like, well, because this movie is probably going to top out at around $250 million in the box office. They're about to give or take 50. Who knows whether it's going to, whether the play it gets on HBO Max is really going to make up for that or not.
01:38:36
Speaker
um but you know i guarantee you there are suits who are looking at this and are like well suicide squad made 750 million and the suicide squad is going to make less than half of that uh probably probably a third of that so we need to make more movies like suicide squad and fewer films like the suicide squad and it happens all the time you know and and that's why i'm like i hope that you know the buzz continues once again this isn't
01:39:02
Speaker
This isn't Itania, this isn't one of these films that I really, really enjoy as a piece of cinema and then also as a fun film, but it's a really good film and I want Warner Brothers to make more movies like this. Take a stab, is it a home run? No, but it's a solid double, a very solid fun film.
01:39:25
Speaker
that I think anybody would be pleased. If any of us would make a movie like this, I think we would all be pleased with the effort that came out of it. Absolutely. I mean, if you made it, it'd be a miracle. It's not the kind of movie that I would make, but yes. No, it's not. Definitely not.
01:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with all that and Warner Brothers always seems to take the long the wrong lessons from movies like they saw how how the dark grounded
James Gunn's Career Resilience and Upcoming Projects
01:39:52
Speaker
approach work with Batman and they said oh this works with all superheroes let's try it with Superman and it didn't. So we'll we'll kind of see how that plays out hopefully.
01:40:01
Speaker
they've learned some lessons but you know historically I'm not sure if that's really a possibility so we'll see what happens but but for what we I'm glad we got it anyway I mean no matter what happens at least we got this and we got to see James Gunn just you know let his freak flag fly a little bit with this movie and
01:40:20
Speaker
Speaking of which, to that point, I've never seen anyone get cancelled be so successful. We get the best of both worlds. We get the Suicide Squad and we're getting the Guardians of the Galaxy Vine 3 and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special all because he got cancelled. I don't know anyone else who's had that sort of success for some stupid internet cancellation.
01:40:42
Speaker
Well, you know, we can talk about that. I don't think it's necessarily stupid. You know, some of the things, but at the same time, let me see. I miss it. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, that's it. That's his idiom. You know, it's like someone trying to cancel Trey Stone or Matt Parker. I'm like, they own that. You know, I mean, you can try, but okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, plus it was when he was doing stuff for trauma and that was kind of their brand. So yeah.
01:41:08
Speaker
I mean, I think that the context is important, especially because that was mostly just, you know, you know, people who hated his politics that they were just, they were just trying to find anything. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway. So, guys, you want to promote your stuff before you close up?
01:41:26
Speaker
Sure. As we've mentioned, we have Queens and Sapphire Sea coming out right now that you can listen to the first season on queens.buzzsprout.com. It's also on any of your favorite podcast aggregators. Season two begins this September and shortly after that, the full season of the Green Llama premieres in November.
01:41:51
Speaker
You can also check out my novels on Amazon or wherever you buy your favorite books. I have a Queen Llama series and there's other stuff I really want to talk about, really can't talk about it right now. And if you happen to be on Vanity Fair and you happen to like a video, there's a good chance I produced it and I hope you enjoy it. And follow me on, at Adalman's Garcia on Twitter and Instagram, basically just type in Adalman's Garcia.
01:42:19
Speaker
I'll probably be the first thing that comes up, and I am so sorry. At Words of Steel, that's W-O-R-D-S-O-F-S-T-E-E-L-E. You can find my podcast, Building a Better Story World, if you're interested in story world construction. It's B-A-B-S-W dot buzzsprout dot com. You can also go to my website, steelphilipac.com.
01:42:38
Speaker
And my horror comic book, Arcane, is coming out in August, September, October. It's going to take a little break, but it's going to be an ongoing series. You can find that through cosmiclyanproductions.com. When it goes on sale, I'll also have the Gumroad link and the Comexology link on my website once those go live.
01:42:55
Speaker
but you can also order it for print. If you'd like, we'd love to hear your thoughts on story world building. If anybody is interested in taking part, I always accept fan submissions for building a better story world. If you want some advice, if you just want to chat story world stuff, or pretty much any of this pop culture stuff, I'm always up for that kind of thing. Awesome. Yeah. I should also say that our podcast is called, sorry. No, it's okay. Go right ahead.
01:43:20
Speaker
I'll give you a clean break for edit. Also, our podcast is under the company name radio room. You can follow us at real radio room dot real radio room on Twitter. I believe is also we have the radio room calm is our website, radio room show calm, yes, radio room show calm. Our website is radio room show calm. And if you search in your favorite podcast aggregator, radio room, you should be able to find us.
01:43:46
Speaker
Okay, guys, thanks so much for stopping by. This was a lot of fun. Adam, great to have you back on the show. Steel, nice to meet you. Great having you on as well. Thanks so much. Thank you. Okay, that does it for this episode. As always, you can find us at superherocinephiles.com, SuperCinemapod on both Twitter and Instagram. And also I have a new podcast that's just launched. It's called E for Evolution, Examining Grant Morrison's X-Men.
01:44:14
Speaker
where me and my two co-hosts, we go through each issue of Grant Morrison's X-Men run, now that it's the 20th anniversary. So you can find that at e4evolution.transistor.fm or anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks again for watching. Thanks again for listening. And we will see you next time. You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast.
01:44:32
Speaker
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com. If you buy or rent any movies through the Amazon links at our site, it helps support the show. Please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
01:45:19
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.