Our writer-at-large saw DCs critically panned film and thinks its emblematic of Hollywoods superhero inertia. His solution: let Yorgos Lanthimos have a go
Warner Bros marketing department is probably having a hell of a time finding positive quotes for their latest DC Comics-inspired critical disaster, Suicide Squad. I feel for the poor intern who has to go through all the press clippings and sort through bon mots such as Resembles the sale rack at a Burlington Coat Factory and Jared Letos overacting makes the dog from Beethoven look like John Cazale just to find the stray compliment that the studio will shoe-horn into a 30-second spot during Bachelor in Paradise. In honor of those poor souls who just want to get some experience in Hollywood during their summer away from Northwestern, heres a quote for you, free of charge: I didnt hate it!
I didnt hate it, says Dave Schilling of the Guardian has a real ring to it, doesnt it? But why, you might ask, did I not hate Suicide Squad?
Its atrocious. A blatant pastiche of Escape from New York, Ghostbusters, Guardians of the Galaxy and Con Air. Yes, I said Con Air is better than Suicide Squad. Con Air sucks, but Con Air sucks in the most fun way possible. Its happy being bad. It knows nothing other than being bad and does not stray from its mission statement of being bad. Its a natural expression of its creative vision.
It includes a prominent role for John Cusack as a US marshall who does karate in Birkenstocks. There are moments in Suicide Squad that harken back to the era of movies such as Con Air the height of the Jerry Bruckheimer brand of unapologetic Hollywood action trash, a dearly departed style of eccentric stupidity wiped away by the pristine war machine of Marvel Studios.
The success of films such as X2, Iron Man and The Dark Knight gave credence to the so-called respectable genre film. Peek at the Rotten Tomatoes page for 2014s Captain America: The Winter Soldier and youll see critic after critic applauding the film for its energy, humor and various allusions to real-world problems. Winter Soldier, like almost every Marvel production, is a testament to the infernal dream factory they have created.
Each film adheres to a stylistic and thematic structure that guarantees success. Even lesser works such as Ant-Man and Iron Man 2 possess enough Marvel magic to skate by without anyone really stopping to consider how generic they are. Theyre fun, brimming with charm and eager to please. Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios should be commended for doing something truly superhuman: getting people to leave their homes to see films in a theater on a regular basis. Of the 13 Marvel Studios releases, only one has grossed under $150m in domestic box office. Only four of them have grossed under $200m. Ask the producers of recent box office disappointments such as Ghostbusters or Star Trek Beyond good movies that received mostly positive critical notices but underperformed financially if making a blockbuster is easy.
That success breeds audience loyalty and brand recognition. If a new Pixar movie is released, people will see it out of cultural obligation. If Apple releases a Wi-Fi enabled nose-hair trimmer, millions of consumers would snap one up just to be the first one at the office to try it out in the private executive bathroom. But Apple doesnt take big swings any more. They release another iPhone once a year with a slightly better camera. Pixars film slate is littered with sequels. What was once refreshing and vital is now the fourth trip to the soup-and-salad bar at Sizzler. Thats OK, though. I have an iPhone 6 and will gladly pay money for Incredibles 2. I also love Sizzler. That cheese toast they have is stupendous. (Still, its human nature to want to sample new things, even in the face of whats warm and familiar, which brings me back to Suicide Squad.)
Warner and DC Entertainment promised a film-maker-centric creative culture, a subtle dig at Marvels Pixaresque top-down structure. Suicide Squads advertising made it look quirky and visually arresting. As the summer movie schedule chugged along and it became clear that nothing outside of Marvel and cartoons were going to make a dent in the cultural conversation, Suicide Squad shone in the distance like a lighthouse that our boat was slowly creeping up on. Finally, something different. What we often forget is that something different occasionally means something terrible.
The movie business is not designed to produce starkly original works. Its supposed to create profitable widgets with merchandising potential. When a piece of art with an unconventional worldview does escape, its rare and it tends to take audiences awhile to catch up to what they witnessed. Sometimes, a film will get hammered to death by the executives whose job it is to protect the profit margin of their studio. Its a facile argument to say that theyre all corporate stooges who hate art. No, what they hate is losing their jobs. Think about all the industry professionals that will soon be out of work at studios that struggled this summer, such as Paramount and Columbia. Im not saying you should pity them; most of them get paid quite well and will find work elsewhere. But understand the motivation behind the instinct to meddle with something weird. Remember the studio executives that watched Blade Runner and suggested Ridley Scott add a voiceover and a happy ending?
Suicide Squad wasnt going to be Blade Runner, but it could have been more coherent with less studio involvement. WB execs clashed with writer/director David Ayer and mandated reshoots to lighten the tone of the film, rendering the finished product an unholy mess of conflicting ideas and unclear character motivations. A movie that co-stars a crocodile-man in a Juicy Couture track suit was probably never capable of the serious treatment. Marvel, on the other hand, has weaponized the ironic distance necessary to make these movies palatable for mass consumption. DC can try to copy that or they can carve a new path, but they have to pick one or the other. As it stands now, they are cranking out glorious B-movies and no one, save for Michael Bay, makes movies this strange and terrible any more.
Maybe thats why audiences have sleepwalked through the summer season. While there is plenty of arthouse fare worth your time, the studio product is competent, clean and safe. The results are predictable. Theres nothing in the big-budget, studio category compelling us out of our moviegoing apathy, nothing as particular and auteurist as Tim Burtons Batman, Paul Verhoevens Total Recall or James Camerons Titanic. Theres also nothing as moronic as Twister, except Suicide Squad. The summer of 1995 the year the neon demon known as Batman Forever squirted out of the Warner Bros apparatus and dominated the box office saw the release of the abominable Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd adaptation. Bombs like that made Batman Forever, a McDonalds commercial posing as a feature film complete with rubber nipples and Tommy Lee Jones having an artistic seizure on camera, seem interesting. If everything is good, is anything really good?
Hollywood needs to take risks and give creative control to singular visionaries in order to keep people energized by the idea of seeing men and women in spandex fight CGI monsters. The auteurist sensibilities of Christopher Nolan pushed the form to new heights with the Dark Knight trilogy, even if the template he laid down is not being followed by the brain-trusts at Marvel and Warner Bros. The sign of a unique piece of work is when it cant be so easily replicated and commodified. Let Yorgos Lanthimos, director of The Lobster, have a crack at a comic book film. Sure, it might turn out to be artsy and unconventional, but it could also redefine the parameters of the superhero genre and breathe new life into the movie business.
Studios are going to have to learn to accept failure, which is outside the realm of their corporate identities. Theres a certain nobility to the earnest, creatively pure disaster. When watching Suicide Squad, its readily apparent that whatever was noble about that film was surgically removed long before opening weekend.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/08/suicide-squad-hollywood-creativity-blockbuster-films
