Suicide Squad Trailer 2

This is going to be an odd year for superhero films.  Previous years have been defined by major throwdowns like Dark Knight Rises against Avengers or attempts from smaller studios to reassert dominance like X-Men: Days of Future Past or Amazing Spider-Man 2.  This year, we’ve still got some of that, in particular this is the year Batman v. Superman will go toe-to-toe with Captain America: Civil War, but there’s way more weirdness and offbeat entries this year.  In February we’ll be seeing Fox take a chance on Internet love with Deadpool, a movie that only got made thanks to the positive response to a leaked trailer.  Then in November Marvel will throw its hat into the fantasy arena with Dr. Strange. 

And in August DC makes its first attempt to implement this whole “movie universe” approach with Suicide Squad, about a team of super villains conscripted by the government for high risk missions.  Even amongst all the other weirdness Suicide Squad has been the odd man out, mainly thanks to a very bizarre marketing campaign that followed up the first, and pretty interesting, trailer with a ton of images that made the movie look both gritty and ridiculous.  Now we’ve got a second trailer and the film looks…well it still looks gritty and ridiculous but now in the best way possible.

In all seriousness this trailer is kind of completely adorable, mainly because it’s not at all pulling off what it seems to be going for.  Firstly, this is another trailer attempting to ape the Guardians of the Galaxy aesthetic, complete with recognizable but offbeat needle drop and someone going through the various team members in a condescending tone.  That appropriation is kind of key to what I like so much about the trailer, the way it’s trying to balance the look and visual design of gritty realism cut from David Ayer’s standard palette with the quirky weirdness of Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man.  That’s one hell of a balancing act and even the best films have trouble with it so it’s not surprising Suicide Squad isn’t pulling it off at all.  What is surprising is how endearing that failure actually feels.  Mainly what this comes down to is falling with style, failing in just the right manner and with just enough passion and gusto that you get swept up in the energy of the performance rather than how little of it actually works. 

Pictured Here: Slipknot

Pictured Here: Captain Boomerang

Pictured Here: Katana

Pictured Here: Killer Croc

Part of what is working for this trailer is how they seem to be splitting the team up into 3 groups.  You’ve got folks like Slipknot and Rick Flag who seem to normal, gruff tough guys you’d see in any number of grounded, gritty action flicks.  Then there’s the much more fun and crazy types on the team like Captain Boomerang, Joker, and kind of Harley Quinn (more on her in a bit.)  Finally you’ve got the predominance of realistic super people.  These are folks like El Diablo, Killer Croc, Katana, and Deadshot.  There are some folks who don’t really fit into this breakdown, most notably Enchantress who seems to only be here to help lay the ground work for that Justice League Dark movie they keep threatening us with, but for the most part these three groups actually work pretty well together. 

Pictured Here: Harley Quinn

Pictured Here: Deadshot

Pictured Here: Enchantress

The non-powered tough guys work as straight men for the off-beat wackiness of Boomerang and Quinn while also working as a kind of sarcastic, “are we really doing this?” voice of reason when it comes to the super people.  The super people themselves are all shockingly laconic in this, especially Deadshot who I expected to be much more in the center frame for this trailer given he’s the only movie star in this film.

Speaking of conspicuous absences Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller has been afforded very little screen time in both trailers now, which should really have more people worried.  DC’s had a weird habit lately of cutting main character screen time like how Batman had very little screen time in Dark Knight Rises or how Superman only got to be Superman for about a 3^rd of Man of Steel.  It’s an odd tactic they picked up from the Transformers films where you ignore the marquee hero in favor of a focus on cops or military heroes because the thinking is the audience can’t identify with a character who’s too far removed from reality, they did the same thing with Godzilla in 2014.  

Given we’ve barely seen any hint of Amanda Waller outside the restaurant scene it’s possible she’s had her screen time slashed to a bare minimum.  Actually, between her absence and how little focus Will Smith really gets in this trailer it’s possible both Deadshot and Amanda Waller, the two most important Suicide Squad members, are getting edged out by folks like Joker, Harley Quinn, and Rick Flag. 

Speaking of Joker he seems to be in a sort of nebulous twilight zone this trailer, in more ways then one.  There aren’t any scenes of him interacting with the rest of the team, save for Harley, and we never once see him involved in the weird sentient darkness stuff that seems to be attack Citysville.  Speaking of said darkness, there’s not really enough shown here to get a good read on it but it’s most likely related to Darkseid, DC’s big major villain who’ll be fighting the Justice League when they finally assemble.  There’s a chance it could be something mystical as a way to justify Enchantress being on hand but given DC seems to want all roads to lead to Darkseid these days it’s probably just one of his minions.  That’d actually be a fitting idea given the Suicide Squad first assembled to fight Darkseid but I already covered that in a previous article. 

Which brings us to Harley Quinn, probably the most inconsistent part of the trailer.  The jury’s still out on what this version of Harley Quinn will actually incorporate from her origin given that the original character has a PHD in psychiatry and is also an abuse victim.  DC has always felt very uncertain of how to approach that particularly uncomfortable origin story given how much they like to promote Harley as an idealized comic nerd fantasy girl so I doubt we’ll see that much of her identity pop up here.  

I do think that her opening appearance where she talks about voices and such is meant to feel so patently inauthentic, maybe setting up the idea that the Harley we’re seeing is an elaborate affectation she adopted as part of her relationship with the Joker.  There’s also every possibility everything we’re seeing is just surface and sincere, after all Harley has kind of transitioned into DC’s Deadpool in recent years and that seems to be the vibe they’re going for with her in this trailer.

So where does that leave us?  Well certainly in a more hopeful place than previously but still not in the realm of “sure thing” that usually accompanies the Marvel movie releases.  A big part of that is just prior experience, DC has spent this entire decade putting out terrible material so there’s not really the same level of trust there yet.  I like the funnier aspects of this trailer and how so much of it seems to be about being fun rather than being oppressive or straining for profundity but there are still major problems hovering around the margins.  But at the very least this trailer has gotten me to give Suicide Squad more of a chance than I was before, that’s progress.  


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