Warner Bros/DC : Marvel Studios :: Guitar Hero : Rock Band
Ouch. I wish I had read this thread before seeing this tonight. All I knew going in was what I saw from the excellent trailers and commercials.
This movie was terrible. In particular, the script was terrible. None of the jokes are funny, the plot makes no sense, the characters motivations are either lacking or absurd, a large portion of the cast has nothing to do, the action sequences make no sense… I could go on but it’s just a mess top to bottom. The dialog is just awful throughout.
Margo Robbie does the best she can do with what’s she’s given and is one of few bright spots. Will Smith is charismatic as ever and his Deadshot would have been interesting if he wasn’t so poorly written.
This is definitely the second best movie that stars Will Smith and Margot Robbie.
Meh, I had fun. It’s not great by any stretch of the imagination, but worth the price of admission (… maybe not popcorn and drinks, but few movies are). There were numerous flaws in the film, most or even all of which have been discussed here and in reviews;
The nemesis of the film needed to be fleshed out more, was given terrible, cliched lines, and never felt as overwhelmingly powerful as made out to be despite the damage caused. The “partner-in-damage” was woefully underdeveloped, and only seemed to exist to provide a moment of redemption for an anti-hero. As for that sordid collection we call the Suicide Squad, did we really need to dress one up with such an obvious red shirt before they headed off? I mean, the film has so many face-palming decisions that I think sitting through it may induce potential bruising if you’re not careful. The pacing was also terrible, imho - both my son and I preferred a more classic ramp-up than whatever … “that” was.
However, it was a fun romp, and I’m glad I went to see it. Smith and Robbie both had interesting takes on their characters, and a couple others pleasantly surprised. I think they tried an anti-hero Avengers, but missed out on a lot because the Avengers had more established characters (and prequel movies) so sharing screentime wasn’t a big issue. This film needed at least another hour of character development for me to care more for the team as a whole, and then a reasonable, rational plot for me to hang in there through the extra length. I believe that someone probably had all of that at one point, and perhaps there’s a stack of discarded storyboards which would magically make it all come together.
So it was fun, though I couldn’t help but notice along the way how much was missing from making it great. I’d have no hesitation recommending a fan of superhero movies to check it out, but temper expectations and skip the reviews until after.
B-/C+
Certainly worth a rent on RedBox, and possibly a watch in the theaters depending on your tolerance levels
I’d probably go with a C+. Decent-to-questionable casting (Will Smith cannot play anyone other than the Will Smith Persona, the actress for the Enchantress did not work at all, Flagg both looked and acted like Kevin Dillon on Entourage), liked the effects & cameo appearances, liked Robbie as Harley quite a bit, but the script beats were weaker & dumber than the average superhero movie (evac someone by flying over the dangerous bad guy? why not?).
I haven’t seen the movie and probably won’t but I love this quote from the Ars Technica review:
A frenetic opening sequence introduces us to our band of bad guys, whose superpowers include things like “shoots well,” “sexy in shorts,” “secretly an Aztec god,” “weird teeth,” and “climbs fast.” If Robert Rodriguez were directing this in a condemned nightclub, I would be all in. It’s the perfect premise for a bloody, sexy, fire-soaked brawl.
I actually like the beginning parts, with the character introductions, but then it became a Will Smith movie when they went on the operation. So Half-ok, half bad.
Also, Diablo asking for a glass of water at the bar (as seen in a trailer) ended up on the cutting room floor I believe.
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Huge opening weekend. $133.3 million total box office. That’s $1.2 million more than Deadpool’s opening weekend, and almost double Guardians of the Galaxy’s revenue for the same weekend last year.
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Reports are coming out that among the footage cut from the theatrical release is a lot of Harley and Joker stuff that painted their relationship as more abusive. Basically, The Joker slaps Harley around and almost kills her twice during the movie, but this footage was re-cut or dropped entirely to make their relationship seem more loving.
For example:
In the movie, The Joker’s helicopter gets shot, but before it goes down, The Joker pushes Harley out to save her life. The way it was originally shot, The Joker actually pushes her out first to kill her during an argument, then the helicopter gets shot down. This scene was re-cut into the version on the screen.
There’s a lot more like that. Jared Leto is apparently not pleased with how his performance was butchered.
Geezus what? It wasn’t THAT good, especially compared to the other two movies you mentioned. WTF.
#Marketing
Also opening to weak competition, more or less.
As Telefrog notes, Week 2 is gonna be a lot more telling that week 1.
That’s putting it mildly:
Go on, I dare you to watch it. I double dog* dare you to watch it.
-Tom
- cat
Well strictly speaking it also runs up against trailing weeks of Ghostbusters and Star Trek, which should theoretically have some moviegoer overlap, but of course, both of those are teetering on the edge of having bombed…
And I think inflicting that trailer on everyone here is pretty uncouth, man…
Come on, you probably didn’t even watch it. I mean, seriously, how bad can it be?
SPOILER: 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, because the MTV review was the only one of 24 reviews that was listed as positive. To wit: “Yes, Nine Lives is dumb. Yes, it’s for very young kids. And yes, I giggled anyway, as did the strange man next to me who’d smuggled in his own fish-scented snack.”
-Tom
I watched Suicide Squad, and I now wish I’d seen Nine Lives instead.
Come on, Suicide Squad can’t be that bad. That Nine Lives trailer was probably the worst movie trailer I have ever seen in my life. I honestly can’t think of a worse one.
Please make sure your kids see that trailer. I love the idea of you being dragged to see Nine Lives, starring Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey and Christopher Walken.
-Tom
I will eventually see Nine Lives entirely due to Walken. I eventually want to see everything he’s done, good and bad. I mean, it can’t be worse than Puss in Boots or McBain.
Oh, they’ll see the trailer. What’s in question is who will
be dragging whom.
Well that was disappointing. I loved the trailers, too bad all the cool stuff was in them and rest of the movie was somewhat boring, sometimes cringey, filler, mixed with overblown melodrama. The finale was ridiculously bad (Diablo excepted).
I wouldn’t mind seeing Joker/Harley movie though. Leto doesn’t hold a candle to Ledger but I still kinda weirdly enjoyed his take. And Margot was the one shiny aspect of the film, pun intended :p
Also, these new DC movies make me long for Nolan era Batman. Rises had its issues but god damn that trilogy is infinitely better than what DC is producing now.
I don’t know which DC movie catastrophe thread to put this in, but since Suicide Squad is the most recent one, here goes
If this is to be believed, Wonder Woman will be another dumpster fire.