What with the new Suicide Squad film on due for release this year, I thought I’d try the animated version first, to get a flavour of what to expect. In short, I’m hoping the live-action film will be better, but it probably can’t.
Suicide Squad is a 'The Dirty Dozen story for super villains. The difficulty with telling a Dirty Dozen story is that once you establish the central team as a bunch of murderers and perverts, it becomes hard to sympathise with them. Normally you can get around this by casting a not-evil, outsider leader for the show to follow. That way, we can sympathise when they are faced with the task of shepherding a highly dysfunctional band of ruffians to do the one right thing. ‘’Suicide Squad’’ does not have any such person, and that’s where its troubles start.
From the get go, the show emphasises that these people are horrible scumbags who haven’t a chance in hell, and certainly don’t deserve one. So we don’t actually mind too much if they die. We also don’t really empathise with their cause, because the suicide mission amounts to little more than a heist against another, less dangerous villain, for the benefit of a more dangerous, fascist villain. The show makes some effort to give life to these guys, and even tries to make them sympathetic (The closest thing to a protagonist even has a little girl). But it feels paltry, out of place, and an inhibition to a story about watching those same people slaughter their way through prison wardens.
The other big issue is that this has Bad Butt written all over it. The film wants to have some serious, hard edged action. But it has characters called “King Shark” and “Captain Boomerang”. They can’t be anything other than (literally) scene chewing, cartoon villains. They want to have sex and swearing, but can’t have anything other than cleavage and the occasional “crap” or “bitch
WesternAnimation The Dirty Dozen Problem
What with the new Suicide Squad film on due for release this year, I thought I’d try the animated version first, to get a flavour of what to expect. In short, I’m hoping the live-action film will be better, but it probably can’t.
Suicide Squad is a 'The Dirty Dozen story for super villains. The difficulty with telling a Dirty Dozen story is that once you establish the central team as a bunch of murderers and perverts, it becomes hard to sympathise with them. Normally you can get around this by casting a not-evil, outsider leader for the show to follow. That way, we can sympathise when they are faced with the task of shepherding a highly dysfunctional band of ruffians to do the one right thing. ‘’Suicide Squad’’ does not have any such person, and that’s where its troubles start.
From the get go, the show emphasises that these people are horrible scumbags who haven’t a chance in hell, and certainly don’t deserve one. So we don’t actually mind too much if they die. We also don’t really empathise with their cause, because the suicide mission amounts to little more than a heist against another, less dangerous villain, for the benefit of a more dangerous, fascist villain. The show makes some effort to give life to these guys, and even tries to make them sympathetic (The closest thing to a protagonist even has a little girl). But it feels paltry, out of place, and an inhibition to a story about watching those same people slaughter their way through prison wardens.
The other big issue is that this has Bad Butt written all over it. The film wants to have some serious, hard edged action. But it has characters called “King Shark” and “Captain Boomerang”. They can’t be anything other than (literally) scene chewing, cartoon villains. They want to have sex and swearing, but can’t have anything other than cleavage and the occasional “crap” or “bitch