Tag Archives: superhero

The Suicide Squad (2021)

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The Suicide Squad 4K Steelbook

Film: Suicide Squad (2016) was said to be the movie we deserved as movie-goers, and I totally agree with it. As action movies get dumber and dumber, and superhero movies attempt, over the ridiculous premise that superheroes are real, to legitimise their stories, society has fallen into their trap, seeing the flick, buying the merch and wearing the t-shirt.

(I’ll point out here that I am a big comic book fan, and have such a large collection I’ve been interviewed both by an Australian Newspaper, and more recently, appeared on a podcast about collecting.)

The pure hatred against Suicide Squad surprised me, to the point that I was shocked to hear a sequel was being proposed, especially after the Justice League fiasco, which I won’t go into here. I think the decision to acquire James Gunn as director and writer may have been VERY deliberate. It seemed to be a slap in Disney’s face for their firing of Guardians of the Galaxy director over a comment made on Twitter years earlier, which from a social media marketing point-of-view, made sense. Taking an ex-Troma director and putting him on Batman or Superman would be a waste, but a wacky premise like Suicide Squad fits into his range perfectly.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn

The premise of both the comic and the movies is fantastic. All the bad guys from the DC comics universe who have been captured and imprisoned have an opportunity to reduce their sentences by going on undercover missions for the U.S. government. This group, called Task Force X are basically put in unwinnable situations, that usually result in their demise, hence the nickname ‘Suicide Squad’. What makes these missions even more risky is that each villain has a bomb planted in their necks, so if they waver from the mission… KABOOM!

In this film, The Suicide Squad (note the ‘The’, that’s the difference) we see Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) organise a crack team, consisting of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman), Weasel (Sean Gunn), Savant (Michael Rooker), Javelin (Flula Borg), Mongal (Mayling Ng), Blackguard (Pete Davidson) and T.D.K. (Nathan Fillion) to infiltrate the small nation of Corto Maltese, with the intention of destroying Jötunheim, an impressive building that contains something called ‘Project Starfish’.

What this team don’t realise is that they are the B team, and the actual team consisting of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), The Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) and King Shark (a digital character voiced by Sylvester Stallone) are on another part of the island, ready to actually perform the mission.

Peter Capaldi as the Thinker

It’s quickly revealed that Blackguard is a traitor and when the B team is all but decimated due to his duplicitous behaviour, the other team have their mission revised to find Flagg and save Quinn, before gaining entry to Jötunheim, via the Project’s manager, Thinker (Peter Capaldi).

Once they gain entry to the facility, they find that Project Starfish is much bigger, and preposterous, than they ever could have imagined…

What a wonderful thing this film is: to give the director of things like Super and Slither an opportunity to take a ridiculous concept like Suicide Squad, and then to not sanitise his work like we saw in his output of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, is brilliant. This film doesn’t just adapt the comics, it turns them into a 70s styled, gory, sexy and raucous beast that has something to watch all the time. The choice of character that he’s been allowed to use really gives fans of DC comics a lot of Easter eggs to look for, and the story is told in the wonderfully staggered, time-hoping manner which makes the unfolding story a thrill to watch as well.

The casting is pure brilliance as well. Gunn does tend to have a gang that return, like Fillion and his brother Sean, but building on the cast of the original was obviously a great deal of fun. The best thing about a film like this it works best if the cast DON’T have any real synergy, and it really makes it a fun watch, like someone else’s unpleasant family Christmas Dinner. The performance add to this as well. Elba and Cena have one of the most wonderfully antagonistic relationships I’ve ever seen, and Melchior and Stallone’s starts off bad, but develops fantastically.

As usual, Robbie’s Harley Quinn steals almost every scene she’s in, and even though a large subplot and several of the big gun battle scenes star her, she still somehow feels a little underused.

The story is totally comic booky, and it proves that Gunn, who also wrote the film, knows his stuff and appreciates both how silly some of the power sets of comic super characters are, and how that can be capitalised on for a film. He, of course, did this previously with the aforementioned Guardians of the Galaxy by making a walking tree a deadly weapon of both violence and marketing, and a raccoon wonderful comic relief, but here? Well, a polka-dot suited man becomes a flesh-melting powerhouse, and a shark with legs and a child-like mentality becomes a gory source of amusement.

Gunn obviously had a lot of fun with the scene changes too, there’s truly some magnificent design choices using text hidden in plain site telling when the time stamp of the scene is. Sure it’s been done before in films, but Gunn’s creativity really shows off with some of the choices.

I do have to give a special shout out to a particular scene of medical atrocities that reminded me so much of those performed in Dawn of the Dead by Doctor Logan that it doubled down my enjoyment of the gore of it.

So, as someone who champions the much-maligned Suicide Squad film, how do I feel about this? I think it is a suitable follow up that exceeds the original, mainly due to its construction, effects and it feels more complete.

Score: ****

The menu screen for the Australian release

Extras: No extras on the 4K disc, but the accompanying Bluray has MUCHO extras.

Deleted and Extended Scenes are, as usual, superfluous and the film is better off without them… that’s not to say there isn’t some fun gore in them though… and a scene that shows the wackiness of Harley which I possibly would have left in.

Unlike the more recent Marvel movies, here is a gag reel that’s actually occasionally funny, especially showing off the comedy stylings of Pete Davidson, John Cena and Flula Borg, and perhaps acts as a warning that props don’t always do what they are supposed to do.

Bringing King Shark to Life looks at the physical and vocal acting that make this character, and the CGI the completes the whole thing.

Gotta Love the Squad looks at the comic on which the movie is based, the characters and the actors who play them… also in and around that, the costume designer and Gunn himself talk about the character design.

The Way of the Gunn is an old school ego-stroke, but if I consider that I like every movie he had made except one (Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is such a load of crap… even worse is the first is BRILLIANT so it hurts even more) I’d probably agree that the stroking is warranted.

Scene Breakdowns looks at the design of 4 scenes, from the set design to the stunts, and is exceptionally fascinating!

Starro: It’s a Freakin’ Kaiju! talks about the brilliant decision to make the big bad thing a giant starfish that is traditionally a Justice League villain. The decision to not ‘adapt’ it but to instead make it just as dumb as comics are was a brilliant one and is discussed here.

Retro Trailers: War, Horror and Buddy-Cop are just amazing! These are trailers for the film but making them look like a 70s war film, an 80s horror and a late 80s cop film: these sit right in Gunn’s love of cinema and his sense of humour! It’s also nice that they highlight different characters too: the horror film highlights Ratcatcher 2 more than anyone else, and the buddy-cop trailer is all about Cena and Elba.

Commentary with Director/ Writer James Gunn is a lesson in filmmaking and a fascinating look at his creative process.

Score: *****

WISIA: It’s very funny and very gory and occasionally sexy… ticks the ‘watch again’ boxes!

The artist formally known as Blackguard (Pete Davidson)

Catwoman (2004)

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Catwoman (2004)

Film: I have been a comic fan for well over 35 years, and I have to admit that whenever I hear that one of my favourite characters is coming out in a cinematic form, I admit to be fairly excited by the prospect… OK, more than a little excited: maybe, just maybe, on occasion a little bit of wee does leak out.

More often than not that excitement turns to trepidation as I hear of choices made in the casting department, but after being proven wrong with my doubts about Michael Keaton being able to perform a decent Batman, I concede that some ludicrous decisions can actually work. The argument against that, of course, is Daredevil, two Hulk films, Superman Returns and this film, Catwoman.

Catwoman is a character I have loved since I first read of her in a Batman comic, and as her character evolved over the years from a cat-burgling she-foil for the Dark Knight into a love-interest female Robin Hood of Gotham City I always had hopes of seeing her on the big screen, outside of a Bat-film and on her own, so imagine my excitement when this film was originally announced in 1995 to be written by Heathers screenwriter Daniel Waters, as a vehicle for Michelle Pfeiffer after her portrayal of the character in Batman Returns as a psychologically damaged ex-shrinking violet turned super-villain/ spirit of vengeance.

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens in Hollywood, films are put on back-burners and cast and crew are replaced, and scripts are re-written, in this case apparently 14 times (which is a GIANT red flag against quality!). For a film that could have had a real pro-woman stance, the story descended into a story where the main character wanted pretty things, and became involved in a fight against an evil cosmetics company.

This version of Catwoman tells the tale of advertising artist Patience Phillips (Halle Berry), a downtrodden wallflower who works for cosmetic magnate George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his wife Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone). After being told her work is not good enough by George, Phillips redoes some artwork in record time and delivers it to him at one of his factories, only to discover their new product Beau-line has disastrous side-effects. Hedare orders his flunkies to kill Phillips and she is flushed out of a sewer pipe, and drowns, only to be brought back to life by the CPR administered by a bunch of cats, led by a cat previously rescued by her, and some magical cat hoodoo.

She returns from deaths as a flesh eating cat zombie… no, sorry, she returns from death with all the powers of the cat: can always land on her feet, can see in the dark, can wield a bullwhip (hang on, cats can’t do that!!) and is so flexible she can lick herself in places normally only others can reach.

Caution: that last idea tragically did not make it into the film.

What she does do though is dress is the sluttiest leather clothes she can find and both foils crimes and commits them at the same time, and eventually is told by a mysterious cat lady, Ophelia (Francis Conroy) that she is the latest in a long line of vengeful spirits that give women super powers (an idea stolen directly from the Crow, along with some of the dialogue). Eventually Catwoman decides to use her powers to defeat the Hedares and stop their evil plans to copy the Joker’s threat from 1989’s Batman film.

This FILM HAS Absolutely NO saving graces. Bad acting, atrocious CGI, over-glossy production design, and a story SO clichéd and… well, crap that I feel that the cavalcade of writers may not have been responsible for it at all, and instead it was actually written by some kind of super-computer programmed to write the worst film ever! I imagine getting caught by your Mum polishing your dolphin to Playstation 1 graphics of Lara Croft would be LESS embarrassing that being caught watching this pile of steaming cat turd.

Now I guess I should clarify some of the comments made in the previous paragraph.

Academy Award winner Berry truly embarrassed herself, and a good percentage of womankind by appearing in this: the quality of her acting in this is nothing short of dull. I am sure that forever more, comics fans who have seen this film will no longer fantasize about her multi-million dollar mams, instead, the dream of slapping her face has replaced it. Singling her out though is unfair though: Bratt was as flaccid as ever, Stone coated her villainy with an air of boredom and the supercool Wilson was as interesting as a high school science teacher. The only actor in this who truly acted to her abilities was Alex Borstein, who other than her portrayal of Lois Griffin in Family Guy is an affront to both words in the term ‘acting profession’.

The CGI was a huge problem here as well. It is a shame that someone like me, who is a proponent of this cinematic artform, can have the barely good enough to be a console game cut-scene images in this film as an argument against his enjoyment high standards of effects. I certainly hope the team responsible didn’t high five each other upon presentation to the director, as to approve this he must have had no standards, or no budget. The surprising thing about either of those options is that Pitof is normally a Special effects supervisor and has works on such films as Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children.

The production design deserves a huge smack in the face as well. Straight up, the worst costume EVER for the character of Catwoman, and considering in the comics at one point she wore a scaly green outfit, that is saying something. Sure it showed off Berry’s great body, but it also showed what a slut looks like at the end of a big night of B and D. The cityscape was lackluster as well, after the amazing designs used in Tim Burton’s Batman films of Gotham City, designed by Anton Furst these were just uninteresting, standard city skylines.

This film received 7 nominations for Razzies, which are the anti Academy Award, and won 4 on them, which, to her credit, Berry went to receive… it seems to me, upon reflection, she was aware of the travesty in which she had taken part.

There is NO doubt that the image is a good one, and is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, but don’t’ don’t imagine anyone will ever test their AV equipment by throwing on a Catwoman DVD! Again, this disc has a really great presentation here in Dolby Digital 5.1 but you will never use it as a standard by which to set other discs.

If I were to give this movie a score at all it would be just for the quality of the disc, but the film is SO terrible, I can’t bring myself to even give it a single star.

Score: 0

Extras: The Many Face of Catwoman is an excellent, if brief, look at all the actresses who have played the character, hosted, as it should be, by Ertha Kitt, and with comments from various comic creators, writers and co-stars (the immortal Adam West) about the history of the feline felon. I have to say my favourite inadvertently funny part of this piece is Halle Berry’s whip trailer talking about her impressive ‘horizontal crack’. OooooKay….

Behind the Scenes Documentary is a traditional BTS piece that briefly discusses the making of the film, with a lot of clips from the film. AT best, it is perfunctory.

The deleted scenes were thankfully, deleted, as it shortened a film that already suffers with far too much padding. I would like to especially point out what absolute GASH the alternate ending is, as well.

There is also a theatrical trailer, and some DVD-rom stuff which involves the installation of something called Interactual Player 2.0 which I am not prepared to litter my laptop’s memory with, so I did not review.

Score: ***

WISIA: Why would one choose to abuse themselves in this way more than once?

The All-New X-men: Ghosts of Cyclops

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It would be a boring review if it were to start with something as terrible as a ‘look up convoluted in the dictionary, and you’ll find the history of the X-men as an example.’ Yep, boring, and lazy reviewing as well, so we won’t do that.

That’s not to say it’s not the absolute truth though. The X-men was nothing short of an absolute brilliant comics in the 80s, but it’s, and more specifically Wolverine’s, popularity came in the 90s at a terrible price.

Sure, the X-men cartoon was amazing, even though it starred lame jerk Gambit, but the comics were truly some of the worst in the history of comics as Marvel, close to going bankrupt, did everything from emulating comics industry bad-boys Image Comics’ style, to deciding that almost everyone was a bloody mutant.

Thankfully, since the turn of the century, and with the popularity of the X-men films, Marvel have attempted to clean up the mutant part of the Marvel universe… even if the films, also, became someone convoluted and confusing.

One of the interesting things that Marvel did was use their time travel deus ex machina (a cure-all for so many awkward story ideas) to attempt to ‘fix’ things by having the original X-men pulled out of time and transported to ‘now’ so they can not become who they do. Jean Grey, Marvel Girl, could be confronted by her possession by the Phoenix Force, and Scott Summers, Cyclops, could perhaps find himself to not become the seemingly megalomaniacal leader of all mutants.

Unfortunately, the ‘all-new’ Scott Summers is so horrified by his future self, that he wants to avoid being Cyclops at all, so he goes off-grid, separating himself from the All New X-men (whose ranks include the new Iceman, Beast and Angel, Wolverine (ex-X-23), Kid Apocalypse and Idie), until a mutant terrorist group called The Ghosts of Cyclops rise up in an attempt to continue Cyclops’ work, and Scott finds himself in a position where he has to reveal himself to stop them.

Story: This story is written by Dennis Hopeless who has given us an interesting take on the X-Men, and the exploration of a young man’s fear of becoming something horrible is an interesting look at the normally stoic Scott Summers character. Unfortunately, the second part of this trade paperback is a fairly stock standard cliff hanger starring the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, that only has half the story and therefore becomes somewhat anticlimactic.

Score: ***1/2

Art: The Official Marvel Try-out Book Winner Mark Bagley is Marvel’s version of Yellowstone National Park’s Old Faithful. Bag key seems to have consistently been working for Marvel since the 80s and he offers the same quality of work that he always has, which is reminiscent of John Byrne’s 70s work. It’s is functional, reads easy and looks nice. The end if this book also features some alternate covers by Ron Lim, Ed Piskor, Pascal Ferry, June Brigman, Janet Lee and Rob Liefeld.

Score: ***