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  • Lauren Balladares

The Suicide Squad (2021): Beating the Predecesor

DC Comics’s films tend to get torn apart by critics and fans, sometimes rightfully so. David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was released on August 5th, 2016, and, while the film was seen as a financial success in the box office, it was considered a creative flop by critics and fans for a multitude of reasons. James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021), on the other hand, had financially failed in the box office (undoubtably due to COVID-19 and it being free for HBOMax subscribers), yet creatively it went above and beyond it’s predecessor by intertwining comedy with solid storytelling. The movie was able to take the successful aspects of the previous movie and work them in in a way that made the somewhat re-do warranted. The obscurity around this statement is due to the fact that it has not really been clearly stated as to whether or not this movie is truly a sequel.

Both movies are essentially the same in their main storyline, highlighting the concept of the Suicide Squad taken from DC Comics storylines. A rag-tag group of villains are forced on a taskforce by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) with the goal of ending threats that most likely will kill them. Along with that, any attempts of deserting or disobeying will lead to the bombs forcefully planted into their heads getting set off. However, if they have a successful mission, their prison sentence gets shorter. In Suicide Squad the main villian is Enchantress, a spirit with a god complex that inhabits the body of June Moone (Cara Delevingne). She was powerless because Amanda Waller had her heart in a box but, when given an opportune moment she resurrects her brother, Incubus, reclaims her heart, and begins a rapid spread of turning humans into monsters in an attempt to destroy mankind.

In The Suicde Squad, the main villain is Starro, a mind controlling giant starfish. The premise of the movie is that Waller sends two groups to Corto Maltese after it’s been overthrown by an anti-American regime. The surviving group is tasked with infiltrating and destroying a laboratory with an experiment called “Project Starfish'' before the project can be used to destroy other nations. While Ayer can technically be credited for casting great actors for his film, at the end of the day, great acting can’t save a lack of storytelling techniques. This is where Gunn succeeds in his attempt to plaster over the past.

What really sells The Suicide Squad as a sucess is the tone of the movie being instantly set in the beginning. Two squads are sent to Corto Maltese --a fictional country that is full of political turmoil-- and one of them is completely obliterated because one of the members, Blackguard (Pete Davidson), leaked information to the government. This, accompanied by the fact that Waller had meant for group 1 to be a diversion from the very beginning, led to their deaths. More specifically, it led to the death of Mongal (Mayling Ng) due to disobeying Rick Flag’s (Joel Kinnaman) orders, the deaths of Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Javelin (Flula Borg), the desertion and death of Savant (Michael Rooker), and further on in the film more died too. This resulted in only two survivors remaining from group 1, Rick Flag and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). The immediate death of characters punctuates the main idea that this mission truly is a suicide mission, hence why they are called the Suicide Squad. While it initially gives the audience an air of hopelessness of succeeding the mission due to the killing of so many members so early on in the film, it allows group 2 to make it into the territory undetected. As soon as the second team gets instructed by Amanda Waller, they scramble to locate Rick Flag and later on they search for Harley to pull this mission off. This is what Ayer’s Suicide Squad failed to do. In his film, few team members, two characters to be specific, died. One died as a joke from trying to flee in the beginning and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) dies in the end in an effort to save the world. The film never gets the audience to believe that there is a lot at stake despite it being the end of the world because Enchantress wants to take control of it with the help of her brother.

While both movies have a male character that is gifted with weapons, has impeccable aim, and has a daughter being their main reason for being on the Squad, ultimately Gunn’s film executed the team lead’s arc better. In Ayer’s Suicide Squad, Deadshot (Will Smith) wants to be a better father and make his daughter proud. It’s the main reason why he lets Batman arrest him and put him in Belle Reve, a prison that holds metahumans and serves as a headquarters for the Suicide Squad. His devotion to his daughter is shown further in the film when he tries to bargain with Flag to get custody of his daughter and have the government pay for her to get into whatever Ivy League college she wants to go to even though she is very young and not even thinking about college yet. It shows that he cares for her by trying to ensure that she has a good future. This storyline, however, doesn’t contribute much to the group dynamic at all, and definitely doesn’t even motivate him to encourage the others to band together. This is, instead, his own character arc that doesn’t lead his character anywhere in the film. Due to this, Deadshot contradicts himself. In his eyes, in order to be a better father he needs to do everything he can to make it out alive and be able to support his daughter, even if it means becoming a leader. However, he doesn’t do this and goes against doing everything he says he’s willing to do in order to do good by her. With all of his talents, he is clearly a character capable of being the leader of the group, but he never actually steps up to the plate to take on the role due to a lack of character development. He instead lets Rick Flag try to run things. This is especially seen when Harley tries to escape with Joker, who has been trying to rescue her from being apart of the Suicide Squad. Amanda Waller, the government official leading the suicide missions and creator of Task Force X, not liking one of her members fleeing, tries to convince Deadshot to shoot Harley. While Deadshot does shoot at her, he misses the shot on purpose. A team leader would’ve taken a stand against Waller and refused to shoot altogether or just taken the shot to keep members that lack commitment in line. Since he never becomes a leader, one would assume he would naturally fall in line and be a follower. However, Deadshot overall was the type of character that made decisions based on his own desires and what he saw as doing right by his daughter. It’s clear at the end of the film when he reunites with his daughter and gets to see her. Because of this focus on only his own character arc, he fails to become the leader the movie wants him to be and more importantly, he puts everything for his daughter on the line by disobeying orders when he should have followed through in order to be able to ensure he was doing all he could for her. Deadshot would be considered a round, yet static character. He’s round in that he psychologically begins to see himself as a good person worthy of taking care of his daughter. But, he can also be considered static because his actions don’t change throughout the movie and he never becomes a leader when everything the movie sets him up for makes it seem as though he will become one in the end. This is where his arc fails because he never took on the role he was supposed to in order to progress as a character.

On the other hand, in The Suicide Squad, while Bloodsport’s own character arc is very similar to Deadshot’s, it’s given more depth. The dynamic Bloodsport (Idris Elba) has with his daughter, Tyla (Storm Reid) is very different to what Deadshot has with his daughter. In the beginning of the film, Bloodsport is shown wanting his daughter to stay as far away from him as possible because he is a bad person. He’s even rude to her as a means to get her to want to stay away from him and have a better life because he feels he has no good within him. The facade obviously crumbles when Amanda Waller uses his daughter’s safety as leverage to get him to lead Suicide Squad group 2. Bloodsport accepts this role because his daughter’s safety is important to him. Throughout the movie he is shown as learning that he has good inside of him and that he can be a good father to Tyla. At the end of the film, Tyla does ultimately see her father for who he is when she sees him on the news fighting Starro. This character arc ultimately impacts the group dynamic for better because he wants to succeed and will do anything to keep the group working together. Part of his character arc is that he begins to care about one of the members, Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior). His willingness to protect her as a teammate is shown throughout the film because she reminds him of his daughter --he even tells her this. On top of that, Bloodsport is seen as a good team leader because he is willing to act quickly and use member’s skills to their advantage. More importantly he’s willing to risk himself for their own safety like a father would do for their daughter. This is seen in the Corto Maltese bar when he gives himself up to the government so Ratcatcher 2 and Polka-Dot Man can escape with Thinker (Peter Capaldi) to continue the mission. Overall, Bloodsport is ultimately the team leader that Deadshot never was because he is capable of making tough decisions (like shooting Peacemaker to save Ratcatcher) and standing by them; he even leads by banding everyone remaining together in the final fight against Starro.

When it comes to The Suicide Squad, none of the members of group 2 feel like background characters. They all have moments to shine in the film and bring intrigue to the team dynamics and interactions. A prime example of this is Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian). While he is not one of the more prominent main characters in the film, he adds a lot of dark humor to scenes and even has moments where he gets to shine and show who he is as a character. Unlike Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a background character that should have been fleshed out in Suicide Squad, Polka-Dot Man has an actual character arc in the film that changes over time. Katana hardly has any lines throughout the film and the only memorable lines she has is when she tells her backstory before the Squad goes into battle. The lack of dialogue and spotlight give her little to no purpose in the film and, unfortunately, she is just seen as an additional fighter that would assist Flag and Boomerang in battle. Throughout The Suicide Squad, Polka-Dot Man is very self-loathing and observant as he deals with trauma from being experimented on by his mother. He sees her everywhere as a result and feels very inadequate and it truly shows through his interactions with the other characters. What rounds out Polka-Dot Man’s character arc is when Bloodsport convinces him to see Starro as his mother. This encourages Polka-Dot Man to take a stand and psychologically take back his power after all the trauma his mother gave him. He even smiles and says “I’m a superhero!” before getting squished to death. Overall, unlike Polka-Dot Man, Katana was put into Suicide Squad without even having a real character arc.

On a different note, the sexualization of Harley Quinn does not go unnoticed in Suicide Squad. In fact, as a byproduct of how sexualized she was in that movie, many female teens and adults dressed up like her Suicide Squad variant for Halloween of 2016. However, it wasn’t just Harley’s wardrobe that was sexualized: it was a lot of her actions (such as changing her clothes in front of a bunch of men and pole dancing in Joker’s club early on in the film) accompanying the raunchy things she says throughout the film. Harley was presented to the audience as an unhinged bombshell whose storyline revolved around reuniting with the Joker (Jared Leto) and defeating Enchantress because she messed with Harley’s new friends, her teammates. When she does have flashbacks, which are supposed to give the audience information on her character arc, they mainly entail her relationship with the Joker, making it very evident that she is the sole reason why the Joker is in the movie and that she is not her own person. She belongs to the Joker. This is shown at the beginning of the film when the Joker falsely hands over Harley to a man that was lusting for her and says to him, “She belongs to you now.” It makes one wonder if her character was solely adapted to be in the film in a way that suits the male gaze. However, in The Suicide Squad, her wardrobe presents her in clothes that aren’t completely meant for the male gaze and creatively show off her personality. Of course, she does briefly have a romance with Silvio Luna (Juan Diego Botto), the usurper to Corto Maltese, but she ultimately kills him because he had some red flags and she is unhinged. This leads her to getting locked up and tortured by the Corto Maltese government. What fits her character better in this movie is how Harley is presented as a woman capable of saving herself before her teammates reach her. Along with being capable of saving herself, she is presented as a character that has purpose in the film. Because of that, she is able to impact the plot. It is shown when she kills the usurper to Corto Maltese and, even early on in the movie, when Javelin bestows his javelin to her right after they get ambushed by the Corto Maltese soldiers. He tells her she is chosen to carry it and at the end of the film her purpose is evident when she uses it to jab Starro in the eye as a final blow to destroy it. It’s instrumental in the defeat of Starro because the gash she makes in his eye allows Ratcatcher 2’s rats to go in and attack Starro where it is most vulnerable. Lastly, it makes sense as to why she would willingly give one of the final blows because she is insane and genuinely feels like she has a destiny because the javelin was bestowed upon her by a divine entity.

When it comes to Rick Flag, he is vastly different in both films. In Suicide Squad he is seen as a cliché soldier that is devoted to the U.S. government. His talent as a soldier made him sought out by Waller to be part of the team. Throughout the film he follows Amanda Waller’s orders to a “T” even if it means he has to kill his lover, June Moone, partially because he knows it’s for the greater good of the world. In fact, his storyline is mainly tied around June and how he wants to save her from the hold Enchantress has over her. The audience is given flashbacks of their relationship, but it’s not fleshed out enough. Only the significant moments in their relationship, like when they first met or had their first kiss, are shown. It’s very easy for the audience to not really care about their relationship because it comes across as very cheesy and underwritten with no real emotional ties. When it comes to working with the metahumans, from the beginning he is against working with them and sees them as “psychotic, antisocial freaks.” Flag only believed that “real” soldiers could get the job done and is, of course, proven wrong when he needs help in the field from Deadshot and Harley. He does eventually warm up to them to the level of being fine with working with them. Although, the team dynamic is never really shown as a give and take from both ends (the team and Rick). It’s seen as Rick needing their help. This is highlighted in a scene in the movie where the criminals try to break away from the mission and go into a bar. Rick then joins them and when he tells them they don’t need to do the mission anymore, he inadvertently convinces them to help him but never really forms a solid bond with them.

In The Suicide Squad, Flag has no storyline revolving around a love interest like Suicide Squad did. His storyline instead surrounds completing the suicide mission and, along the way, he occasionally goes against what Waller would want for the sake of the team. This is evident when he encourages the team to help him rescue Harley from being held captive. He even goes as far as to hatch a cleverly thought out plan with the team. Right when they start to execute their plan, they see she has escaped on her own. Harley shows great surprise that they wanted to help her. He tells her something along the lines of “Of course we would rescue you.” She then hugs him and, despite his slight discomfort, he hugs her back to show that he does in fact, care about her and is willing to verbally and physically show it. This type of reliance is never seen in Suicide Squad. It shows depth in his character by his willingness to work with and get to know these people because he understands the importance of strength in numbers and knowing the people they work with so they can rely on each other. He doesn’t let the morality differences get in the way of the mission and believes that this mission is for the good of the people. That is, until the climax of the movie where Rick’s unwavering loyalty to the U.S. government dissolves when he realizes that the U.S. was behind Project Starfish. Rick Flag is horrified when he finds out how people of various ages, including children, were tested on. He is willing to throw away his career and life as long as he can leak the horrifying information to the public because he believes that the public has a right to know. The death of Rick Flag paints him as a martyr willing to die for the people because in his eyes they have a right to know the truth.

Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad is presented as a very cold and calculated woman. It’s clear in her introduction when she states that metahumans are a problem because of their human half because they can’t easily be manipulated to do what she wants them to do. She also has the overall belief that using them is needed to fight fire with fire if the next Superman comes and happens to be a terrorist. Waller further demonstrates her calculated nature when she orchestrated Rick Flag falling in love with June Moone so she could have him like a puppet in her hands because of her possession of Enchantress’s heart. Knowing this would deter the Squad from working with Flag, she tries to hide this information from them because she is partially responsible for the end of the world since Enchantress was put in the work field and got away. The woman even had a part in Deadshot’s arrest by giving Batman an anonymous tip because she saw the potential in using him. Waller operates on a need to know basis to keep order and wouldn’t even hesitate to throw the Squad under the bus if they get caught; this is something she reveals to the government early on in the film. She overall is clearly admired and feared greatly by the people she works with and gives off an intimidating aura when she walks into a room to the point where upon meeting her, Harley Quinn questions, “Are you the devil?” Waller coldly responds, “Maybe…” It really shows that she is willing to go to extremes even if it coins her as being like the devil. Although she can be ruthless and go to extremes, she does, at the end of the day, keep her word with the Suicide Squad and gives them shortened sentences and obliges to various requests like getting Harley some appliances for her prison cell.

However, while she is presented very similarly in The Suicide Squad, she is, in certain areas, even more ruthless and in other areas shockingly not. In general, the woman is feared by her own workers in the Task Force X headquarters because of how ruthless she is. Her ruthlessness goes to the point where she is willing to jeopardize the safety of Bloodsport’s young daughter by having her put in Belle Reve instead of juvie, in an attempt to get him to lead group 2. The repercussions of this action are that Tyla is 16 and only stole a watch. Sending someone to Belle Reve is only viable when a criminal is an adult and has committed a more serious crime than petty theft. She would not be safe at all surrounded by all of the criminals there and could easily be killed if jumped by them. Waller’s workers are horrified to the point where one of them says to her along the lines of, “You’re not really going to harm his daughter right?” She also doesn't hesitate to kill Savant when he tries to flee from the mission. She sees these criminals as expendable and is willing to do whatever it takes to get them to be obedient. Another area where she is seen as relentless is the fact that she foresaw a predicament with Flag not wanting to destroy the data drive, so before the mission even began, she had given Peacemaker (John Cena) direct orders to make sure the drive with the information was destroyed at all costs. She knew that Peacemaker would go to extremes to destroy the data, even if it meant killing Flag. It says a lot about her not caring who lives and who dies as long as her plan is a success. An area where Waller’s lack of ruthlessness in the writing comes into question is toward the end of the movie where she hesitates to kill the Suicide Squad when they openly want to help the people of Corto Maltese by defeating Starro. She tells them to turn back but they ignore her and she doesn’t get the chance to execute them because she gets knocked out by one of her employees. When she comes to and Starro has been defeated, she doesn’t punish her workers or even the Suicide Squad which is very surprising and against who she is as a character.

In conclusion, The Suicide Squad succeeds in areas that Suicide Squad lacked in as a film. Despite the low box office numbers, it is very encouraging to see a film franchise that actively tries to improve upon itself. While it isn’t clear whether The Suicide Squad is an actual sequel to Suicide Squad, it very much feels like it and definitely takes the cake for being a worthy sequel. Aspects such as great acting and writing have made it as such.

 

Sources Cited

Suicide Squad (2016), Directed by David Ayer, Performances by: Will Smith, Viola Davis,

Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Joel Kinnaman, Jay Hernandez, and Cara Delevigne,

Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, Atlas Entertainment, and RatPac-Dune

Entertainment, 2016.

The Suicide Squad (2021), Directed by James Gunn, Performances by: Idris Elba, Viola Davis,

Margot Robbie, John Cena, Sylvester Stallone, Joel Kinnaman, and Daniela Malchior,

DC Films, Atlas Entertainment, and The Safran Company, 2021.



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