Suicide squad

Title - Suicide Squad
Language - English
Genre - Super hero, Comic

Spoiler warning

Suicide Squad is the third film in the new D.C. comics universe after 'Man of Steel & Superman vs Batman, Dawn of Justice .  The film is set in the wake of the second film, mentioning how the world has changed since the appearance of Superman.  It is felt that a team is needed to combat any future meta human threat and so a group of villains are 'recruited' to 'Task force X', also know as the Suicide Squad.  When there is an attack by a super power the Squad are called into action but, of corse when you are dealing with a group of villains and misfits things never run to plan.

Like all films that deal with a group of characters some get more screen time than others and the two main players in suicide squad are Deadshot and Harley Quinn.  A lot of the characters seem to be there for one little plot piece each, using there unique skills to help with there mission and some characters are fleshed out more than others, most have some backstory but some, such as Slipknot don't get much screen time which does make it a bit obvious what his part is if you have seen/read any other Suicide Squad first story's.

Deadshot Is well fleshed out and is used as the non official leader of Task Force X and is one of the more emotional parts.  Harley Quinn is there partly for the comic relief and to drive a sub plot which could be continued in a future film other than that  (and acting as a bit of eye candy) her part in Task force X is a bit of a puzzle, If you have scene the animated film 'Arkham Assault', Harley's purpose is made clear but in Suicide Squad  her reason for being in the team  until near the end of the film.  It was nice to see that Harley Quinn was portrayed as being intelligent and not just a crazy, she was a psychiatrist at Arkham  and does user her training a couple of times.

There were times when I was reminded of the original 'Ghostbusters' mainly by the character of the Enchantress who switches for a someone who would be well at home in a Japanese ghost film to Goza the Gozerian from Ghostbusters, the building she is in has a stream of light surrounded by swirling mass which I though was reminiscent of where the ghost storage system is broken.

There have been a few complainants about the Joker, some who do not like the way the character was portrayed and some who think he needed more screen time.  I know that Joker is a fan favorite but this was not a Joker or even a Batman film and Joker was not the villain of the main story.  Also Suicide Squad is a different type of film to the two previous superman films, they both spent a lot of time on the story and world building which has done some of the work for the set up of Suicide Squad which allowed it to be more of an action film, this and the number of characters involved  who needed to be introduced  leaves less time for subplots.  A similar thing happened with the X-Men film days of future past.  In that there were a number of scenes shot involving the character of Rouge but it was later cut as it was not thought to add the film and just added extra plots and this would probably have been the same with the Joker in Suicide Squad, his role in the film had some point in the film, adding to the emotional of the film  and  helping build up to Harley Quinn's actions.

As for the portrayal of the character.  There have been many different versions of the Joker over the comics, TV and Film and in computer games and this version of the character had to fit into the existing universe and distance it's self from the last cinematic version.  If it was to close to the last version then people would be comparing the two for longer and it would make it harder to separate the two sets of films which are not really

connected and this may cause confusion in this and later films.  This Joker had to fit into the new universe and there was a more 'Gangster' feel to some of the characters that were in Suicide Squad. It had also been established that Batman had been dealing with gangs in Batman vs Superman so this version did fit into the film.

As with the other D.C. films Suicide Squad is dark in parts, darker than the X-men films and there were people who thought  that it should have been a higher rating but I think that that would have been unnecessary, it would have just made it to violent and, unlike films like Deadpool that would have been unnecessary and would have made harder to fit into the existing universe.

Suicide Squad is a good film with more action that the previous two in the series, it takes on an emotional journey through the pasts of some of the characters and has a couple of humerus moments.  It has a good soundtrack  and is well worth  a watch.