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It's a good thing Sabotage was actually still a good action movie, because honestly Suicide Squad just ain't shapin' up to be as good as Fury or even End of Watch. It is shaping up to basically be Sabotage 2, however, so that's actually good. They've even made the Joker into the world's most elaborate Scarface fan.
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Jul 22, 2016 21:47
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precision posted:I really loved End of Watch, but I've heard Sabotage is hot garbage served in a ball-sweat sauce, c/d? No, Sabotage is good.
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Jul 24, 2016 15:00
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What does "edgy" mean?
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Aug 2, 2016 22:31
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Of the three Ayers films I've seen, none of them have been edgy, then. Like, Sabotage comes the closest to that definition, and I feel like the most pertinent thing about it is less what it's 'trying to do' and more that what it is is a movie about what if the militarized, self-interested macho-men of Three Kings don't get the 'saving grace' moment. Doesn't the idea that Suicide Squad isn't edgy fit the film's overt thematic advertisement even better? That there's a difference between someone being 'bad' (possibly abrasive, annoying, offensive, having aspects that you don't like) and being 'evil'? Wouldn't 'edginess' undermine the entire conceit that what makes Joker bad is what he does, not, like, his jokes? edit: Like, what makes Joker evil isn't that he says poo poo like "I can't wait 'til you've seen my toys!" It's that what he means by "toys" is that "I aspire to be Batman."
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Aug 2, 2016 23:26
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The best thing to come out of the smear campaign against WB/DC is that it's forced David Ayer to reveal his primary inspiration is Emiliano Zapata, and that like Snyder he considers filmmaking to be a fully political act.
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Aug 3, 2016 14:50
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Crosspost: Like, you'll notice that the frequent point is that "Suicide Squad is trying too hard to be an edgier version of Guardians of the Galaxy," but the basis of this criticism is literally that GotG exists at all, and implicit within it is actually a far more troubling premise where GotG is actually superior because it has no aspirations whatsoever. The film is praised highly for having a foul-mouthed alien raccoon character which it 'effortlessly' renders as indistinct and non-disturbing, for example. Like the editing, this quality is good because it doesn't arouse any particular feeling at all, but is rather reassuring about the consistency of the projected gaze with our own ideological comfort. You see the same thing with the commodity fetishism regarding Deadpool. "Look, two comic book movies about wisecracking mercenaries! Coincidence?!" Meanwhile, David Ayer is sitting somewhere wondering if anybody has actually watched his films, or considered that he doesn't think Marvel movies are good, while he types an obscurantist tweet about a Mexican revolutionary. This is this awkward guy's feeble attempt to tell the socially-mediated world that he doesn't share the oppositional cynicism of Deadpool or the candy-striped morality of GotG, but none of this matters because the point of these lazy criticisms and appraisals is never actually that people earnestly believe that Suicide Squad is more like those films than, say, Sabotage (another underrated action film compromised by studio meddling); it's that they want all movies to share in the inoffensive mediocrity of Deadpool and GotG because it makes their jobs easier. Of course, this premise that 'trying too hard is worse than not trying at all,' that the invisibility of the spectacle is preferable to testing the audience and risking their vitriolic rejection, forces a series of comorbid premises which adopt vague memes: Mediocrity is good, 87% of cape-man movies are "fresh" (conveniently benefiting whichever corporation just manufactures the most of them), the problem with the cinematic minority lies with the absence of "color" and trying too hard to be "edgy," etc. Meanwhile, virtually never in this discourse are particular scenes cited, shots juxtaposed, cuts analyzed, dialog deconstructed, criticism merely persists on the level of vague memetic subscription. It's almost like debating Ed Wood, "Filmmaking isn't about the little details, it's about the big picture!"
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Aug 3, 2016 20:50
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Grendels Dad posted:I cannot believe this thread has failed to ask the most important questions: Yo, this, though.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:43
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DrVenkman posted:But isn't the comparison with GotG going to be inevitable when SS feels so hard like it's trying to ape that particular movie? I mean if 'what it is' is a cynical chasing of a Marvel success, then isn't it right to discuss how it stands compared to that one? People draw parallels between similar material all the time, it's literally a basic function of communication and criticism. Thoughts being unavoidable is not the same thing as thoughts being accurate or truthful. Knowing that Marvel movies literally exist and are economically successful, and therefore that WB/DC know about this, or that test audiences are also aware of this, is not substantive of the formal or thematic similarities between popular works. It's turtles all the way down, mate. Suicide Squad is only "like GotG-meets-Deadpool" because it's an ensemble action movie that combines high-stakes violence with levity/ironic distanciation. This is a shallow appraisal of the film that describes the generic formula governing any number of action movies running the gambit from Ghostbusters to The Expendables to Jurassic World, many of which may or may not be thematically or aesthetically related to Suicide Squad, but the particularity of which we get no closer to understanding because clarification of analysis isn't the point. The point is commodity fetishism: that the 'unavoidable thought' regarding the apparent generic similarities between GotG/Deadpool and SS actually overrides the numerous particular differences and, thus, the necessity of critical investment. Again, the point is not even that GotG/Deadpool are good, but that they possess some 'essence' consistent with other fetishistic aspects of our reality, like RT scores and box-office reports. SS is bad because it's 'trying too hard' to steal this precious essence from movies that 'earned it.'
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Aug 4, 2016 00:04
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An art house movie and a focus-tested movie contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference.
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Aug 4, 2016 05:06
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Cardboard Box A posted:The existence of movies is a highly overrated phenomenon It's a fair cop.
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Aug 4, 2016 05:32
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She's directing Wonder Woman.
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Aug 4, 2016 05:34
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I wasn't judging, I'd never heard of her before this. Like, you're not uniquely responsible for sexism.
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Aug 4, 2016 05:39
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I'd prefer fame, but I'd buy infamy for a dollar.
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Aug 4, 2016 05:43
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Flesh Forge posted:If you do it right, you get paid for infamy. Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194
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Aug 4, 2016 06:04
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Ang Lee? More like hang me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm_GPkOfVKI&t=5s
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Aug 4, 2016 17:48
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Leto's Joker is by far the *sanest* and most logical interpretation of the character I've seen in a long time. He just comes off as a Romero-style gangster updated for modern audiences. The ~iconic~ scene with him laying among the knives reminded me more of Scarface with the mountain of cocaine. Now we just have to wait to see if DC's above making a "Harley and Ivy" movie. Also, it's a great, subtle gag because historically Tony Montana has been an avatar of nativist hysteria about how our liberal immigration/amnesty policies are letting foreign gangsters flood our major cities. Joker, on the other hand, is a "home grown" terrorist who is literally bleached white.
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Aug 5, 2016 14:23
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Doesn't China already have a really strictly controlled domestic market? Their import quota is actually going up in recent and the next couple of years, but there's a really big project now to 're-nationalize' the Chinese film economy spearheaded by China Film Group, which basically boils down to creating more liberal cooperation with Hong Kong and international (especially American) film companies to manufacture spectacles that can compete with U.S. imports, which typically poo poo all over their domestic market. This is where you get stuff like The Great Wall. Like, Pan was allowed in in 2015. China has no problem accepting our lovely movies.
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Aug 5, 2016 16:49
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Dark_Tzitzimine posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkqyIoYAXV8 Even if the movie shits the bed, the music videos have actually been either pretty good-to-next level poo poo, especially "Sucker for Pain," where the video is way better than the song deserves. Hedenius posted:They allow 34 foreign films per year to be shown in Chinese cinemas. I have no idea how they choose which films to allow (although I assume bribes are involved) but I assure you it has nothing to do with quality. Right now I think it's Tarzan and Turtles 2 they're showing. This is the thing about lazy journalism and commodity fetishism, again. It's like Suicide Squad is this magical rock that now ironically gets mainstream American liberals to take the opinions of foreign Communists seriously, even though it not being distributed in China means exactly the same thing as any other tentpole film not getting distributed in China. Meanwhile, you only have to watch actual Chinese blockbusters to see how little quality matters in this equation.
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Aug 5, 2016 17:40
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The real story here is that the American and Chinese media industries and trade press are both engaged in a very polite, mutually beneficial game of moving the money around, hiding the leads, and making it seem like their national economies are a lot more stable than they actually are. This is why The Big Short / The Wolf of Wall Street was ultimately pointless, and, in fact, regressive. Adam McKay and Martin Scorsese aren't going to turn that righteous indignation onto the hand that feeds them.
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Aug 5, 2016 18:57
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Junior Jr. posted:I watched this today in the UK which had a 15 certificate, I'm aware you guys have the PG-13 rating, so does that mean you have a censored version of the film? No. Initially Ayer and WB announced that the film as written was striking for an R-rating, coinciding with the success of Deadpool as well as the already extant press that the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman would be R-rated. As it turns out, the cut of the film submitted to the MPAA received a straight PG-13. Despite rumors to the effect that this was yet another case of a toned-down theatrical cut in anticipation of a harder home video release, this is the film we got.
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Aug 5, 2016 23:49
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Barry Convex posted:Source? I don't think it was ever intended as anything but a PG-13 film. Yeah, I think I was just remembering a previous bit of news wrong, but looks like you're right and they were going for PG-13 right out of the gate. That said, there was a lot of internet-press that just ran with the baseless speculation that an R-rated extended/"original" cut was forthcoming, but Ayer's put that baby to rest. The amount of deleted material apparently comes out to about 10 minutes, a far cry from Beavis's 30.
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Aug 6, 2016 01:09
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VJeff posted:Plot was whatever. I never really felt like there were big stakes (I guess 'cause if there was, Batman and Wondy would be there), but I still had a lot of fun. How did it look, cinematography-wise? I already know it's not as good as Beavis, I'm just askin' if it's at least better than Sabotage.
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Aug 6, 2016 02:35
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Violator posted:I'm really surprised you're still doing this. I don't think has caught on at all and only makes discussion disjointed. I thought you generally liked the movie, but is this some sort of passive aggressive protest? Is Beavis your version of 0bummer? It's not passive-aggressive at all - I legitimately think Beavis is an endearing nickname for the film. The actual act of passive-aggression is treating such a clever joke transliterating the abbreviation BvS to "Beavis" as an accurate commentary on the film's qualities. Batman v Superman is goofy bullshit and proud of it. It's like getting upset at a bully in middle school who says "Spongebob is for fags." There's nothing passive about saying "I know, that's great."
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Aug 6, 2016 03:10
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Slim Killington posted:Not bad, just kind of thoughtless. Functional and nothing else, except that when a particular shot does call for flashiness it's just done with CG. It also has the "too loving dark because we just had to shoot it in 3D" problem. Actually, it was just post-converted to 3D, and was shot on Kodak film. So far WB's been pretty ace about shooting on film. Wonder Woman looks gorgeous. The rest is duly noted.
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Aug 6, 2016 03:18
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Junior Jr. posted:Zack Snyder wanted to make BvS look cool and edgy as gently caress but it ended up being really boring and just unpleasing to watch, maybe the Ultimate Edition clears up a couple of loose ends but not by a long shot. Nah, Batman v Superman was really good. I definitely enjoyed the Ultimate Edition more, but it has its own problem of explaining away all the poo poo that actually made the theatrical cut disturbingly interesting. Thankfully, it changes that out for some equally awesome stuff: 
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Aug 6, 2016 03:33
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The consistent framework of the soundtrack is that the characters of the film have terrible taste in music, and it's kind of endearing. Like, they couldn't even be assed to illegally download the live version (which has the foresight to use Mercury's back-up vocals): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT1t4jVmv7E
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Aug 6, 2016 03:55
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Why would anyone pay to see a movie and then ruin their viewing experience with a 3D screening The 3D projection when I went to see Beavis was actually surprisingly tight, wasn't at all overused or gimmicky, I even tended to forget about it most of the time because instead of poo poo popping out at you it seems like they concentrated on drawing you into the depth of the image. Shots like these ones in particular looked phenomenal in 3D:   
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Aug 6, 2016 05:12
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Steve2911 posted:How does putting a mentally ill liability on the team help achieve that goal? It's like a high school drama where a theater/cheer mom does everything in her power to make her overworked daughter look good. Enchantress is her daughter.
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Aug 6, 2016 16:45
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My favorite aspect of Suicide Squad was its devotion to being as absolutely deadpan and anti-climactic as possible. Like last year's Green Room, what we have here is an action movie which is almost pretentiously devoted to undermining any attempt to extract enjoyment from the violence, per se. Now, we inevitably ask, "If the violence is un-engaging, then what else could there possibly be?" My answer is, the ensemble, obviously. But then you logically respond, "But the ensemble is a bunch of offensive, two-dimensional stereotypes that barely even do anything." And it's like, yes, exactly, but the film wants you to have compassion for horrific stereotypes. Suicide Squad is basically very elaborately over-funded anti-action cinema. It gives you all the superficial content (and diverse cast) of the Fast & Furious franchise, but takes away the most essential component of this genre, which is the satisfaction of seeing these now more 'diverse' phallic forces punching bad guys into a pulp. In Suicide Squad, it's explicit that the villains are just "regular people" turned into an undead army by a military weapon gone wrong. A government official literally mows down a bunch of faceless interns, and patriot Rick Flagg just shrugs like, "Eh, whaddayagonnado." This is what makes all the ballyhoo about Harley Quinn's relationship with the Joker particularly funny. Suicide Squad is exactly this sort of maximally cynical scenario strung together by mediocre cinematography, over and over again; and amidst all this emphatically anti-American sentiment, people are worried that a Randian psychopath fetishizes another Randian psychopath. People are constantly trying to interpret these films as stories of "issues," like the Marvel and X-Men movies, where 'character flaws' are in this state of constantly being overcome, so that we can feel like an epic saga built around 'character' is progressing even when literally nothing happens. Suicide Squad is merely honest - Nothing happens. Not only does nothing happen, but it doesn't even look good when it does. Overall, personally, I didn't much care for it, but I do see it as a basically superior version of The Purge: Anarchy. I think structurally, SMG is right that there's a lot of unnecessary repetition of information, though I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of films dealing in rather similar films, even recently, that are also much more visually compelling. RoboCop 2014, for instance.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:36
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Timeless Appeal posted:I'm a bit bummed that with all the flashbacks, there wasn't something for Amanda. I've said this before, but the thing that grounds her was that she was a normal woman who lost a lot of her family to crime. She pushes herself to college and into politics to try to change things. She is literally the anti-Batman. A person in the US with very, very little privilege (A Black lower middle class woman from Detroit) who doesn't ascend the system, but uses the system to stop crime. On the other hand, we get a version of Nick Fury who guns down innocent people while sending a bunch of un-trained super-slaves to kill even more innocent people-turned-zombies by her overworked daughter. On the face of it, the movie is about "bad guys with a heart," but more than that it's about how these cookie-cutter villains are literally just conscripted to censor the "necessary evil" perpetrated in the name of stagnant hegemony.
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Aug 10, 2016 13:30
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Suicide Squad opens with a joke about Nutraloaf and ends with Gozer The Gozerian destroying the NSA. It kinda owns. Yeah, I find it incredibly interesting that both this and the official reboot of Ghostbusters came out in the same year. edit: It's also a lot like "Planet Terror." K. Waste fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 18:30
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The Joker scenes (which are more often actually Harley scenes) are there to represent this netherworld of paralyzed, Dionysian anarchy that exists just beyond the margins of Batman v Superman. It's very much like the climax of Lego Movie, where the number one threat to the 'structured play' of father-and-son bonding is an infantile, feminine imagination; or the Abstract Thought sequence in Inside Out, where the development of 'complex emotions' is hindered by the characters taking a literal narrative 'short cut.' Task Force X represents an attempt to impose 'structured playtime' over the collective imaginary, to limit the potential for chaos. The reverse of this is that when you represent this netherworld, it's associated with libidinal disappointment and threats to gender/sexual norms. Both Joker and Harley 'cocktease' male victims, pursing their deep red lips and making impossible demands.
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Aug 10, 2016 19:19
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MCU is definitely Carl's Jr. while Suicide Squad is the Secretary of State in Idiocracy who ends every line with "Brought to you by Carl's Jr."
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Aug 11, 2016 02:59
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What kind of sandwich is Common?
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Aug 11, 2016 03:20
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:What's remarkable from It's so bizarre, it's like WB/DC has spontaneously metamorphosed into a Warhol-style factory for cape-man movies. Suicide Squad looks like one of the worst, most mind-boggling films ever when lazily compared to Guardians of the Galaxy, but if you double feature it with Blood for Dracula/Flesh for Frankenstein, it makes perfect sense.
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Aug 11, 2016 05:04
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Contextually, this film about minorities being drafted to fight a proxy war - aside from being a thinly-veiled reference to the use of "Long Tall Sally" in Predator - makes liberal use of a lot of Vietnam era, often spiritually-laced pop standards: "The House of the Rising Sun," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Slippin' into Darkness," "Fortunate Son."
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Aug 12, 2016 14:56
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I don't know how anyone can watch David Ayer's films and come away from them as conservative. Especially Fury, which is basically just as overtly anti-WWII nostalgia as Inglourious Basterds except without a shred of ironic distance.
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Aug 14, 2016 22:27
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You know what would be a good double-feature with this? The '97 Spawn.
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Aug 15, 2016 05:12
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The quantity of affirmation of the skwad being "bad," in the film's terms, is not as important as the context. Think of how cavalier the film is to the accusation that Killer Croc likes eating people, or that Rick Flagg doesn't care if a bunch of secret service newbies are mass-executed, or Deadshot acknowledges that he's probably got some kind of narcissistic or anti-social personality disorder. These are not the markers of a film that's just saying "bad" over and over again until reverse psychology kicks in. The characters are explicitly the worst of the worst for very casually photographed evils they perpetrate constantly. The point of the film is that the skwad represents the entire status quo enigma of "necessary evil." It's essentially a good version of The Purge films.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:53
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This "redemption" is signified literally by a revolver changing over from "hate" to "love." This is not "redemption" imagery, but disillusionment imagery. These obsessive emotions of "love" and "hatred" are conscripted to mask the ceaseless revolution of political machinery. Indeed, redemption is always seductively out of reach, because its full implications - the call to be good, and not merely 'not evil' - are too much to bare. When Harley embraces Joker in the form of a SWAT guy, this is tonally and thematically more like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. "I was cured, alright." This isn't an issue of the film beating the spectator over the head. It's an issue of postmodern dialectics throughout pop culture. You say, "It's like the film is gay and desperately wants us to think it's straight." But it's actually more like the film is radically rejecting your binary, apolitical conception of sexuality. Effectively, David Ayer is comparing Deadshot both to Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing and Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter. It's actually rather nuanced characterization. K. Waste fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 04:09
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