295 - Explanations
I saw Suicide Squad this weekend. Twice. And it was fun. Once again, I come on here to talk about how I feel like movie critics just want to complain about things that will get them more hits. Is the movie some bastion of perfect art? Nope. Are there raging plot holes? Sure. But, again, I’m going to point to the fact that the same kinds of things are in critically adored movies. So, it appears to me that it just gets decided somewhere where the “journalists” are going to just collectively pan something for... reasons, I guess. Even looking at the things that they’re complaining about, it being chaotic & hard to understand, are ridiculous. If anything, it was too straightforward. It wasn’t some complicated plot trying to advance cinema. It was a fun action movie that actually was able to advance some of the DCU backstory. If nothing else, the limited appearances of Batman and the Joker started to point to the larger whole of the DCU that I have been waiting for. I, for one, am happy to see that there is a larger story that is getting fleshed out and am still willing to give it time to get there.
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That having been said, this movie did kinda cement something for me that I am really really disappointed in about the DCU as a whole. As a whole, three movies in, it can’t quite seem to decide if it should be gritty and R-rated or go with the superhero trend of being PG-13. Thematically, they seem to really want to be rated R and, honestly, if they went that way I’d be all for it. However, Warner Brothers really wants the money from a PG-13 release. So, they have now pushed out 3 movies that would have been better had they just committed to what they wanted and, in turn, the movies have been lukewarm and only half of what they could have been. Them being PG-13 gives kids, like my son, the hope to want to see Batman or Superman in a movie theater and then they are treated with something that was not really intended for them. I won’t be taking my son to see any of the DCU movies for a LONG time. I’m not going to put him through that. I will, however, probably start taking him to the MCU movies within the next year or two because, while those can some heavier themes, they aren’t trying to shove some dour nihilism down my child’s throat and passing it off as a superhero movie. I’m a grown man and I can parse that out just fine, but it really rankles me that Warner Brothers is trying to play both sides of the fence here. If they would just commit to letting Geoff Johns and Zack Snyder apparently want, the gritty R-rated universe that they are setting up, that’s cool: I’m down. But don’t pretend that it’s not that and keep pushing for PG-13 movies that push what the boundaries of that rating can handle.
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-Tom 8.8.2016
