Suicide Squad (DC)*

That's not true. The director having the final cut flourished in the 1970's as director's were given more control and contributed to a great flowering of terrific films. even novice directors--if they had a terrific script and idea back in the 70's--could get away with it. It died when films like "Heaven's Gate" tanked at the box office. The big name director's often still have final cut with provisions--for example, on some of Ridley Scott's he has final cut of his films provided they run under a certain length. He retains control and this also has allowed him to, later, do director's cuts of films that are much longer (and often better) on home video.

It's not so much about the movie today as it is the cross pollination of other industries/products that can generate interest and money. While that might not reflect in the box office profit, it can make the difference between making a one shot movie and sequels when the films didn't necessarily do well in theaters.

 

I think that "Justice League" may be the film DC fans have been waiting for as it promises to lighten up a little bit taking the lead from "The Avengers" films. One can hope. I think that the themes examined in "Batman v. Superman" are interesting and would have made for a great film, it's just that the film had too many cooks spoiling the broth (i.e., suits and other creative folks telling the writer and director what they wanted).

I also think that Snyder was the wrong choice to helm the franchise films. They combined Snyder's approach to that of Chris Nolan's in a disaster of a mutant marriage in terms of style and content.

Indeed, what's frustrating is that Goyer and Snyder took bits and pieces from some great DC arcs and glued them together into something of a Frankenstein monster of a movie. It may move, it can talk, eat, kill, etc. but man it can be ugly particularly if you can see the stitch work.

 

One of the reasons that Marvel is doing so well is that Disney largely leaves Marvel to work on their own much like Pixar. Disney was no great shakes at producing adult movies. It's too corporate.

 

I blame Nolan for starting this direction in the first place. It barely worked for him and Batman but it definitely doesn't work for other DC characters.

 

Maybe, maybe not.

These are adult films?

 

I think that Batman is unique suited to the darker interpretation for a variety of reasons including the fact that his life is driven by tragedy. Superman? Not so much at least in the beginning.

There are Marvel character movies that lend itself to this darker approach and some--like "Ant-Man"--that don't. It's all about tone and if you can sell it to the audience. Reading a comic is one thing but translating it to the screen is quite another.

 

Well....let's say they aren't little kid films. Some of the Marvel stuff is pretty darn dark so we could go with teens to adults more so but Disney has shown that they can blow it with any film genre.

Marvel has found a formula that works and sometimes defying that formula works. I think that they, as a studio, are more in touch with the essence of the characters.

For example "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" managed to capture the vibe of 70's political thrillers like "3 Days of the Condor", "Parallax View" or even "The Manchurian Candidate" (60's) and integrated that into a comic book movie that holds up amazingly well.

 

Batman was certainly suited to it best but the grim dark ultra realistic tone got tiring very fast. I never cared for the Frank Miller Batdick persona. By the time the trilogy came to a close I needed to watch Batman Forever to rince it off.

 

I don't find it objectionable provided the craftsmanship was great. The third film in Nolan's trilogy is the weakest IMHO and the only element that truly worked for me in BvS was "Batman". While the Batman character can handle both light and dark elements well, the character lends itself to a dark, tragic story more readily.

Also if there is consistency. Burton's Batman films worked because he created a universe for the character that was both dark and filled with absurdity, humor and he was CONSISTENT about it. The first sequel "Batman Forever" stayed fairly close to those roots and, largely, worked but "Batman and Robin" was just a disaster and a bad, bad films. Clooney looked the part but the writing, direction and performances were awful.

One of the few areas where Marvel imitated Nolan and DC where it worked--"Daredevil" which shares some of the same tone.

 

True but the ideal Batman has a balance of both. You'll find that balance in the comics and in Batman: The Animated Series.

Even though the craftsmanship was there and there and still think they're pretty good films, I still found those aspects and others about the film objectionable. Much of the time it didn't even feel like I was in the Batman universe. The city didn't even feel like Gotham City. He didn't aesthetically create a Batman universe. That was by design but I think that hurt the films. I think those things may actually date the films and hurt them in the long run.

 

Unfortunately, what works in comics and--sometimes--in animated movies and series doesn't translate well to live action movies. I think that Nolan did create a Batman universe but it was reflective much more of our universe than like, say, "Gotham".

I'm not sure how it would work or even if someone like Nolan would want to do that as he does insist on creating his own universe for his films. He's one of the few directors aside from Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick and others that can do it well and convincingly IMHO. It may not always work but it is HIS universe and is consistent with his vision.

I also think that the difference is that the animated stuff is, largely, has better fidelity to the source. Love him or hate him, Snyder creates his own universe (some of which borrows from some of Nolan's ideas and other bits have been part of Snyder's approach from the beginning with superhero films).

He's also been able to tackle difficult to translate comic sources such as "Watchmen"--love it or hate it, it captures many of the elements of the comic very well.

 

And the weekend news is not good:

And then there are victories that feel more like defeats. “Suicide Squad” topped domestic charts with $43.8 million, bringing its stateside total to a hefty $222.9 million. However, that represented a punishing 67% slide in the superhero movie’s second week business, nearly equaling “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s” 69% sophomore plunge. It’s a signal that the deplorable reviews are catching up with the film and is unwelcome news for Warner Bros., which is trying to launch an inter-connected series of cinematic adventures based on DC Comics characters, but is still struggling to make movies that people like, as well as attend.

Box Office: ‘Sausage Party’ Scores With $33.6 Million, ‘Suicide Squad’ Plunges in Second Weekend »

 

This should read the second sequel "Batman Foever".

 

Finally saw it. The pacing in the beginning is turgid and the development giving us the back stories seemed like it was cut quite a bit for time. The background of the characters could have been done as brief flashbacks throughout the film. The opening had too much exposition that could have easily been spread out to improve the structure of the film. The witch was a fairly lame as a villain.

I don't consider it awful. A C maybe for film. Too little character development as well. Who are these guys and why should we care? Beyond Smith's character and the Harley Quinn character we don't have much. Leto's Joker was wasted.

 

A 7/10 rating which is good by my standards. iMAX 3D theatre viewing. I was going to watch it in a smaller cheaper 2D theatre.

Better than I thought ( I'll give it that).
No compitition with MARVEL though.
The plus's.
Soundtrack
Will Smith
Tbe Witch (voodoo guise)
Some great CGI
Negatives
The joker, looked a glam riot,but was hardly in it.
Fight scenes a bit dark ( as in visually).
3D was ok, money shot end credits.


That aside..better script.
Scott Eastwood looked like his dad in Fistful Of Dollars.

A extended blu ray cut purchase, my part.

 

It was weird that the best 3D of the movie was the credits.

 

Some scenes were in 2D, CGI appears so does the 3D. The script had some fun lines just not enough. Nightime films I prefer Frank Miller ( or the 300 team).

 

My comments about SS's rating was 100% objective. I didn't find in objectionable or anything along those lines. "Deadpool" is obviously an R. "Suicide Squad" much, much less so. But they presumably don't rate a given movie against another "R" and, if it comes in less objectionable, gets a PG-13. They rate each movie against whatever (arbitrary) guidelines they've set.

I just don't think I've heard as much light "swearing" in a PG-13 movie before as I did in "Suicide Squad." While the excellent documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" tells us that there are no hard and fast rules, I always assumed a PG-13 could get away with a few "s**ts" and not much else in terms of language. I think they are more stringent on the "F" word; I think occasionally someone gets away with one "F" word and maintains a PG-13.

 

And exactly what I said was going to happen is happening; despite it being PAINFULLY obvious that this was *exactly* how "Suicide Squad" was going to do, it's reported as a shocking and "punishing" slide.

"Captain America: Civil War" dropped nearly 60% (59.5%) in its second week.

"Furious 7" dropped an identical 59.5% in its second week last year. By all reports a "hit", and it even did relatively similar numbers to "Suicide Squad" in its first week ($147 million versus $133 million).

Even "Deadpool" dropped 57.4%.

Even HUGE HITS with legs like "Finding Dory" and "Secret Life of Pets" and even "Jurassic World" drop around 50% in their second week.

Frankly, if Warner Bros. knows that a film with AWFUL Rotten Tomatoes scores and alleged horrible "word of mouth" will only drop off 7% more in the second week than "Captain America: Civil War", they're probably pretty happy.

Here's what I wrote at the end of last week:

The movie is almost surely going to hold on to #1 in its second week for lack of any huge competition, but I'm already sure it will have a pretty big drop in week #2, and what's going to be annoying is reading the same freaking headlines that note the drop off and ignore that all big tent pole pictures have their largest week in week #1.

Just like the "evidence" of the Friday-Saturday drop-off ignored the TONS of similar movies in recent years that have had that same drop-off, articles at the end of this coming weekend will try to paint a troubled story about a huge drop. As I said in an earlier post, all huge tent pole pictures are front-loaded in terms of box office, and they're *especially* front-loaded when there are a lot of non-kids and a lot of hardcore fans going to the earliest showings. Word-of-mouth certainly isn't helping and won't help either on this one, but I think that factor can be overstated a bit sometimes.

I would guess "Suicide Squad" will bring in something like $40-$50 million in week #2, which would be in line with other vaguely similar films, and which will also be easily painted by the press as a "disaster."

 

True but you have to consider the cost of "Suicide Squad" including marketing and the post production tweaking the film underwent.

That 7-8% difference in a drop can be the difference between profit and loss for many of these projects. I suspect that Warner was also hoping that this was the film that would reverse the trend with the Snyder movies of critical drubbing and underwhelming box office compared to expectations. I don't think "Suicide Squad" will be the disaster the press is making it out to be but it didn't quite perform up to expectations when it came to having legs just as "Star Trek: Beyond" also didn't have the legs that was hoped. At some point spending these huge sums of money will have to stop because, frankly, we reach a point where they damage the studio (I.e., the Warner layoffs) and the ability to expand a franchise.

 

A drop of 60% or less is encouraging that there's good word of mouth and likely having legs, a drop of 64% or higher is indicative that word of mouth likely won't carry the movie to the heights that were expected. These films need appeal beyond their core crowd to be successful in the long run and with all the ancillary potential income revenues attached (VOD, streaming, cable deals, etc.), and big drop offs for a franchise like this shows a limitation to a core crowd and a general audience that may not return for sequels.

 

Warners's books may indicate that the difference between a 67% drop and 60% drop is the difference between profitability and loss (I would tend to doubt it's that dire, but I don't have access to their books). In which case, the industry again needs to use a different model or risk going under at some point. A 7% drop-off difference in week two for "Suicide Squad" means $9.31 million. Not an insignificant number. But if that's a make-or-break difference for Warner on this film, then they're already screwed.

But many articles aren't delving into how that 7% could make the difference. They aren't looking at the advertising budget (which *all* films have). They're simply basically saying "Holy s**t! Can you believe this film fell off 67%?" as if it's a unique thing, and just hoping nobody pays attention to the fact that ALL tentpole films are WAY MORE front-loaded than they used to be. And that's also not even getting how it was hugely obvious that this film would have a drop-off around the level of something like "Batman v Superman."

I'll bet people who don't follow these numbers at all, when confronted with the 67% "Suicide Squad" statistic and then asked to guess how much, say, "Captain America: Civil War" dropped off in its second week, would not answer *anywhere near* 60%.

 

I just don't buy that the difference between 60 and 64 is *quite* that important (I understand how all their metrics and trend lines could dictate why it's important, to be clear).

And it's of nearly no importance to the "headline" being created as a result of this drop.

I think this film will be huge in VOD and home video, and $222 million after two weeks tells me that some level of "the masses" are seeing this beyond the film's "core" audience. I'm not even sure what "core" audience is supposed to mean. Is that all the people that show up in the first week? Just a certain age or other demographic?

Admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests a good amount of people seeing this film know *very little* about the story or characters beyond what is sold at "Hot Topic." Tons of people who saw this film have never read the comics, don't even know Harley was introduced in the "Animated Series", etc.

 

It's a grey area that can go either way which is why I left it out. But generally 60% and lower is celebrated and 64% and higher makes people question some things.

As for "core" audience, for Suicide Squad this would be comic book fans who will see a movie on opening weekend regardless. This opening was pushed by comic fans and general audience who were sold on the trailers, and that general audience might not come back next time. They're being burned too many times by DC. If Suicide Squad were to continue and doing the same thing it's currently doing I'm positive that the box office numbers would look like the rebooted Star Trek franchise where each outing shows less promise, which is what is worrying WB about the DC franchise on the whole. They needed Suicide Squad to really connect with the audience b/c their chances of doing so are dwindling. If audiences feel the same way about Wonder Woman, the Justic League movie will likely be their last chance and the nail in the coffin if doesn't hit a billion. There won't be enough return considering the money they've put into it. All eyes then on the Affleck Batman. If successful I think they'd rather just keep making Batman movies with charcter cameos rather than Justice League movies and giving charcters like the Flash their own films.

 

Regardless of how this movie does, I hope WB looks at what worked and what didn't and realize that if they make a Suicide Squad sequel that from Day One has the tone of the trailers in mind, there's no reason they shouldn't have a decent chance to hit it out of the park.