Suicide Squad Comic Con Trailer - Review and Recap

The comic-con trailer for the upcoming DC Comics movie Suicide Squad has been released.

Directed by David Ayer (Fury, Sabotage, Street Kings), the movie stars Will Smith as Floyd Lawton/Deadshot, Jared Leto as The Joker, Margot Robbie as Dr. Harleen F. Quinzel/Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Waylon Jones/Killer Croc and Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

For the uninitiated: Suicide Squad (a.k.a “Task Force X”) is a group of villains who are (forcefully) recruited by Amanda Waller to complete deadly missions. For obvious reasons, the trailer does not reveal the exact mission for which they have been assembled in this movie.

Check out the trailer:

In the 2014 animated movie, Batman: Assault on Arkham, the squad was ordered to kill The Riddler, who is currently in Arkham Asylum. Making things further interesting was the fact that The Joker (also confined in Arkham Asylum) has a ticking time bomb hidden somewhere that will bring destruction to Gotham city.

Batman's efforts to locate and defuse the bomb brings him into conflict with the Suicide Squad. The movie served as my introduction to the super-villain team. Plus, it helped that the animated movie is hands downs one of the best DC Animated Original (DCAU) Movies ever made.

That movie also happens to be the one and only reason, I was looking forward to the live action adaptation coming out next year. 

Unfortunately, the trailer does not do the movie any favors. Just as the Comic Con trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice informed us about the potential drawbacks in that movie, this movie also indicates an unmistakable lack of imagination and humor. The movie looks pretty generic and dull.

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The costumes for Katana, Killer Croc and even Deadshot look like cosplay that would look more at home at the Comic Con itself rather than in a big budget blockbuster.

Will Smith is all emo as Deadshot. As readers familiar with his character will be aware, he loses his daughter when goes to prison. And this factor is really hit over our heads in the most unimaginative way possible.

Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is nothing like the Harley Quinn, who was introduced in the classic Batman: The Animated Series. Gone is the funny and quirky character and in her place, we have been presented with an extremely sexed-up version. Shame on Warner Bros. and the writers for making such crass and commercially motivated changes to a classic character.

After failing to wow audiences in A Good Day to Die Hard and the most recently released Terminator Genisys, Jai Courtney threatens to bore us again as Captain Boomerang.

Rest of the cast do not get much screen-time and/or mouth dialogues to leave any impression. Mention must be made that Ben Affleck's Batman makes a very brief appearance in the trailer. This is presumably taken the footage that was leaked while filming - Batman is on top of the car in which The Joker and Harley Quinn are making their escape.

The only saving grace looks to be Jared Leto's performance as The Joker. He looks to be genuinely having a blast with the role. Hope, he can inspire the same in his co-actors as well.

I do applaud the courage displayed by Warner Bros. in making a movie that does not have Superman or Batman in the lead roles. Perhaps, the marketing department did not do a great job of winning us over. I hope that is the case and that the actual movie turns out far better than what this trailer represents.

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Image Sources: Atlas Entertainment, DC Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Lin Pictures

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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Comic Con Trailer - Review

Dear Readers,

The Comic-Con trailer for the upcoming DC Comics movie has been released.

Directed by Zack Snyder (Man of Steel, 300), the movie stars Henry Cavill as Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman, Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman.

Supporting cast includes Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth and  Laurence Fishburne as Perry White.

The trailer focuses primarily on why Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne/Batman has a grudge against Henry Cavill's Man of Steel.

In the first movie, Man of Steel, we only got a quick look at one of Bruce Wayne's satellite that was damaged in the climactic fight between Superman and General Zod (Michael Shannon). But it seems, Bruce Wayne was more directly impacted than what the movie suggested.

As seen in the trailer, Bruce Wayne loses a number of his employees, when his office gets trashed in the battle between the two nearly invulnerable Kyrptonians. This convinces Bruce that he needs to step up to the alien, before he inflicts further destruction on the human race.

Alfred tries to convince his master that Superman is not their enemy, but fails to succeed. Hey, we need them to fight to justify the movie's title after all...

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We also get our first look at Gal Gadot as the Wonder Woman, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Tao Okamoto as Mercy Graves and Holly Hunter as a US Senator. 

Lex seems to have convinced Holly Hunter's Senator to initiate legal proceedings against the Man of Steel. I am sure she will change her opinion at the end of the movie.

After romancing Hugh Jackman's Logan as Mariko in The Wolverine (2013), Tao Okamoto has entered the DC Universe as Lex Luthor's assistant/bodyguard, Mercy Graves.

The two new major players who get a lot of screentime are Gal Gadot and Jesse Eisenberg as the Amazon and Lex Luthor respectively.

Gal Gadot's character does not get to mouth any dialogue and is reduced to looking beautiful as Diana Prince and then in full battle mode as Wonder Woman. It is too early to judge her performance right now.

Jesse Eisenberg seems to be miscast as Lex Luthor. His dialogue delivery seems to be modeled on Kevin Spacey's version in Superman Returns. He also seems to be channeling his usual arrogant genius shtick that we have already seen many times (The Social Network, Now You See Me).

At least, his evil plans seem to be different. Instead of the usual land grabbing scheme we have seen in Superman (1978) and slavishly repeated in Superman Returns (2006), Lex seems to be experimenting with General Zod's corpse. My guess is that he is going to create Doomsday, the unstoppable Kryptonian villain who killed Superman.

This would also explain the reason for DC Comics Trinity to band together to stop Doomsday. And of course, other superheroes include Cyborg (played by Ray Fisher), Aquaman (played by Jason Momoa) and The Flash (played by Ezra Miller) can also lend a helping hand.

As interesting as all this sounds, the trailer indicates that the movie suffers from two major problems, that can potentially prevent the movie from being the pop culture behemoth that it intends to be.

The first one is that none of the actors/actresses seem to be in character. The only exception might be Holly Hunter and she is not playing a DC Comics character at all.

Every one from Ben Affleck to Jeremy Irons look and act in a one-note mode. Ben Affleck is all angry and Jeremy is all serious. Henry Cavill is bland as ever and for some unexplained reason, still gets to play the most iconic superhero ever. As I mentioned earlier, Eisenberg seems to be miscast. Even the reliable Diane Lane looks bored as Martha Kent, while giving some motherly advice to Clark.

I guess one possible reason is that Zack Snyder is not an actor's director i.e. one who gets some great performances from his actors. Zack's strengths seem to be in the special effects department, which brings us to the next point: Bad Special Effects.

I had hoped that this sequel would improve on the shockingly bad CGI that was quite obvious in the previous movie. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case here. The special effects look as bad as ever. Perhaps, the finished product will look better when the movie releases in March 25 2016. But history does not inspire confidence...

Irrespective of the box office success, in my humble opinion, the reason this movie will suck big time is because this is a studio product, as opposed to being a passion project for a visionary filmmaker. Richard Donner and Christopher Nolan made amazing movies that will stand the test of time.

This one has been made with the sole purpose of making money. Just for the sake of competing with rival studios, Warner Bros. is doing a big disservice to these classic comic book characters.

Well, looks like the late Christopher Reeve and Christian Bale will continue to be the definitive real life impersonators of Supes and Bats respectively.

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Image Sources: DC Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Syncopy, Warner Bros.

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