John Ostrander reviews Suicide Squad

comicmix.com/2016/08/07/john-ostrander-reviews-the-suicide-squad/

>If every superhero film is not The Dark Knight, they’ll bitch. I think that’s going on here to a certain degree. Just as I came prepared to love the movie, they came prepared to hate it.

>My late wife, Kim Yale, was a movie critic for a while for a small suburban newspaper in the Chicago area and I went with her to some of the movie screenings. Don’t tell me that some of the critics didn’t come with pre-conceived attitudes to some films. I know better. I saw and heard it.

wew

Critics btfo

...

Except critics usually like Marvel tentpoles.

>Makes a critic about the pre-conceived attitudes some of the critics had according to him
>"I came prepared to love the movie"

Also was there a reason he had to mention the job of his wife ?

You could actually read the entire article instead of the 2 lines I posted.

>DCfag friend super excited to see Suicide Squad
>came out completely hating it
Goddamn critics!

"If every superhero film is not The Dark Knight, they’ll bitch. I think that’s going on here to a certain degree."

That doesn't makes sense, considering the little to no mentions of The Dark Knight on the critics towards SS

Learn to context. Ostrander's saying that unless a capeshit blockbuster ends up being a perfect zeitgeist landmark film like the Dark Knight was, critics are more inclined to pan it based on it for failing to be more than what it is, a passable blockbuster movie. It's like a critic watching Predator and shitting on it because it didn't end up having as much character driven story and substance as First Blood did.

Huh, that's not my experience at all. I really, REALLY wanted to enjoy this movie. The trailer looked so great, and I expected to like the movie even more. Instead, it just barely above Batman V Superman. For some reason DC movies have terrible problems with pacing and having intrusive music. They also struggle to properly motivate characters.

>Chief for me were the performances, starting with Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. All the other characters in the Squad, both the comic and the movie, were created by others. In the comic especially I would re-define and expand on them but they were established characters. Amanda Waller was my creation and Viola Davis embodied her to perfection. I was happy when she was cast, I was delighted when I saw her in the trailers, and I was ecstatic when I saw her in the film. Davis has Amanda’s voice, her look, and her attitude. I was delighted at the after-party when I got a chance to see her face-to-face and tell her how much I enjoyed her performance.

I'm super happy for Ostrander and glad he liked the movie.

I thought it was a fucking mess but to each his own

At this point Marvel is the exception to the rule. Blockbusters these days almost always get panned, but for some reason Marvel gets universal praise.

Well considering the hype built by WB/DC for that movie and the flop that was BvS, there were high expectations with SS to be a giant step of the cinematic universe of DC

That's because they've become entirely cookie cutter formula made and thus become the standard for what is considered 'good'

That might be true if we forget how people hated Thor 2, Iron Man 2/3 or even Captain America.

Who gives a shit about your friend though? I'm not a DC fag and i enjoyed it? WHAT DOES IT MEEEEEEEANNNN!!!?

None of those were critically panned, they still got "eh, it's alright" reaction. Especially Thor 2 which is objectively a complete piece of shit.

>hated

At worst they got middling reviews. Thor 2 deserved something below 30%. That movie was fucking dogshit.

A lot of people enjoyed the character performances. The characters carried the movie, a the story itself is nothing to write home about. Opposite of say Ayer's other work Sabotage where there where the characters were so unlikable when they started getting offed you didn't give a shit.

I keep hearing this and yet WB hero flicks are all playing off the same formula

Ayer said Sabatoge was work for hire, he didn't even write the script. Ayer basically just came in and shot a movie for Skip Woods and left.

What formula? Hate them or love them, but BvS and Suicide Squad were wildly different from the other comic book movies that have come out in recent memory and wildly different from each other. Suicide Squad reminded me of a cheesy 80s action movie like Escape from New York

>yet WB hero flicks are all playing off the same formula

MoS and BvS might seem similar, but guess what, they're made by the same fucking director. SS and Snyder's films on the other hand aren't that alike. Meanwhile Marvel's movies almost entirely fall under the same formula.

Suicide Squad definitely gave us a glimpse of the potential of the DC cinematic universe, but it was just a mess. An entertaining mess, but a mess.

Viola Davis nailed it as Amanda Waller though.

I think this will be the last DC cinematic movie I watch in theaters.

Yea for me the worst part of the movie was the inconsistency. The cast did well for the most part, the overall plot was fine, effects were good, but somehow it ended up being not a good movie at all.

Critics like the marvel brand.

Thank DUBYA BEE and their fucking cuts after getting spooked at the BVS reviews. I think this had the chance to be a pretty good movie, ingredients were there. I really hope there is a directors cut blu ray that puts what they cut back in.

Sabotage was also butchered in the editing room, the film basically had an entirely different third act in the first cut and it was shredded in favor of the horseshit we got.

Now believe me, even if it kept the original ending it still would have been a terrible, terrible movie. But it would have been a slightly more interesting terrible movie.

What was the original plan and ending?

I've been avoiding the threads until I saw the movie today.

There were a few good ones, but no one was really laughing at a lot of jokes at my showing.

Basically as the movie goes on Olivia Williams' cop character was supposed to become the main character. There's a bunch more of her in the deleted scenes investigating the team and having her own story-lines, the film was going to start from Arnold's perspective and end from hers. The third act is also entirely different after Arnold kills the traitors on his team, he doesn't use the money find his family's murderers, he just plans on taking it and running. Hilariously in both of the alternate endings he has entirely different motivations for why he took the money, just showing the quality writing and thought that went into this screenplay.

So instead of getting that Unforgiven ripoff shootout in the bar as the finale, it's a scene of Arnold running back to his house to grab the money and Olivia Williams being there. They have have a hilariously bad fistfight and she kills him.

Also when Olivia Williams goes back to Arnold's she scuba dives there like James Bond for literally no reason other then to have her be in a skin-tight wetsuit for the ending.

This is why her character literally disappears in the ending of the movie for no reason and we have an entirely out-of-place old west shootout in a bar that has nothing to do with anything for the finale. I guess the producers thought actually having Arnold be the bad guy would hurt sales, so they shredded the third act and cut most of Williams' screentime as some half-measure.

>people just can't like superhero movies that aren't like The Dark Knight!
>what about marvel movies
>those don't count!!!

Oh wow. That does sound awful, but at least it's interesting sort of awful. I don't know, I largely hated Sabotage because it was advertised as Arnold and his team fighting off against the cartel coming after them with some suspense to who the traitor was but then it turned out to be this slow quasi survival horror/thriller that wasn't interesting at all and the ending was complete horse shit. It would have been much better if it had just been them fighting the cartel in a cat and mouse action scenes and some in fighting within the team as they turn more paranoid over who's the guilty guy, ruining the team cohesion and getting everybody killed.

>strawman

>strawman when there is an explicit example right in this thread

Well it's what happesn when you get Skip "Just Swordfish My Shit Up" Woods writing your movie.

That man is a cancer.

Dude, if you dislike those movies you're a contrarian fuck. The critics talk about hating more and more tentpole comic book movies, but disregarding BvS which is just a choppy and sloppy and technically bad movie movie, they never actually reflect their opinions on those other comic book movies.

>looks up his filmography

Good lord, it's a cornucopia of shit! I kinda liked the A-Team though

I think the main complaint is that for a bad MCU movie, the worst complaint for the general audience (non-comic readers) is that the movie is just boring. Iron Man 2 is boring. Thor 2 is largely boring.

For BvS and SS, it's not that they are cookie cutter and boring. It's that they actually fail at crafting even a competently boring movie. Editing is bad, story structure is jumbled, characters are unused or poorly utilized.

If you try to aim for middling entertainment and succed, it gets treated as a success. If you try to go for something grand to launch off a movie franchise after a competing franchise has already established it and failed, it will be treated as a failure; not a semi-success just because it attempted to be something more.

Fun Fact: he mentioned in an interview that he had almost nothing to do with The A-Team beyond the very basic first draft.

I guess he didn't want to accidentally be associated with a good movie.

>attempting to be something more

And Nick Spencer thinks it's gross

He also went full retard hard

Literally who?

>Demeaning Harley
>Literally the same personality as BTAS
>New 52 demeaned Haley more than this movie ever could hope to
>who the fuck is this guy again?

I think I saw a review that called Suicide Squad "the Trump of comic book movies" or something like that.

>Joker-Quinn as MRA wish-fulfillment

...what? Because they did something different and actually made Joker and Harley dig each other, instead of Joker being entirely abusive? That counts as MRA?

They are still asspained over Ghostbusters bombing after they pushed it is all. I am the most anti Trump, Sup Forums hating mother fucker here and i think these sjw fags are cancer. Also this is one of the reasons that i don't listen to these two bit shitty internet critics

I don't understand? What the fuck does suicide squad have to do with Social Justice shit? I mean, it was kind of funny to me when Harley called her teammates pussies cause I knew that would trigger feminist sensibilities, but otherwise it was kind of average.

Being surprised that Harley Quinn is a demeaning character to women is like being surprised that a blackface character is racist.

How is any character "demaning to women" Harley or other wise? She is one fucking character with her own personality. The fuck does that have to do with women in general? Are you saying women are a hivemind like the borg? One acts a certain way they all do?

Is there no such thing as an "individual" when it comes to women and minorities? Fuck

He sounds like a bitch.

The reviews for Suicide Squad are the definition of hyperbole.

What makes you say that?

>Being surprised that Harley Quinn is a demeaning character to women

Oh yeah, I forgot other women being viewed sexy is inherently bad to women.

That's one of the reasons why i am glad it's doing well right now and i honestly hope it continues to. Also this is even funnier considering WB cut a lot of shit to not trigger the sjw, and they were triggered any fucking way so what was the point?

>Harley Quinn is a demeaning character to women
This notion is absurd because Harley Quinn does not represent all women. That's like saying one KKK member represents all white people, or Tupac represented all black people.

Harley was always an unstable psychopath. NEVER a role model. Somehow SJWs haven't realized this yet.

Yes! How dare you romanticize abusive relationships you bernie bro shit-lord.

>be liberal
>DC dicks you over for comic
>THEY WERE KKK ALL ALONG!

>this idiot thinks BvS flopped

it made at least 300 million profit you flaming pile of walking garbage

Does he mean the fact that Amanda came across as tough, but completely incompetent at her actual job?

"Suicide Squad amounts to an all-out attack on the whole idea of entertainment."
"Everything is flat & grim, there's hardly no color in this depressing world at all. "
"Call DC Comics the Donald Trump of blockbusters."
"If I have not yet convinced you of the movie's astonishingly slipshod quality, I'm unlikely ever to do so."
"A vapid, soulless, tedious and painfully boring blockbuster. A contender for one of the worst films of the year. I'm surprised it wasn't directed by Alan Smithee."


It's like each critic was trying to one up the last.

>this is the guy currently ruining Steve Rogers

It all makes sense now. Can't have a white Aryan male be a good guy.

>worse than fant4stic four and green lantern

Ah yes, the Sup Forums tactic, take the 6-7 full-retard reviews and ignore the 100+ others to support your point.

Wow, why so touchy?

Cause you're spreading disinfo like a shill.

Christ, I didn't like the movie, but even I think those are a bit too extreme. At least it was better than Batman V Superman :)

Except now it's not actually that abusive, so what's the problem, Nick?

There's tons more. I'm not about to flood the thread, it was just to give you a general idea.

You want to read a good negative review? Richard Roeper. You know, one of the few legitimate film critics left.

I'm not that user.

>Like a shill.

Seems a bit paranoid. Are you honestly implying anyone here is being paid to shit on DC movies and get facts wrong, rather than attributing it to ignorance?

DC CAN DO NO WRONG REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

But if those marketing estimates are to be believed man did they screw the pooch

I think the film would've worked a lot better if the order was different and didn't focus so much on the first act like it did, also it would've been nice if the joker's appearance was hinted instead of flat out mentioned every 10 minutes

the antagonists needed way more mystery, having all the answers from the start was a terrible idea

will smith was a solid 10/10 though

The guy who made Captain America into a Hydra agent.

Shit isn't a formula user

How long until we get Rick Flag x Enchantress comics?

I liked this part

>Let’s look at Will Smith as Deadshot. Some folks have objected that he’s not my Deadshot. No, he isn’t and that’s just fine by me.

>My Deadshot was not the character as he had been created or portrayed prior to my appropriating him for the Squad. Gail Simone’s version was not exactly my version either. You don’t expect two actors who play the same character in different versions to be identical so why expect those versions in different stories to be identical?

> Smith did a great job – intense, cynical, with a weak spot for his daughter (although I thought their last scene together had a disturbing element). Smith is a fine actor and one of the world’s biggest stars; he sure as hell wasn’t slumming here and he made Deadshot his own – which is exactly what he was supposed to do.

The Snyderverse is all about trying to be darker and edgier, they tried to mix it up by injecting out of place music and shit.
The RNC was all about how America is on the verge of the apocalypse, they didn't try to go off message.
Trump is everything the Republicans very openly stated they hated, but their rabid fanbase did nothing but suck his dick to the convention. Snyder hates everything about the main DC characters, but some bizarre fanbase can't stop eating up every one of his turds.

>by injecting out of place music and shit.

I don't really understand the objection to the music. It worked in the movie and gave the the flick character.

Expect them right now, senpai. Seeing who's on Skwad and all.

>I'm not that user
Point still stands nigga is still straight up lying.
>like a shill
Emphasis on like, I'm not saying he is a shill but just that he's exhibiting shill like behavior.

Hey, he also gave us Superior Foes

His sole decent book. He's batting like 1 of 50

Why do people insist on giving him a pass on on fucking book?

Morning Glories? Shit
Ant-Man? Shit
Captain America? Shit.
Supergirl pitch? Shit.

Hell with the way he's dickriding the SJW train I'm surprised that they haven't pulled out the #Problematic shit that was in Morning Glories.

I think the critics went full retard with this one, it is a solid 6.5 nothing special but it also wasn't the worst piece of shit I could ever have seen
It was good seeing Will Smith have fun on the big screen after the disaster that was After Earth
Also I thought Diablo was the best character in the movie

i wonder who much Ostrander's view of the Joker/Quinn OTP in the movie triggers Spencer :

>Like Pygmalion, he [Joker] creates a woman that he can love; in this case, it’s Harley Quinn. If we accept his love for her (and her love for him) as genuine, does that make him less of a sociopath? Ledger’s Joker loved no one except, perhaps, Batman. He’s no less strange or deadly but his entire plotline revolves around being re-united with Harley.

Avengers: Standoff is best crossover Marvel had in last 15 years.

Because it's the only book of his I bothered ro read and it was a really fucking good one. No one is 'giving him a pass' I'm just saying that he ALSO gave us Superior Foes, hell even shit star writers Bendis and Slott gave us New Ways to Die and Ultimate Spider-Man.

Dini said he liked the movie version of their relationship more than his version on BTAS - he said he actually teared up during the movie. Everyone's getting triggered. I love it.

Regular Sup Forums bunch that goes JOKER LOVES HARLEY IN WAY YOU LOVE YOUR FAVORITE SHOES and whatnot.

What an accomplishment.

That's not saying much.

I just can't take people who mention SJW tendencies in a criticism seriously. At this point it's like using Reddit or Tumblr or cuck unironically.

>inb4 BECAUSE UR A SJW

No because I've seen too many people on Sup Forums use the argument that once you become a SJW not only does it taint all your future stories but it somehow goes back and invalidates your previous work. You faggots treat it like the vampire curse where it somehow infects all their work past, present and future.

And of course, The Fix which is more or less Superior Foes without the capes with buddy relationship from The Nice Guys,

I actually like Ant-Man, but I admit it's just rehashing the same loser comedy bit that Superior Foes and now the Fix is doing.

Nigga when everything is shit, something that's still shit, but not as shitty as the previous shit, it's still shit

This made me kek.

it's a list too that's extra shitty

At this point, I'm just going to assume that either he needs to stick to comedies, or that Lieber is the one with the talent.

>Literally shoehorning Trump into this for no reason

What is wrong with you Americans?

Liberals hate trump more than anything else

Having a man in a relationship is MRA because all men should be killed. Men have no rights, remember?