If all goes according to plan, I will be absconding from the Fortress of Ineptitude to join my son Dean on an excursion to finally see Deadpool & Wolverine.
Anticipating my being pressed for time to write my regular weekend movie post, I am reposting another previous outing with just father and child to see a movie.
From August 16, 2021: The Suicide Squad.
Andrea did not go. We suspected the level of bloody violence in this movie would not be her idea of a good time.
And we were right.
The Suicide Squad is replete with full on bloody violence and that's before we get to the opening credits. There are people in the opening credits whose character's face has been shot off before their name shows up in the credits.
Alas, poor Pete Davidson.
Rick Flag leads a fairly sizable contingent of the Suicide Squad as a strike force onto the shores of the island nation of Corto Maltese.
All of them are expendable cannon fodder, a big explosive distraction for the somewhat more compact Squad team of Bloodsport, Peacemaker, King Shark, Polka-Dot Man, and Ratcatcher 2 to sneak into the country.
Corto Maltese has experienced a coup with the overthrow of the corrupt pro-American leaders by the corrupt anti-American military.
The mission: destroy Nazi-era laboratory Jötunheim, which holds a secretive experiment known as "Project Starfish".
The only survivors of the distraction mission, Rick Flag and Harley Quinn links up with Bloodsport's team to capture the Thinker, the metahuman scientist in charge of Project Starfish. They coerce Thinker into getting them into Jötunheim where we find out why Project Starfish is called Project Starfish.
The Thinker is holding a giant alien starfish who can kill and mentally control people through face hugging starfish.
Everyone give it up for the one who must be feared and obeyed, the one you must bow down before as your god and your damnation, the one and only.... Starro the Conqueror.
And Starro is fucking PISSED OFF!!
Starro rips Thinker apart, bursts out of Jötunheim and sets about subjugating the population of Corto Maltese with a giant alien eyeball on taking over the whole damn world!
Fear Starro the Conqueror!
All hail Starro the Conqueror!!
Dean, stop laughing at Starro the Conqueror.
What's left of our rag tag band of super villains set out to stop Starro the Conqueror. Alas, the Suicide Squad is seriously out manned and out gunned in this match up!
Beware the might of Starro the Conqueror!
Bow down before the power of Starro the Conqueror!!
Dean, seriously, stop laughing at Starro the Conqueror.
But Harley Quinn has a really sharp stick and Ratcatcher has a shit ton of rats and somehow, the bad guys of the Suicide Squad become the good guys of Corto Maltese.
Against all odds, the great and terrible power of Starro the Conqueror has been defeated.
And everything smells like dead fish.
Man, The Suicide Squad is a seriously fucked up movie. But with writer/director James Gunn at the helm, it is seriously fucked up in a good and often hilarious way.
Gunn is constantly playing with your expectations. The film opens with an extended sequence with a super villain named Savant whiling away his hours in Belle Reve prison. We wouldn't be spending so much time with Savant if he's not going to be important.
Do not get attached to Savant. His biggest contribution to the film is when his dead body floats in the surf off of Corto Maltese, the blood from his head wound forms "Warner Brothers Pictures presents..." and the opening credits begin.
Michael Rooker who played Savant is in those opening credits. Nope, he's dead and ain't coming back.
Hey, look, Jai Courtney is back from the first Suicide Squad movie as Captain Boomerang. Surely he will have a big part to play in this -- Nope, dead!
Margot Robbie is back as Harley Quinn. She only 1 of 2 (well, 3) to survive that massacre. Harley Quinn is still weird and bat shit crazy but she is a force to be reckoned with. She takes on the a whole damn squad of Corto Maltese soldiers and freakin' wins. Oh hell yeah!
Idris Elba as Robert DuBois (Bloodsport) may seem too dignified to be a part of this mess but he portrays DuBois with the tired cynicism of a man who has been trained to kill and to be very good at it. Like most draftees to the Squad, DuBois can get his sentence reduced but he's mostly doing this to keep his daughter out of jail.
Christopher Smith aka Peacemaker is like Bloodsport in that he has been trained to kill and to be very good at it but unlike Bloodsport, Peacemaker is motivated by a perverse obsession with his ideology of peace at all costs. Peacemaker will fight for the cause of peace no matter how many men, women and children he has to kill to get it. John Cena leans hard into Peacemaker's obsession with an unrelenting earnestness that borders on absurdity but ultimately makes Peacemaker a grave danger to the squad.
Voiced by Sylvester Stallone, Nanaue, aka King Shark, becomes a surprisingly sympathetic character for someone whose favorite mealtime entree is people and whose favorite between meal snack is people. Hey, it's nothing personal, he's just hungry. And people are not friends. But Ratcatcher 2 decides to become Nanaue's friend.
Cleo Cazo is Ratcatcher 2 who controls the tech she inherited from her father, the first Ratcatcher, to control rats. Portrayed by Daniela Melchior, Cleo is kind of the movie's heart. Yeah, she robbed a bank with her rat powers but is she really a super villain? Does she really deserve to be stuck on a suicide mission for Task Force X? Well, it is a good thing she is there as Cleo is instrumental in the defeat of Starro.
Abner Krill is the Polka Dot Man. In the comics, Polka Dot Man is one of the stupidest villain concepts ever. In the movie, the polka dots are manifestations of a strange and powerful extra dimensional energy, the product of an experiment gone wrong forced on him by his mother. David Dastmalchian's performance turns Polka Dot Man from a joke to a tragic figure. Krill is able to use his powers as an offensive force because he sees his targets as his mother. Shot from Krill's perspective shows members of the Squad (including King Shark), the Corto Mortese army and even Starro as manifestations of his mother, a plump brunette woman with a stern expression and I imagine her name is Karen.
For all the good character work in The Suicide Squad that is by turns funny and poignant, Amanda Waller is not well served in this narrative. As originally conceived by writer John Ostrander, Amanda Waller was an indomitable force of nature, strong willed and even ruthless. Hell, she made Batman back off! But behind it all, Waller was still a woman of honor and integrity. In defense of her team, Waller once went prison to protect the Squad. The Amanda Waller I knew from the comics would never willingly send a Squad force to be target practice as a mere distraction.
Movie version Waller verges on the sociopathic. She blows up Savant's head because he has the very reasonably fearful reaction to flee from being shot to death on the beaches of Corto Maltese. She is prepared to blow up the explosive charges in the heads of Bloodsport's team because they dare go beyond their mission to actually try to save people from Starro. She is only stopped by support team member Flo Crawley cold cocking her upside the head with Waller's own golf club. Movie Waller is a maniacal control freak.
There is some much packed into this movie, I can't cover it all but I would be remiss if I didn't mention Nathan Fillion as T.D.K., The Detachable Kid, a metahuman who can detach his arms from his body and control them from a distance. Yes, he is inspired by Arm Fall Off Boy.
And we should take a moment to remember poor old Milton who fell in combat. Even if no one other than Polka Dot Man remembered him.
Kudos to DC and Warner Brothers for hiring James Gunn to make a Suicide Squad movie AND for letting him actually make it a James Gunn movie. The Suicide Squad does not fit with any kind of DCEU aesthetic. It is incompatible with Wonder Woman, Aquaman or Shazam! It may share that universe but The Suicide Squad is it's own sick, perverse and beautiful thing.
Dean, for fuck's sake, stop laughing at Starro the Conqueror.
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