It’s kind of hard to express how incomprehensibly incompetent this film is for a major Hollywood blockbuster.  I am not a fan of the Avengers films but, watching this I feel like those films are masterpieces in comparison. In fact, watching this film, I long for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s basic film-making competence – yeah, they’re pretty dumb and over-the-top, but at least those film makers understand how to make movies.

There’s no real rising action in this film – they just need to assemble a team of super villains due to the gut instinct of a bureaucrat. (Seriously. That’s the initial plot of the film.) What follows is a series of condensed origin stories, which are presented in ways which are borrowed from numerous previous movies. The awkwardness of this editing is hard to put into words. It’s incredible. The only way I can really describe it is that it feels like someone who has never edited a film before is just combining scenes for the first time. (I should point out that the production values are pretty high. But that doesn’t make the editing better. Oh, and pretty high does not mean “great” by any means. Lots mediocre CGI.)

Did I mention the villain of the film is only a villain because the Suicide Squad is formed? So basically the movie is pointless? There’s that.

Things pick up once the squad is assembled and actually has something to do, but everything about the film is so cliched that it doesn’t matter much that the editing is now passable. If you’ve seen a movie about a group of people who don’t get along trying to accomplish something, well chances are something from that movie is repeated in this one.

Some stray thoughts:

• Every time to film jumps back in he past, it is just horribly awkward and sometimes incomprehensible.
• Some characters just randomly kill people with barely any explanation or rationalization, because it’s just that easy.
• We’re supposed to feel team building development but since nothing feels real, we don’t care. (We don’t believe that they care.)
• The timing of the dialogue just feels off most of the time – not just the jokes but the supposedly heartfelt parts too (though the bad writing may account for that). 

The one thing I will say about it is that it was filmed in Toronto so we could play spot the landmark. (As Jenn said, the finale is like Ghostbusters Take the Train to Ajax.)

I don’t know anything about the comics but this is the kind of soul-sucking clusterfuck that takes whatever minor interest I had in comics as a child and tween and stomps on it. I was always a Marvel kid to the extent that I was anything, but after watching this it feels like there’s nothing good that will ever come from DC again.

3/10

PS I forgot to mention: this is some of the most cliched use of music in a film you’ll ever see, at least in terms of the rock songs. I mean, holy shit.