The Suicide Squad: Sticking the Landing

In a Surprising Twist, Starro the Conqueror Elevated Everything

She is all out of chewing gum, kids.

NOTE: Here be spoilers. You don’t want to know? Stop reading now, weirdo.

I’m a sucker for a bad movie. Most of the entertainments released into the world reach a baseline of competence, after all—no matter how shitty the script, the direction, set design, costuming, and even the acting usually reach acceptable levels. We have a well-established industry of trained professionals, after all¹.

None of it guarantees a good movie, but it allows bad movies to be bad in interesting ways. When you know the cinematography is going to at least be pedestrian, you can focus on the storytelling decisions that are ruining your film, and that’s always fun for me. I can totally vibe with a movie that kind of sucks but has something going on².

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad isn’t exactly a work of genius. Would I call it a bad movie? No, perhaps not. There’s some charm and some wit, a few surprises³. In fact, for most of its running time it’s an amiable mess just like most superhero movies—a bit overstuffed, a bit rubbery from all the CGI, a bit overlong⁴. It gets by, as most of these movies do, on the charisma and repartee of its characters—something Gunn understands better than most of today’s A-list directors specializing in CGI-soaked mayhem. Gunn is smart enough to lard up his film with interactions that develop the characters as people while setting up threads for later use.

These threads include Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn coming into possession of a nifty javelin and wondering out loud what it’s purpose might be⁵, Idris Elba’s Bloodsport⁶ bonding in a fatherly way with Daniela Melchior’s Ratcatcher II while also admitting his deep phobia of rats, Ratcatcher II’s entire existence, as she seems like the weirdest and dumbest idea for a superhero ever, the mother issues of David Dastmalchian’s Polka Dot Man, King Shark/Nanaue’s (Sylvester Stallone) constant urge to eat everything he sees, and the willingness of Peacemaker (John Cena) to do anything if it serves the interests of his country.

That’s a lot of threads to slip into your script, and the film does drag a bit here and there as Gunn tries to give all of these elements some time to breathe and develop. But then Gunn pulls off quite a trick, because the ending he comes up with pays off every single one of those threads. Every. Single. One.

Mama, Just Killed a Man

I think … I think the edibles just kicked in.

So, the plot of The Suicide Squad isn’t particularly inspired: A collection of low-rent villains serving time in a special prison are offered time off their sentence if they agree to go on a, yep, suicide mission into a fictional South American country⁷. Their task is to destroy an old Nazi research lab run by Doctor Who (Peter Capaldi) for reasons vaguely related to the national security of the United States⁸. They bicker, kill a lot of people (Harley Quinn is captured and tortured and when she breaks herself out she murders like an entire battalion of soldiers⁹), go to a nightclub to dance and ambush Doctor Who, then force him to get them inside the secret lab building.

So far, so good—up to this point the film is pretty entertaining and a lot of fun. I mean, Elba and Robbie are overheating charisma machines on a bad day, and having Sylvester Stallone say “Nom, nom?” will never not be delightful. But then Gunn reveals a secret boss level to his oversized video game cutscene: Doctor Who has been experimenting on a giant alien starfish American astronauts captured decades before, keeping it imprisoned and using its terrifying starfish babies to experiment on humans (the terrifying starfish babies act like Alien facehuggers and turn humans into the alien’s slaves).

The alien is named Starro the Conquerer. Making your alien look like a starfish and then naming it Starro takes some balls, but I am here for it.

HERE FOR IT.

Freed from its prison when the explosives detonate too soon, Starro goes on a rampage¹⁰, and The Suicide Squad reluctantly decide to risk their skins in order to stop it. And then, one by one, threads are paid off. Peacemaker, ordered to ensure no evidence of America’s malfeasance comes to light, turns heel and betrays his team, and is (not really) killed with a callback to an earlier conversation. Bloodsport saves Ratcatcher II from certain death because he cares for her as a stand-in for his daughter. The Polka Dot Man takes a stand against his mother. King Shark is finally given permission to eat something (that something is, you guessed it, Starro). Ratcatcher II sics the thousands of rats living in the city on the alien. Bloodsport has to tolerate the rats despite his fears. And Harley Quinn realizes why she’s been carrying the javelin this whole time.

It’s actually kind of impressive how Gunn slides all these pieces into place—or that he bothers to. The ending would have been perfectly acceptable without these grace notes, honestly. Once you have a giant CGI starfish destroying a city, you can get away with some hi-tech weapons and superhero/villain stuff. But Gunn takes the time to justify all this noodling, and as a result every character gets their moment in a more or less organic way. It’s skillful.

Which is why, I suppose, James Gunn gets paid millions to make movies and I get paid in compliments to write essays. But I digress.

Whether you think superhero (or, in this case, anti-superhero) stories are inherently silly or filled with the potential for powerful storytelling, the way Gunn makes all his character details meaningful in his ridiculous finale is a good lesson for any writer. Character detail by itself can be fun, and can deepen your characters which improves a story. But linking those details to other parts of your story—and paying them off—makes them even more powerful. And if you can figure out how to involves an army of rats and a very hungry shark god, more the better.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of compliments to deposit. Tonight, we feast!¹¹

Next week: Plan B and saying “what?!?” a lot.

1. This is why most entertainments are about as exciting and memorable as the color beige.

2. "Kind of Sucks but Has Something Going On” is going to be the title of my memoirs.

3. Any movie that kills Pete Davidson in the first 5 minutes can’t be all bad.

4. I am extremely over with vast prejudice those CGI guns that start off tiny and grow larger in physics-defying spurts. It hurts my eyes.

5. To be fair, Gunn puts a lampshade the size of Texas on that javelin and then spends some time posing next to it pointing at the lampshade and saying LOOK AT THIS GODDAMN LAMPSHADE ARE YOU LOOKING LOOK.

6. I demand to know why every other villain in this universe is simply extremely skilled as a marksperson. I mean, there are, what, four so far in the two Squad movies. Make someone an explosives expert or something, you cowards.

7. The decision to open the film with a decoy Suicide Squad that is almost instantly eradicated is, I’ll admit, amusing as hell.

8. Capaldi, who is a genius, spends the whole movie with transistors stuck to his head and an expression on his face that implies his brain’s pleasure centers are being directly massaged by some sort of invasive parasite.

9. I do love the fact that after murdering an entire battalion and breaking out of prison, Harley hails a fucking cab.

10. There is a whole other essay concerning the implication that Starro is the true victim of this film. In fact, Starro’s last line is heartbreaking. Am I saying I want a Starro side project? You bet your ass I am.

11. On whiskey and jealous rages, obviously.