BEFORE: Well, since I figured out that I need to move "The Laundromat" from late May to early July, that leaves me with an empty slot in May now. I thought I was going to have to drop this one again, after dropping it back in January, but now it turns out I have room for it. This was going to connect to the earlier films with Tara Strong, but now Tara Strong carries over from "Tarzan & Jane", and with a sixth appearance today and a seventh tomorrow, suddenly she's a contender for the most films in the year, as I approach the halfway point of 300 films for 2020.
We're slowly getting close to normal life resuming, word is they may start printing comic books again, though right now the comic book stores aren't even open. That's OK, I switched over to mail-order at the Manhattan chain where I'm registered, and I've slowly been using the two months of lockdown to catch up, I was 5 weeks behind on comics in March, now I'm just 1 week behind. And there's talk of movies getting released soon too, all the ones I want to see are comic-book related, like "New Mutants" and "Wonder Woman 1984" in August and "Black Widow" in November. All that still could happen if we all keep wearing our face-masks and don't blow it by going to bars and parties and spreading the virus. Ah, crap, in some states it's already too late for that.
OK, so since New York City's stats are still inching toward progress, this summer I hope to enjoy going to movie theaters and comic-book stores again, but if you want to join me, keep doing the social distancing, even if your state says it's OK to relax the protocols. Within another two or three weeks everyone who's gone to the beach too early will be either dead or immune, and maybe enough people will have the antibodies that Covid-19 won't be spreading any more. Honestly in those states that re-opened things too early, I don't see another way out. I'm still at home collecting checks and playing video-games until my governor and mayor tell me to do otherwise - I've got enough movies to last until late July.
We're slowly getting close to normal life resuming, word is they may start printing comic books again, though right now the comic book stores aren't even open. That's OK, I switched over to mail-order at the Manhattan chain where I'm registered, and I've slowly been using the two months of lockdown to catch up, I was 5 weeks behind on comics in March, now I'm just 1 week behind. And there's talk of movies getting released soon too, all the ones I want to see are comic-book related, like "New Mutants" and "Wonder Woman 1984" in August and "Black Widow" in November. All that still could happen if we all keep wearing our face-masks and don't blow it by going to bars and parties and spreading the virus. Ah, crap, in some states it's already too late for that.
OK, so since New York City's stats are still inching toward progress, this summer I hope to enjoy going to movie theaters and comic-book stores again, but if you want to join me, keep doing the social distancing, even if your state says it's OK to relax the protocols. Within another two or three weeks everyone who's gone to the beach too early will be either dead or immune, and maybe enough people will have the antibodies that Covid-19 won't be spreading any more. Honestly in those states that re-opened things too early, I don't see another way out. I'm still at home collecting checks and playing video-games until my governor and mayor tell me to do otherwise - I've got enough movies to last until late July.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Suicide Squad" (Movie #2,512)
THE PLOT: Amanda Waller's task force targets a powerful mystical object that they will risk their lives to steal.
THE PLOT: Amanda Waller's task force targets a powerful mystical object that they will risk their lives to steal.
AFTER: It's a little weird, but in hindsight I can often see other paths that I couldn't see before - like if I had linked from "Hard Rain" to this film, via Christian Slater, then I could have flipped the last 26 films around in reverse order, and ended with "The Kitchen", which just happens to also link to tomorrow's film, but in a different way. But, then, of course, all the animated films wouldn't have been in a nice little row together, and I wouldn't have landed an appropriate film on Mother's Day. So maybe that tells me that my scheduling, for all its faults and petty annoyances, is in fact about as good as it can be.
I really didn't have a problem with the "Suicide Squad" movie that came out in 2016 - it had big stars, it had a Joker in it, it introduced the movie-going public to Harley Quinn, who'd been a fan favorite in the Batman animated series and then the comic books for years, and I ended up giving it a 7 when I finally saw it in January 2017. If there were any negatives for me, they include a somewhat confusing storyline - their mission was to "save the world", which didn't sound like a clear set of parameters, but since the danger came from within their own group, I guess you could say they did save the world from themselves, so, umm, mission accomplished? Also, the poster was very busy and poorly-designed, so that didn't really help sell it as a superhero film. But the backlash was very terrible and heated against it, you'd think that this movie killed everybody's favorite pet, which I can confirm it did NOT do.
There's another "Suicide Squad" movie due in 2021 (assuming the production wasn't slowed down too much by the pandemic) and DC/Time Warner/AOL is about to make the same mistake they did with "Birds of Prey", only in reverse. "Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of Something or Other" was an extremely complicated title, and they had to change it to "Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey" after its release just to get people to go and see it. But the "Suicide Squad" sequel title is too simple, it's just "The Suicide Squad", they just added the "The", and that's too close to the original movie, so many people may avoid it because they'll think they already saw this movie. Just call it "Suicide Squad 2" or "Suicide Squad: The Final Mission", just something to distinguish it from the 2016 movie, or else you'll have to do that in the third week of release just to draw some box office after two weeks of fail.
But between 2016 and 2021 came this animated "Suicide Squad" movie, and since it's out of live-action DCU continuity, they could do anything they wanted, even kill off the main characters, which works great because those are the parameters of the plot anyway - criminals are given an opportunity to knock years off their sentence if they take part in a near-impossible mission, a suicide mission if you will, at least for some of them. In the real world city and state governments faced a similar dilemma, by keeping criminals incarcerated they ran the risk of exposing them to Covid-19, which could mean their death, and that's a potentially cruel and unusual punishment, especially for non-violent offenders who didn't deserve the death penalty, or even a serious illness penalty. So in the early days of the pandemic, a lot of criminals were given early release, and at least here in NYC, some of them went right back to committing crimes. What dopes, they got a "Get out of jail free" card, and then stupidly rolled doubles three times in a row AGAIN, and ended up back where they started.
But the answer to the dilemma was right here in the "Suicide Squad" movies - if you want early release, you have to do a difficult task. Those jailbirds should have been put to work to earn their release, either by cleaning the subways or delivering food to food pantries, or helping to load bodies out of hospitals, something in-between prison and release I think, something that maybe put them at a lesser risk than jail, but would also help out the community during a difficult time. I think this should have at least been discussed before they cleared out the prisons to the extent that they did. Public service should have been a fine alternative to incarceration.
Anyway, the animated film brings back three characters from the 2016 live-action film - Harley Quinn (of course), Deadshot, and Amanda Waller (the characters blatantly discuss how she's recently lost weight, which suggests they may have started animating this before Viola Davis took the role in the DCU). What's great here is that there really are no superheroes, just three sets of villains that find themselves at cross purposes - there's the Suicide Squad of Harley, Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, Killer Frost and Copperhead, then there's the eternally immortal Vandal Savage and his crew, and the third faction is led by Zoom (sort of an alt-universe reverse Flash) but also includes Silver Banshee and Blockbuster.
(Before that, there's an intelligence-gathering mission with a different Suicide Squad line-up, with Deadshot's team of Count Vertigo, and the criminal couple Punch and Jewelee, who were always seen as a wanna-be Joker and Harley. The preliminary mission succeeds, but there's a reason why none of the other anti-heroes stick around for the main storyline.)
What they're all after is a mystical object, a sort of "Get Out of Hell Free" card, something that will get someone straight to heaven if they die while holding it. Umm, I thought we had a separation of church and superhero movie in this country, this is just a little too much Christian religion coming in to an action film. Hell and heaven are real in the DCU, is this firmly established? Then how come Superman died and came back to life? He should be more popular than Jesus in the greater Metropolis area. But I digress.
Everybody who wants this card is either sick or dying, which is a bit of a bummer. We even see Amanda Waller undergoing some medical tests, so is this a mission for the good of the country, or does she want the card because she has some terminal illness? Vandal Savage wants it because even though he's eternal, he's not immortal, or something - hell, I don't think he even understands his own powers, he's been alive for 10,000 years but he's afraid to die? Does he just think he's been extremely lucky all that time, or what? And Zoom, with his Flash-like speed powers, wants the card because even he can't outrace death, apparently he got killed by Batman (Thomas Wayne?) in another dimension last week, and he's so fast that he's dying really slow - does that even make sense? I thought all the guys with Flash-powers could run so fast they could go back in time, so why doesn't he just do THAT?
This is not really a superhero film for kids, DC made a push to try to appeal to some more adult fans (or I should say OLDER fans, "adult" implies that they've grown up, which we clearly have not...) so these are super-powered people who curse, kill, and attend (or perform in) male strip clubs. So if your kids watch this, they may have some interesting questions after, like "Who is Magic Mike?" Don't say I didn't warn you. But what's great about it is that there are enough characters with their own motivations, so they keep you guessing about who's really working for whom, and you're very aware that when you put villains up against villains, that's going to create a situation that's very difficult to navigate or predict, with constantly shifting sands. But perhaps there's just one too many reversals here.
I'm really more of a Marvel comics fan than a DC fan, but I like to stay current on the exploits of Batman and Superman, plus I read the Justice League trade paperbacks. I should eventually catch up again with the Batman & Superman movies on iTunes - I count 5 Superman movies and 9 Batman ones there that I haven't seen, but even at $3 per movie, that adds up quickly to some real money to watch all of those. And now I think I have to add the "Justice League" animated movies, too, like "The Flashpoint Paradox", which I think got referenced here. I wonder if I can join the DC movies streaming service for a free month or something, and then cancel - that might be worth looking into. But there are 10 other "Justice League" films available also, and that seems like a ton of work to go through all the cast lists and figure out the best order to watch them in.
There's another "Suicide Squad" movie due in 2021 (assuming the production wasn't slowed down too much by the pandemic) and DC/Time Warner/AOL is about to make the same mistake they did with "Birds of Prey", only in reverse. "Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of Something or Other" was an extremely complicated title, and they had to change it to "Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey" after its release just to get people to go and see it. But the "Suicide Squad" sequel title is too simple, it's just "The Suicide Squad", they just added the "The", and that's too close to the original movie, so many people may avoid it because they'll think they already saw this movie. Just call it "Suicide Squad 2" or "Suicide Squad: The Final Mission", just something to distinguish it from the 2016 movie, or else you'll have to do that in the third week of release just to draw some box office after two weeks of fail.
But between 2016 and 2021 came this animated "Suicide Squad" movie, and since it's out of live-action DCU continuity, they could do anything they wanted, even kill off the main characters, which works great because those are the parameters of the plot anyway - criminals are given an opportunity to knock years off their sentence if they take part in a near-impossible mission, a suicide mission if you will, at least for some of them. In the real world city and state governments faced a similar dilemma, by keeping criminals incarcerated they ran the risk of exposing them to Covid-19, which could mean their death, and that's a potentially cruel and unusual punishment, especially for non-violent offenders who didn't deserve the death penalty, or even a serious illness penalty. So in the early days of the pandemic, a lot of criminals were given early release, and at least here in NYC, some of them went right back to committing crimes. What dopes, they got a "Get out of jail free" card, and then stupidly rolled doubles three times in a row AGAIN, and ended up back where they started.
But the answer to the dilemma was right here in the "Suicide Squad" movies - if you want early release, you have to do a difficult task. Those jailbirds should have been put to work to earn their release, either by cleaning the subways or delivering food to food pantries, or helping to load bodies out of hospitals, something in-between prison and release I think, something that maybe put them at a lesser risk than jail, but would also help out the community during a difficult time. I think this should have at least been discussed before they cleared out the prisons to the extent that they did. Public service should have been a fine alternative to incarceration.
Anyway, the animated film brings back three characters from the 2016 live-action film - Harley Quinn (of course), Deadshot, and Amanda Waller (the characters blatantly discuss how she's recently lost weight, which suggests they may have started animating this before Viola Davis took the role in the DCU). What's great here is that there really are no superheroes, just three sets of villains that find themselves at cross purposes - there's the Suicide Squad of Harley, Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, Killer Frost and Copperhead, then there's the eternally immortal Vandal Savage and his crew, and the third faction is led by Zoom (sort of an alt-universe reverse Flash) but also includes Silver Banshee and Blockbuster.
(Before that, there's an intelligence-gathering mission with a different Suicide Squad line-up, with Deadshot's team of Count Vertigo, and the criminal couple Punch and Jewelee, who were always seen as a wanna-be Joker and Harley. The preliminary mission succeeds, but there's a reason why none of the other anti-heroes stick around for the main storyline.)
What they're all after is a mystical object, a sort of "Get Out of Hell Free" card, something that will get someone straight to heaven if they die while holding it. Umm, I thought we had a separation of church and superhero movie in this country, this is just a little too much Christian religion coming in to an action film. Hell and heaven are real in the DCU, is this firmly established? Then how come Superman died and came back to life? He should be more popular than Jesus in the greater Metropolis area. But I digress.
Everybody who wants this card is either sick or dying, which is a bit of a bummer. We even see Amanda Waller undergoing some medical tests, so is this a mission for the good of the country, or does she want the card because she has some terminal illness? Vandal Savage wants it because even though he's eternal, he's not immortal, or something - hell, I don't think he even understands his own powers, he's been alive for 10,000 years but he's afraid to die? Does he just think he's been extremely lucky all that time, or what? And Zoom, with his Flash-like speed powers, wants the card because even he can't outrace death, apparently he got killed by Batman (Thomas Wayne?) in another dimension last week, and he's so fast that he's dying really slow - does that even make sense? I thought all the guys with Flash-powers could run so fast they could go back in time, so why doesn't he just do THAT?
This is not really a superhero film for kids, DC made a push to try to appeal to some more adult fans (or I should say OLDER fans, "adult" implies that they've grown up, which we clearly have not...) so these are super-powered people who curse, kill, and attend (or perform in) male strip clubs. So if your kids watch this, they may have some interesting questions after, like "Who is Magic Mike?" Don't say I didn't warn you. But what's great about it is that there are enough characters with their own motivations, so they keep you guessing about who's really working for whom, and you're very aware that when you put villains up against villains, that's going to create a situation that's very difficult to navigate or predict, with constantly shifting sands. But perhaps there's just one too many reversals here.
I'm really more of a Marvel comics fan than a DC fan, but I like to stay current on the exploits of Batman and Superman, plus I read the Justice League trade paperbacks. I should eventually catch up again with the Batman & Superman movies on iTunes - I count 5 Superman movies and 9 Batman ones there that I haven't seen, but even at $3 per movie, that adds up quickly to some real money to watch all of those. And now I think I have to add the "Justice League" animated movies, too, like "The Flashpoint Paradox", which I think got referenced here. I wonder if I can join the DC movies streaming service for a free month or something, and then cancel - that might be worth looking into. But there are 10 other "Justice League" films available also, and that seems like a ton of work to go through all the cast lists and figure out the best order to watch them in.
Also starring the voices of Christian Slater (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Vanessa Williams (last seen in "Shaft"), Billy Brown (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Liam McIntyre, Kristin Bauer van Straten (last seen in "Nocturnal Animals"), Gideon Emery (last heard in "Krampus"), C. Thomas Howell (last seen in "Hidalgo"), Jim Pirri, Dania Ramirez (last seen in "Premium Rush"), Dave Fennoy (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature"), Greg Grunberg (last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), David Boat, Trevor Devall, Cissy Jones, Julie Nathanson, James Urbaniak (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Natalie Lander, Matthew Mercer.
RATING: 5 out of 10 chicken nudges
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