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"A dot started notes and lines. Lines made up bars. Eventually, a musical piece is created.
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Saturday 13 August 2016

Suicide Squad Movie : My Point of View

I am not a DC / Marvel comic books reader. I do not watch every single of their animation series either. I do not know very well every single of their characters but at least I know some main characters, just like any other novices do. However, as I keep up with a number of western TV series, I also watched some DC and Marvel superhero TV series. I watched the latest Marvel’s Daredevil that was broadcasted by Netflix and also DC’s Green Arrow and the new Flash TV series that were brought by CW television network. The two latter names gave a little enlightenment of the story on the currently showing DC Comics movie : Suicide Squad.

P.S : Warning, the content below may contain spoiler information for those who haven’t  watched Suicide Squad movie.

screenrant.com
I watched the movie a week ago. The movie poster illustration at the cinema was not describing the movie itself. At first glance, my wife, who came with me, guessed that it was some kind of cartoon comedy or horror movie. However, after watching it, I can say that I love the whole movie. Despite of the negative reviews on several sources, I think that this movie can be consumed either by novices who did not keep up with the comics and also the DC comic geeks. Additionally, a half-DC/Marvel fans like I am. We can say the movie is in average level. The story is not too deep and hard to be understood by non-comic readers, but not too light and shallow (I found in Batman vs Superman : Dawn of Justice where comic readers said the movie was awesome and close to its comic book whereas the other party give negative comments regarding of their lack of understanding). There were brief introduction and background stories of the bad guys, members of Suicide Squad, so the audience will at least understand about who they are and why they were imprisoned.

It is fortunate that I had been following the DC heroes TV series which are the Green Arrow and The Flash. I had a bit of clues about the story and few characters in Suicide Squad. At least I already knew who is Floyd Lawton, who is the one with the red streak who arrested Capt. Boomerang (well, I think anybody can guess this guy… :D), I already had a little knowledge about the ARGUS organization led by Amanda Waller and what they had been doing, and also its connection with our superheroes. Some of the stories and events were already presented (with different framework) on the TV series.

One of the characters that became focus of attention is of course the renowned villain characters who is troublesome to Batman a couple times : The Joker. I thought, judging from the movie trailers and sneak peek, The Joker will be one of the main stars, side by side with his lover, Harley Quinn. But in fact, he only showed up in some scenes, coupling with Harley Quinn.

Talking about the Joker, take a look at a few years back, Heath Ledger had successfully stolen the audience attention by becoming The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. While in Suicide Squad, this character was played by the handsome Jared Leto. As the Heath Ledger’s Joker image was fabulously strong, there is no way that Jared Leto can portray the same kind of Joker as Heath Ledger did. So he played Joker with a slight different style. He must bring a new fresh Joker’s character, different with his predecessors : Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, and Cesar Romero.

The Joker : Heath Ledger's version VS Jared Leto's version
Source : denofgeek.us & metro.co.uk

However, after seeing the Suicide Squad movie, I’d still prefer Heath Ledger’s Joker to Jared Leto’s. In my opinion, The Joker in The Dark Knight movie has the closest image to The Joker that anyone expected from Batman stories, who is extremely sick and insane. Heath Ledger brought a too strong image of The Joker in my mind (and many other people’s). In my perspective, Jared Leto’s Joker was too cool, too handsome, and obviously, too sane to be the Joker.  

My most favorite character ? The hottest female villains (or can we say heroine for this movie ?) ? Most of the people agree that Harley Quinn deserves the crown as the hottest female character with her sexy and tight suit. I completely agree. Harley Quinn (played by Margot Robbie) is hot. Harley Quinn is sexy. And as one of my friends said, “A beautiful girl who is crazy = sexy”. However, my most favorite female character is the Japanese originated character, Katana.

collider.com
Why Katana ? Beside the pretty Karen Fukuhara behind the mask as one of the reasons, I think Katana character is mysteriously cool. I also liked the suit she wears with the samurai style and weapons she used. Previously, I had watched this Katana a.k.a Tatsu Yamashiro character on Arrow TV series. However, the one played by Karen Fukuhara in this movie is much hotter -- my opinion. Even so, she was also sick with a depressed life background. The sword she used to fight, Soultaker, was the thing that previously took her husband’s life. Her background story was not told clearly on Suicide Squad movie. Fortunately I got a clear picture of Maseo (her husband) and Tatsu Yamashiro story from Arrow TV series.

P.S : Last Warning ! The paragraph below is a closing paragraph that contains huge spoilers. For those who has not watched the Suicide Squad movie. Better stop now…..

www.suicidesquad.com

As a conclusion, overall I like this movie because it’s a combination of action with dark story that will satisfy those superhero comics lovers. There were many reviewers who gave bad reviews for this movie. I think it’s because of overexpectation and when they saw it on cinema, the movie was just “average”. However, there are many things that surprised me (and maybe I missed many information before the movie) :
  • I did not expect that this DC movie was connected to the preceding and upcoming DC movies.
  • I thought the movie will be just about the villain characters but there are superhero characters (The Dark Knight and The Streak) emerged as cameo. And the scenes were pleasing. Yeahh !!
  • The teaser movie posters show a  number of bad guys gather as a group of justice called Suicide Squad. Well the fact is, Enchantress became the antagonist and there is a character who was just present for a few seconds and then die…..(-___-)
  • I was thinking that The Joker will be the main star or the keyplayer -- seeing his cool appearance on the movie trailers. But it turns out that he was just a sideplayer where Floyd Lawton a.k.a Deadshot was the main character. (No wonder it was played by Will Smith !)   
  • Keeping up with the movie, it was like Harley Quinn and The Joker has their own side story. I think the producer was considering to bring up their own story into another movie.

So for those who has not watched the movie yet. I think, why don’t you give it a try. Even if later the story was not as expected, at least it was fun to see how our comic bad guys was portrayed into a movie...