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...

Jurassic World Movie : The Success and The Bonds with Audience

Forbes.com

Okay... I know this article is soooooo too late. I should've posted this months ago when the topic was still warm. However, since the idea has popped out in my head, I would get headache if I did not pour this down. Besides, there might be some people who did not notice before about this.

Jurassic World is a new sequel of the preceding Jurassic Park movies trilogy. I think I will not have to tell the story since most of you might have known that this movie is mainly about dinosaurs. Furthermore, (unexpectedly) this movie successfully gained a huge mass attention and an amazing amount of profit. This great success is far beyond what has been predicted before. Jurassic World broke the record by becoming one of the most successful movie of all time. Put behind Titanic and Avatar, Jurassic World was third one on the list.

Of all the factors that brought Jurassic World to success, there is one simple and logical factor but may not be realized by the audience : Jurassic World came at the right time.

Despite of its purpose to bring nostalgic moments to adult audience (yes, we can obviously recognize this from the movie scenes), there is also relevant factor that Jurassic World was worthy to be launched at this time.

Jurassic Park was a big hit in 1993. There was no movie before that unify many elements (family, action, thriller movie) involving the dinosaur at that time. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard (the main actors on Jurassic World) were around 12-13 years old when Jurassic Park was screened and they admitted being amazed by the movie. Many adults at the same age brought their children to the cinema on Jurassic World screening in 2015. Beside nostalgia, they wanted to show to their children the movie that made them amazed when they were still kids. Consider if the current adults were at that age in 1993, most of them might already have kids now that could be brought to cinema to feel similar thrill.

Mosasaurus (Forbes.com)

Jurassic World also grabbed other kids and teenage audiences by showing enormous creatures like Mosasaurus and Indominus Rex. The stunning gigantic battle also stuck their gaze at the screen.

So we found that initially Jurassic World were created to bring nostalgic moments to adult audience. But, whether intentionally or not, it also grabbed kids and teenager audiences. This large scale of market is one element that brought the movie to the biggest hit of all time.

Thanks to Jurassic World, it brought fortunes to several parties. Universal studios became the first ever studio who had three films that cross $1 billion internationally in a year. They are Jurassic World, Furious 7, and Minions. The movie director, Colin Trevorrow, was also selected to direct Star Wars : Episode IX from the incoming Star Wars movie trilogy. The Jurassic World movie itself was also planned for its sequel in 2018 - following the first movie success.

[SPOILER ALERT. The next passage might be spoiler if you had not watch the movie(s)]

Obviously, the creator wanted to relate Jurassic World with the first big-hit Jurassic Park movie. There are scenes in Jurassic World that remind us of the first movie in 1993. Some of them I recognized right at the time I watched the scenes at the cinema. 

A Scene from Jurassic Park (1993) (empireonline.com)

1. The technician at the control room was wearing a t-shirt with a logo of the first Jurassic Park and he talked a lot about it. If you had watched Jurassic Park, you must be really understand what he was talking about.

2. The Jeep that was found by the brothers at the forest was the Jeep that was being used to drive around in Jurassic Park.

3. The original Jurassic Park music score by John Williams was played occasionally during the scenes.

4. Dr. Henry Wu in Jurassic World's laboratory was the young Dr. Wu at Jurassic Park's lab.

5. The scene when the brothers were trapped inside the glass ball and Indominus Rex tried to break the glass using its snout and jaw reminded us when Tim and Lex was trapped inside the electric car and Tyrannosaurus Rex was attacking the car from above at Jurassic Park.

6. The camera angle when Raptors were chasing Claire, Zach, and Gary when riding an ambulance was similar to the moment when Ellie and his friend was saving Dr. Ian Malcolm and T-Rex was chasing the Jeep they were riding in Jurassic Park movie.

There were still a lot easter eggs that other observers found at the movie that connect Jurassic World with the first movie. You can google it or you can observe it yourself by paying attention on details while watching the movies.

Dinosaur Whisperer (wired.com)

Sources :

- http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/06/jurassic-world-billion-international-box-office
- http://m.metrotvnews.com/read/2015/09/08/167051
- Jurassic World : The Secret to Its Success by Genevieve Hassan (http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33078934)
- How Jurassic World Became One of The Biggest Blockbuster of All Time (http://flavorwire.com/526224/how-jurassic-world-became-one-of-the-biggest-blockbusters-of-all-time)
- http://www.slashfilm.com/jurassic-world-easter-eggs/