I went to see Suicide Squad in theaters and haven’t sat down to watch it until now. Am I Damaged now? This time it was to watch the “Extended Cut”, a call back to the halcyon days of the late 90s-early 00s when printing a DVD was a license to print money incentivizing studios with the creation of “director’s cuts” and other alternative cuts of film. Most of the time these extended or unrated edition don’t meaningfully change things, perusing films of that era on movie-censorship.com can give you a good idea of what little changes. Normally the distinction of a director’s cut means there is some clearer change see the works of Ridley Scott, Zack Snyder, to a degree Wong Kar Wai (though that’s more due to his penchant to re-edit his films and terrible deals with Harvey Weinstein), and the entire ouvre of Rob Zombie. In the realms of extreme cinema the unrated cuts are generally the way to go where “unrated” acts as a metonym for “director’s”. The 12 additional minutes of this cut to Suicide Squad do not meaningfully improve or change the film as its glaring deficiencies are still entirely present. This isn’t a case of Batman v Superman wherein shockingly if you insert the first act back into the movie the whole thing hangs together as a coherent piece of filmmaking.
Much like BvS, however, Suicide Squad is the byproduct of studio interference and collective freak outs after the latter film underperformed (due in no small part to cutting ya know that first act to ribbons). For his part David Ayer has disowned the Squad as it currently exists describing his cut as and “intricate and emotional journey with some bad people who are shit on and discarded (a theme that resonates in my soul). The studio cut is not my movie. Read that again. And my cut is not the 10-week director’s cut – it’s a fully mature edit by Lee Smith standing on the incredible work by John Gilroy. It’s all Steven Price’s brilliant score, with not a single radio song in the whole thing. It has traditional character arcs, amazing performances, a solid third-act resolution. A handful of people have seen it.” Which is to say a film in the style of Hollywood continuity editing. Which is also the exact opposite of the Guy Ritchie-lite non-linear thing we have received. The modification of which can be seen in the progression of marketing materials over these trailers.
I would be interested to see what Ayer’s cut of this film would be, both out of personal and professional curiosity. My whole thing is the construction of gender through media, in particular superhero media. David Ayer certainly has his type and style as a filmmaking, which is often built on an appropriation of Cholo and “street gang” aesthetics (see Bright and The Tax Collector for the most egregious examples) which is its own discussion I’m not currently here to really discuss. Within all that is also a fascination and damnation of toxic masculinity, which is why his work and the surprisingly level of mainstream acceptance is intriguing. From a technical standpoint Ayer’s body of work by dint of their budgets and distribution is just above the work of directors like Jesse V. Johnson and John Hyams.
None of that feels present in Suicide Squad as the film is cut to the plot bones so that it structurally “makes sense” at the expense of character, which is funny considering just about everyone gets a micro episode to exposit them to the audience. Watching Viola Davis, Will Smith, and Margot Robbie on screen is a reminder in what star power looks like as they’re able to make the base and thin material to be at least if not dimensional entertaining to watch. Now how the camera treats Robbie and her hot pants, that magically change sizes, is a byproduct of that same fascination with toxic masculinity and a century of Hollywood as an industry. Look at how the camera treats Robbie in this film versus Birds of Prey.
The other revelation I had while watching this movie is … I like Jared Leto’s Joker! Not in that Hot Topic, Fault in our Scars, way that a sect of fandom and the larger transmedia Joker is created. I like this iteration for how it reflexively rejects everything prior transmedia Jokers have been constructed. It rejects the charismatic sociopathy of the character and just makes him so friggin annoying and off putting, which is helped even further by the fact that they’re performed by Jared Leto. Prior live action and animated incarnations of the Joker all eventually succumb to the charisma and excess of the performance transforming the Clown Prince of Crime from a figure of subversion and satire to one of adoration and engagement. This is what the Joker should be in. my mind, not someone “cool” but a figure that refuses that sort of relation to everyone. A figure that continually subverts traditional relationships and understandings. How can you like this iteration of the Joker? He is so annoying! I love it because I hate it so much.
There isn’t much to consider with Suicide Squad as a text, all the interesting stuff is the meta textual: the production, shifting paratextual framing via marketing materials, etc. Despite having clear filmic references to pull from whichever of the supposedly three separate trailer houses cut it together like a postmodern Guy Ritchie film, which is pretty far from what David Ayer does. At least in the case of the reshoots they managed to keep the lighting the same even if the color job on the film in attempt to brighten it up washes out all the colors leading what could’ve been a fun riff in B movie aesthetics and sensibilities to look just boring. This Suicide Squad should’ve been a grimy dirty B movie with A level distribution and marketing, something a step and half above DTV. And instead we got this boring mess of nothingness.
