Now that everyone has seen Suicide Squad, what of the majority critical view that David Ayer‘s film exudes soullessness and suckage? I don’t mean the first 40 to 45 minutes — I mean the rest of it. I ask this knowing that over-25s with a semblance of taste and a marketable skill will almost certainly agree that it’s putrid for the most part, and those under 25…well, we know what they’ll say.
What did the room feel like as you left the theatre? Were fellow moviegoers looking ill, stricken, ashen-faced? Did they seem to be questioning their lives or at least their willingness to sit through another piece of shit from the Warner Bros./D.C. Comics kingpins?
“There’s a major disconnect with what the critics are saying and the audience is seeing,” Warner Bros. distribution vp Jeff Goldstein told Variety‘s Brent Lang. “We’re resonating with a younger audience. The younger the audience, the higher the score.”
Lang reports, however, that Suicide Squad dropped 41% between Friday and Saturday, which is a much steeper decline than Captain America: Civil War or Deadpool experienced. It seems likely that Squad will drop around 70% next weekend, which is what the similarly-loathed Batman v Superman managed to do.
Keep in mind the N.Y. Times estimate that Suicide Squad cost at least $325 million to make and market, which means it has to pull down $650 million to move into profit.
“The fanboys and fangirls propel superhero movies to a great opening weekend with their unbridled enthusiasm,” said comScore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “The question for the longterm, though, is will moviegoers’ opinions align with critics?”
Resonant portion of Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review (“How Bad Is Suicide Squad?”): “Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), whose very surname reminds him of his duty, is, we learn, ‘the finest Special Forces officer this nation has ever produced.’ Note the superlative — the grammatical form of choice for comic-book adjectives. Nothing in this movie is ever middling, or allowed to muddle along. Nobody has an okay day. Instead, Deadshot (Will Smith) is ‘the most-wanted hit man in the world.’ Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the Joker (Jared Leto) are ‘the king and queen of Gotham City.’
“This perpetual overreach, desperate to outdo anything that might smack of regularity, has the genuine tang of adolescence; it is as though all the characters, even the ones not adorned with tattoos, are straining to shock their parents or to drive them nuts.”
![](https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/themes/amory/patreon-banner.jpg)