(Well, yes, but that’s the case with the majority of flawed movies, arguably with most of them.)
What I’m asking, beyond the executive meddling, is just how did this go so wrong apparently? Not that I want to make this into the umpteenth version of the increasingly one-sided “fight” that is DC vs. Marvel, but one really has to ask this question: Given that the previews for this were clearly trying to ape Guardians of the Galaxy’s surprisingly huge success and that you have two whole years to plan possible re-drafts of the script and re-shoots of the movie around actually mimicking that to some degree, how do you still fuck up, much less fuck up so bad?
I mean, Hades, I was just typing almost stream-of-consciousness above as I often do and the more I think about it, the more I actually think that Poison Ivy as the main villain would have helped at least some of apparently poorly plotted aspects of this movie for various reasons.
Off-The-Top-Of-My-Head Six-Point Argument for the Merits of Poison Ivy as The Main Villain:
details=Spoiler1. Despite not being an enemy of Suicide Squad in the comics (as far as I’m aware), she’s one of the few Gotham villains with a tendency to have greater scope beyond the confines of Gotham. She’s also generally one of the most powerful villains from Gotham in general. She also tends to work alone with one exception that will be handled under point 3, so no need to further complicate things by bringing in whoever “Incubus” is, especially if you’re also going to be adamant on bringing in the Joker and other cameos as well.
-
Poison Ivy readily has command of mooks, whether they’re plant-people, people turned into plants, people enslaved by plants, giant vines, or even just fellow eco-terrorists provided by Ra’s Al Ghul or something. Point is, when it comes to throwing waves of minions at you that aren’t actually (normal) people at you, Poison Ivy is the go-to Gotham person for it.
-
Poison Ivy gives Harley Quinn an actual reason to be there beyond ass-less sex appeal since there’s no reason for the two to not still have known each and, uh, “known” each other even in the doom-and-gloom yet simultaneously PG13 setting of the DC…CU, especially given the double standard that “Girl on Girl is Hot” means it wouldn’t push up the rating to R like two guys making out would. With Poison Ivy instead of Enchantress, Harley Quinn would have actual merit and reason to be there given both her immunity to pretty much all of non-physical things that Poison Ivy can throw at them as well as arguably the best way to recruit Poison Ivy to their side given their friendliness with each other, especially given the latter would be important with Waller’s mission statement given at the beginning of the film of wanting to build up a metahuman army with plausible deniability. That version of Harley Quinn seems far more worth letting out with the Joker still flitting around free as a potential liability apparently than the version we’re given in-movie that’s apparently just an above average acrobatic woman with a bat who’s clearly there because of sex appeal. Because, you know, sex appeal, acrobatics, and a single, breakable bat are totally threatening to most extra-dimensional magical entities worth a damn.
To be fair, Harley Quinn’s probably not there just because of sex appeal. Beyond name recognition, it wouldn’t surprising if the execs also probably saw the initial line-up and were like “Holy fucking diversity Batman! You’re telling me the only woman on the team is a humorless, bad-ass Asian woman that can’t be slutted up?! Fuck that noise! Get me a white woman stat!”
- Visually, pretty much all versions of Poison Ivy save for the most monstrous ones are generally regarded as sexy. Even the corny versions like Uma Thurman in that (gloriously bad) abortion that is Batman and Robin are actually still pretty decent looking underneath all those costume angles. Now, in keeping that in mind, please think about how sexy you find the following picture of the current in-name-only Enchantress that is apparently played by a former supermodel turned actress:
Spoiler
http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/suicide-squad-character-poster-3-small.jpg
fans self Wow, I’ve got the, like, grimmest, darkest boner right now. Thanks DCCU. :tup:
I’ll take this thank you.
[/details]
-
You get a villain with actual personality and actual goals rather than a generic “try to take over/destroy the world!” schtick that’s been done at least literally hundreds of thousands of times by this point. You can even use said personality to develop other characters more, like the aforementioned backstory without need for flashbacks between her and Harley or even helping to build Batman by having it stated or guessed at explicitly that the reason she “branched out” was in part because she’s so fucking scared of the guy (which makes sense given DCCU Batman is a goddamn psychopath apparently).
-
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you get a villain with actual name recognition. I get why they tried to mimic The Guardians of the Galaxy route so hard, especially since it’s obviously the same reason they showed (a weird version of) Joker was in the movie so much despite him not really being there: the average person doesn’t know who any of these characters are save for maybe this (horrible, new) version of Harley Quinn. The average person does tend to know whom Poison Ivy is, however, even if only vaguely, and that would arguably go a long way to having helped this movie just in and of itself, at least as far as getting people in the seats regardless of quality (or lack thereof).[/details]
I don’t know. It just seems easy to fix and even with the executive impediments, the script from what I’ve heard commented on was already rather weak, which the rushing didn’t help. I know it’s generally easier to comment on things and see flaws an (“objective”) outsider, but I just don’t know how stuff like this falls through even though I already think the worst of humanity–I have to wonder if Poison Ivy was even considered at all.
Shrug.
