This is a recurring segment, with a recently-updated title, "Simple Answers," where I gather the questions I come across on the Internet in a given week, and provide a straightforward answer.
This week's question again addresses the controversial DC Extended Universe movies. Previously, we drilled down into the reasons why Zack Snyder is allowed to keep making movies.
Today, we talk about why the Batman V Superman follow-up Suicide Squad is getting so much hate.
Critics who have seen Suicide Squad early dislike it because it appears to be a tasteless, trashy boast.
Let's be clear. I haven't seen Suicide Squad. I imagine you haven't either, depending on when you're reading this.
Whether the movie is good is irrelevant to this particular conversation. The question is: why is Suicide Squad getting hated on?
I can tell you for darn sure that it isn't a magnet for criticism due to some grand scheme to derail the DC shared universe. Critics are tremendous dorks. If you were a grandmaster class film-industry Illuminati, and you approached a cabal of hundreds of obedient critics writing for websites across America and across the world, and you said, "We can't have good Marvel movies and good DC movies," do you think those dorks would immediately bend the knee?
Oh, there's the theory that they're paid off to hate very specific movies, right? Who are you with that theory? What do you eat for breakfast? Do you swallow pebbles whole for nutrition?
Never mind the lunacy behind the supposed conspiracy, I'll direct you to the logistics of it all, namely: do you know how hard it is for a large company to cut a check to a freelancer? Because that's what these "bribes" would be under. Companies aren't timely with their payment to any contract work. Getting internal approval, shifting the money out of the secret slush fund, sending out payments to hundreds upon hundreds of online-only critics, and every single time these payoffs take place (and they seem to happen often, am I right, guys?), nobody says a word?
Listen: two of the Navy SEALS who helped kill Osama Bin Laden wrote books about it, despite federal government ultra Top-Secret gag orders. Are you telling me that not one film critic slips an admission about the lizard-people run media, "Yeah, Disney and Marvel paid me $100 (or $1000 (or $10,000, how high do you think?))) to drip some negative comments into my review of this DC movie."
Or, alternatively, early reviews of Suicide Squad are less than stellar because it isn't a great product?
The reports coming in today from industry publications confirm more plausible explanations: the Warner Bros. studio and David Ayer, the director, couldn't get the film's tone right after the Batman V Superman response response.
Okay, I get it. You're still not convinced. These critical payoffs funded by Marvel to torpedo the DC movies can't be on the books. Around the world, on the night before Suicide Squad's preview screenings, shadow-faced film executives meet in a parking structure with a man only known by his hacker / YouTube account alias, BillyFartsMoviez. They hand the childlike reviewer a brown paper bag full of money in exchange for his loyalty.
Movie studios oftentimes can't do their actual jobs of making and marketing movies. Do you think they want to add corporate manipulation to their daily workloads?
Movie studios are companies. Companies are boring places full of boring people who just want to go to work and do their jobs.
Morons would rather believe critics have been paid off, rather than believe Suicide Squad could be a bad movie. The world is chaos, people, and a desire to just exist, man. There is no invisible hand.
Suicide Squad is getting hate because the people who have seen it didn't like it. They didn't like it because the pacing was bad. They didn't like it because the action scenes were rote. They didn't like it because the musical choices seemed like a clear pantomime of Guardians of the Galaxy's fun-loving needle-drops. They didn't like it because it had a tasteless design and it was trashy.
From the sound of it, critics hated how obvious its reshoots were cut in, perhaps betraying a more cohesive, and genuine, original vision. Sucks that such things get lost in the edit sometimes.
Suicide Squad isn't getting hate because of a conspiracy or money changing hands. It's getting hate because people who see a lot of movies are noticing the cracks in this ultra-produced commercial product in their field of expertise.
image via.
