Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

So does anyone else think this game's lackluster performance is one of the reasons WB has decided to delist their Adult Swim games? WB might have taken the wrong lesson from this and figured they shouldn't focus so much on videogames.

Edited by M84 on Mar 12th 2024 at 11:26:09 PM

No, WB is doing massive cuts to anything geek or comic related.

I think you'll note that the stuff they keep cutting are of a very specific kind.

Scifi, fantasy, superheroes, and cartoons.

I think they do want her to be a female Deadpool, though. The problem is then if other characters/and or the narrative treat her as genuinely heroic as opposed to a wildcard and potential nuisance or enemy, that can still be useful in a team that do grittier stuffs (like Deadpool in X-force).

Ironically her initial vilain appearance in Batman Ta S ends up as one of her more redeemable-looking since it didn't go as over the top as the comics or other incarnations in term of violence.

Nothing ironic about it, really. Batman TAS had restraint that the comics lack. Even the Arkham games had a level of restraint its comic book tie-ins lack.

The thing with Deadpool is that he's very unpopular with the superhero community because he's a violent mercenary and his madcap personality makes him unbearable to be around.

It helps keep him likable, cause yeah he is a spotlight hog and he has a very obnoxious personality, so having the heroes not being able to stand him is giving actual flaws that prevent him from being a total creator's pet.

Harley suffers from the fact she is as obnoxious as Deadpool yet she does not get the same in-universe reaction, where characters are instead bizarrely enabling of her being an annoying lunatic.

There's a scene in the current Birds of Prey run thats a perfect microcosm of this. When the team is all together planning, and Harley gets all up in Zealot's business, being an annoying chatterbox to a virtual stranger and all Zealot does is give her a silent confused look.

And keep in mind Zealot is a centuries old no-nonsense proud warrior race alien woman, so you'd think she would at least be visibly annoyed at this annoying clown-lady she barely knows invading her personal space but no she just allows her to continue making an ass of herself. If Deadpool were to pull that shit he would either get insulted or slapped away for invading someone's bubble.

Exactly. I don't think they could make Harley a full heroic character (unless she go through character development to go from anti-hero to that), but she should be treated as a anti-hero.

I know. That's what I was saying. The ironic part is that the version of her that was still fully in her villainous days (with some hints that she could be redeemable) ends up looking more heroic than the versions that tries to sell her as a hero.

I think it's cause villain Harley was arrested then which at least lent a veneer of consequence for her actions.

Like sure Batman wants Harley to rehabilitate herself bit he's not just gonna let her off Scott Free. First dhe needs to be charged for her actual crimes, do some time getting the help she needs, and then afterwards he'll help transition her back into society as a civillian.

But now she's basically just given a slap on the wrist, all the heroes enable her instability simply because she's no longer working with Joker. She still commits crimes and kills people, but no one cares about doing anything about that.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 13th 2024 at 4:32:15 AM

Does that make her a Creator's Pet?

Kinda? Look at Gunn's Peacemaker for example but even there Peacemaker does suffer blowback from his actions. I don't think Harley ever dies or gets seriously hurt during her time in the squad.

Edited by Mizerous on Mar 13th 2024 at 7:54:55 AM

Oh she's definitely a Creator's Pet. Her and Deadshot.

Oh no Deadshot doesn't count.

He gets nowhere near the level of spotlight, overpromotion, and favoritism Harley gets.

Hell Deadshot is still typically used as a villain in stories that do end in him getting his ass kicked. That disqualifies him from being a Creator's pet.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 13th 2024 at 7:42:08 AM

In the comics, yes. But WBD is clearly trying to frame Deadshot as a badass antihero protagonist in other works.

That doesn't make him a Creator's Pet though.

It's an issue of overexposure sure but he's not a Creator's Pet specifically.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 13th 2024 at 7:49:05 AM

Overexposure to the point of annoying some of the audience is Creator's Pet in a nutshell.

It's a ymmv trope of course, but the bottom line is the dissonance between how much the people behind a character like said character and how much the audience does not like said character.

The Suicide Squad in general could be considered a Creator's Pet team, given WB's insistence on trying to make it popular.

Edited by M84 on Mar 13th 2024 at 10:52:27 PM

Yes but I wouldn't really count Deadshot specifically as one. Its a weird group technicality where the character's are individually well-liked but its the same exact line-up thats become tiring.

People aren't really tried of King Shark, just how sterile the 4-man squad line-up is.

Deadshot isn't being promoted as a solo effort, Harley is. Harley has the Suicide Squad property, and her own solo works like her cartoon promoting her. Which is where all the frustration with the character stems from, as it feels like the Suicide Squad property is being used primarily as a marketing vehicle just to give her own team and make more Harley stuff.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 13th 2024 at 8:02:08 AM

I'm still really bothered by how this is set in the Arkhamverse when it didn't need to be at all. Like, if this was its own universe with its own Justice League and own Suicide Squad, then that would be fine and all the continuity hiccups wouldn't be there. But because it is set in the Arkham, it feels like we missed a whole game of Batman coming out of hiding and joining the newly formed Justice League. A game that we won't get now that the whole Justice League is dead.

Yeah, this game kind of ruined the Arkham-verse. Rocksteady and WBD really threw their whole legacy into the garbage fire.

Kind of like what Zaslav is doing to the company!

Ironically by releasing something instead of shelving it.

Y'know, why couldn't it be in the story that Waller still orders the Suicide Squad to kill the Justice League, but Wonder Woman is able to convince her to capture the brainwashed Justice Leaguers to be able to reverse the brainwashing. So Waller orders them to capture them, and if they kill any of the Leaguers, they get their heads blown off for failure. It can still be the same game, but we'll call it "Suicide Squad: Save the Justice League" instead.

Not much thought was put on the story, it seems. Or on how many more people like the Justice League in comparison to the SS.

The devs didn't realize that the League being brainwashed victims and legitimately nice people made us not want to root for the Squad.

Especially with how shallow and depthless the Squad are.

I mean, I'd further go so far to state the game seems to assume its intended audience are Iron Age edgeboys who think Superman and Batman are stupid.

Y'know, early into the game, it sure was convenient that Captain Boomerang kept The Flash's thumb that he had accidentally cut off, which is later used to get into the actual Hall of Justice. If The Flash had used his index finger for the fingerprint scan, the Suicide Squad would have been boned.

Edited by AFan on Mar 15th 2024 at 11:56:11 AM

So what was the point of putting in the main universe Lex in the game, and then kill him off shortly after introducing him, but replace him with him from an alternate universe, who acts basically the same as normal Lex? Why not just keep normal Lex?

Okay, Kill the Suicide Squad tangent: The Lex Luthor mission makes no sense. So Brainiac sends The Flash to go get Luthor to tell him what he knows. But when Flash actually has Luthor, he stuffs him in a cargo box, and Brainiac, who has technology that can transport any member in his force to his ship immediately like with how Batman captured Flash while inside a building, DOESN'T use that technology to get Lex onto his ship and instead summons a big ass cannon. And then after the Suicide Squad destroys it and goes to get Lex, who wasn't taken while they were fighting the cannon and seemingly kills The Flash after Lex gets the drop on him with his tech via the bus he was launched into exploding, only for the Flash to kill Luthor, who again, Brainiac wanted alive to get the info out of him, by taking his heart out while no one was looking. And Flash DOESN'T do this to the Suicide Squad, who just destroyed that big ass cannon not five minutes ago.

Final thing. It's more of a nitpick, but when Deadshot tries to shoot The Flash with Boomerang warning him not to take the shot because he's The Flash, should have also said the "Why don't you just mail me the bullet?!" line, for a funny Strange Minds Think Alike moment.

Edited by AFan on Mar 16th 2024 at 11:22:54 AM