...Well, now that everyone's already made up their minds about this movie and they'll be totally useless to everyone, here're my thoughts:
First, the Troubled Production is glaringly obvious throughout. I won't mention it further, save to note that, yes, the film got shredded and suffers for it.
But there were major problems with the film as a whole even discounting that. Here's the biggest one: the entire Joker/Harley subplot. All of it. It's not badly acted or presented, but it had no business being here. It eats up huge amounts of time without really serving the film, and the film in turn doesn't serve it well. If the previous DC film should have been a sequel to another movie, this subplot should have been a part of it.
And with Harley and Joker slurping up all the screentime they can, enough isn't left over to develop all the other characters, most of whom I frankly found much more interesting.
El Diablo would've almost made a better focus character than Deadshot. Killer Croc has an interesting story arc about regaining his humanity by being treated like a human again. Katana is superbly-acted when the actress is allowed to act, yet the script does little with her but have her stand around posing and almost literally everything we know about her comes from clumsy info-dumps from Flagg. There just isn't enough time spent making anyone but Deadshot and Harley seem like they're getting closer and learning to like one another. And if we'd just jettisoned their whole plot, we would've had plenty of screentime to go round, rather than making better characters fight over scraps.
And the villains are a boring disappointment. Badly sketched-out, with cloudy motivations and indistinctly-omnipotent superpowers. For better or worse, previous DC movies had much better-characterized bad guys than these, and I say that as someone who intemperately hates their version of Luthor. They could've stepped out of a lower-tier Marvel movie!
All of that said... the film as a whole is still fun. Structurally kind of a mess, but fun. Will Smith gets some room to be funny and charismatic, and all the other characters really own their roles. Even Flagg, who could've been a boring "boy scout" gets enough effort from his actor to be very likable and human.
And, sure, the special effects might not be anything to write home about, but when the villains don't look like something out of Thor: The Dark World, their design is interesting. I liked the creepy multi-eyed henchmen, for instance.
I don't know if a director's cut will really save this film, since the biggest problem, the Joker/Harley plot, is pretty deep in its DNA. But, like all previous DC efforts, I find it's still a good enough time to overcome its gaping flaws.
Fun, but a bloody mess with critical problems.
...Well, now that everyone's already made up their minds about this movie and they'll be totally useless to everyone, here're my thoughts:
First, the Troubled Production is glaringly obvious throughout. I won't mention it further, save to note that, yes, the film got shredded and suffers for it.
But there were major problems with the film as a whole even discounting that. Here's the biggest one: the entire Joker/Harley subplot. All of it. It's not badly acted or presented, but it had no business being here. It eats up huge amounts of time without really serving the film, and the film in turn doesn't serve it well. If the previous DC film should have been a sequel to another movie, this subplot should have been a part of it.
And with Harley and Joker slurping up all the screentime they can, enough isn't left over to develop all the other characters, most of whom I frankly found much more interesting.
El Diablo would've almost made a better focus character than Deadshot. Killer Croc has an interesting story arc about regaining his humanity by being treated like a human again. Katana is superbly-acted when the actress is allowed to act, yet the script does little with her but have her stand around posing and almost literally everything we know about her comes from clumsy info-dumps from Flagg. There just isn't enough time spent making anyone but Deadshot and Harley seem like they're getting closer and learning to like one another. And if we'd just jettisoned their whole plot, we would've had plenty of screentime to go round, rather than making better characters fight over scraps.
And the villains are a boring disappointment. Badly sketched-out, with cloudy motivations and indistinctly-omnipotent superpowers. For better or worse, previous DC movies had much better-characterized bad guys than these, and I say that as someone who intemperately hates their version of Luthor. They could've stepped out of a lower-tier Marvel movie!
All of that said... the film as a whole is still fun. Structurally kind of a mess, but fun. Will Smith gets some room to be funny and charismatic, and all the other characters really own their roles. Even Flagg, who could've been a boring "boy scout" gets enough effort from his actor to be very likable and human.
And, sure, the special effects might not be anything to write home about, but when the villains don't look like something out of Thor: The Dark World, their design is interesting. I liked the creepy multi-eyed henchmen, for instance.
I don't know if a director's cut will really save this film, since the biggest problem, the Joker/Harley plot, is pretty deep in its DNA. But, like all previous DC efforts, I find it's still a good enough time to overcome its gaping flaws.