Suicide Squad Movie

"The Weasel."

A criminal nicknamed the Weasel, huh? Then why does he need a mocap-

"Is an actual weasel man."

... comics.

According to a new report, John Cena is indeed playing Peacemaker, but Idris Elba is playing Vigilante.

Having the Asian actress play a literal yellow-skinned alien whose father's name in Mongul sounds like it might not go over well.

Sorry, I meant to say that Mongul was her father's name.

Edited by windleopard on Oct 16th 2019 at 2:14:10 AM

I mean, technically, her name is Mongal.

While the character himself is ultimately fairly harmless and a standard evil space dictator with nothing in the way of actual Asian associations, I did get the feeling that he might've gotten some inspiration from Yellow Peril villains like Ming the Merciless at the start for those reasons.

Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 16th 2019 at 5:57:20 AM

The actual Yellow Peril aliens are the Dominators. Seriously.

Of course, then there is literally a character whose name is Yellow Peri.

James Gunn Defends Racebending White Characters

Edited by FOFD on Sep 15th 2020 at 11:39:56 AM

Good dude, that James Gunn.

Weasel looks really awful.

Trailer is out. It looks...uhh...no comment.

John Ostrander is the injection tech at 47 seconds in.

Well it certainly looks like… something. I’m not sure what, but something.

Also, did they actually include freaking Polka Dot Man?

Gotta have someone to kill off. It's gotta be Polka Dot Man because he's the fodderiest fodder that ever foddered, or King Shark, because CGI.

I feel like Blackguard and Javelin have more fodder attached to their names and looks.

Plus unlike Polka-Dot Man they don’t have powers.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 26th 2021 at 6:16:30 AM

Pretty much everything about Polka Dot Man makes me suspect he's a shoe-in to live tbh.

He's the oddball choice (a goofy, campy Silver Age character in a gritty modern universe), which means throwing him in just to kill him is a waste of the movie's weirdest pick in a movie that is selling itself on being weird (the first guy to die in the first movie, in comparison, was the one with the least interesting concept). Then this trailer establishes him as a depressed-seeming Death Seeker, which in a dark comedy means the universe will probably go well out of its way to keep him alive.

If we didn't know Peacemaker was getting a spinoff, he would've been my first pick to die right away. And even then, the Peacemaker show is apparently a prequel so I'm still not entirely convinced.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 26th 2021 at 7:06:34 AM

So we still don't know who Taika Waititi is playing...

Who wants to bet he's Starro?

I like how during the debriefing Peacemaker is writing notes.

He really is committed to this.

And prequel or not, "Peacemaker actually dies in the first 15 minutes of the film despite having his own tv show, fuck you" sounds exactly like the kind of joke James Gunn would do. Idris Elba's Bloodsport dying within minutes is another one I could see considering Elba is the biggest actor in this.

Polka-Dot Man I can actually see dying, but only as the grand last Heroic Sacrifice. Think that role will fall to either him or Ratcatcher.

My general rundown is:

• Safe: Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, King Shark, Rick Flag.
• Probably safe or go out big: Ratcatcher, Polka-Dot Man.
• Coin toss: Sol Soria, The Thinker, Weasel.
• Big Names who might be dying for shock value: Peacemaker, Bloodsport, Mongal.
• Very definitely dying (some like chumps): Javelin, Savant, Blackguard, TDK.

Like, the moment I heard John Cena was playing Peacemaker I thought Dead Star Walking - because that's exactly the kind of gag you would cast a popular (and pop cultural), yet good humored actor like Cena to do. That feeling only went up when we found out they were going overboard in making him a Captain America parody.

I too think Ratcatcher is a possibility for a death. She seems like a good candidate for this movie's "showcases her power in a big way, sacrificing themselves" bit after El Diablo. Like, I imagine a thing in the movie where people either look down on or don't believe in her ability to control rats, but then in a climactic moment she summons hundreds of them or something.

Also, anyone else think the twist for King Shark might be that he's faking being a dumb brute?

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 26th 2021 at 8:24:01 AM

Pleasantly surprised by the trailer, I was concerned it would be a straight GOTG transplant (80's pop songs, lots of cheeky metahumor, division between self-aware characters and those not in on the joke) but it actually feels relatively in line with the style established by the first movie, only bloodier and more absurd. It's a Soft Reboot in terms of the creative team but continuity seems to be respected.

Really sets the tone nicely with Flagg counting down and Bloodsport ready to zip-line up the wall to rescue Harley and she shows up behind them, having gotten out by herself, and sincerely offers to go back in so they can rescue her.

Of course, this also follows on what I've felt when people complained about the first movie going with a supernatural, over-the-top threat. The Suicide Squad needs to be put on a perceived Suicide Mission because the threat is that big and they are seen as expendable, if it's standard black-ops with a mundane enemy something feels lost.

I feel like the supernatural nature of the threat was always Misblamed for the problems with the story, especially seeing as the Suicide Squad have always fought a mix of mundane and very fantastical threats.

The big problem with Enchantress wasn't that she was supernatural, but that the way she was used was off-genre: the whole black ops nature of the team is basically thrown away despite a third of the movie setting it up, because immediately they're actually being sent to fight the army of the damned practically head on. They justify it a little with the whole "extract Waller" subplot, but ultimately the story tried to turn them into the Justice League-lite instead.

If the plot of this one is "the squad drop down in a unstable govt / terrorist cell / whatever to do black ops stuff, only to discover halfway through that everyone is under alien mind control" (which I think I mentioned earlier in the DC Movies thread is a twist on one of their earliest stories) that's far more on-genre for the Squad, and so even though Starro is much bigger and crazier a threat than Enchantress is he would probably work better than the first try.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 26th 2021 at 9:38:08 AM

I think the pitch is more the problem. The first movie both in-and-out of universe set the Task Force X as the direct answer to the question of "What if Superman goes evil? Who do the governent call back on?". That's a insane pitch to the traditional Suicide Squad (and it's closer to Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers in their best days).

The appeal of Suicide Squad in its traditional form is basically superpowered black-ops done in the vein of films like The Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch (the former being explicitly referenced by Gunn this time). I.e they're a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits from mid-to-low-tier villains who are not that far from human whose pitch would be more accurately described as the answer to "How exactly do we do regular black-ops wetwork in a world with superpowered people?". E.g in the classic Ostrander run some of their first missions are just regular black-ops things like "Assassinating foreign targets", "retrieving a person of interest from behind enemy lines" but with superpowered things/people in the midst (e.g superhuman bodyguards or doomsday devices).

"Let's send the Suicide Squad to assassinate a Physical God" is a bit out of their paygrade. Like I said that's the territory of other super-teams that have sprouted over the years (Justice League Elite was basically that in DC, for one, with a roster that could lay low cities at a much higher super weight class than most incarnations of the Squad). While in the comics the Squad has flunctuated over the years I think their roots is at that mid-to-low tier guys doing mid-to-low super things and that's where they work best.

Starro is not an optimal choice but he's guy that can work here because his powerset is usually defined by being very inconsistent even in-universe (with the multiple Starro forms having variable powersets and skill levels, plus the character's tactical focus on mass mind control making it more of a brainwasher than a super-hitter a lot of the time) so they can easily adjust so that the Squad isn't trying to duke out with a goddamn elder god. Plus in this case it looks like Starro was not part of their original mission and they're just imrpovising after things went south in a hurry.

I really enjoyed the trailer! It was so much fun and Harley Quinn as always was the best part of the trailer! Although, I do wonder about whether or not this film is supposed to be a sequel to the first Suicide Squad movie or a reboot of sorts?

Within the original Ostrander run alonne they did things like invade Darkseid's home turf, topple an immortal psychic zombie despot, and get into a dustup with the Justice League. As I said before, the idea that the Suicide Squad was never supposed to face outright fantastical concepts is false: they were always conceived with that in mind as a possibility.

The idea of the Suicide Squad was always more that they act behind the scenes of the DC universe, less than they would specifically fight lower deck and mildly superpowered threats. It's a similar concept as to the Outsiders: that they fight in the same venue as the bigger heroes, but do so in subtler ways. Basically, the concept is a bit of a genre-fusion (superhero characters reinterpreted in a black ops way, rather than an isolated black ops team beneath a superhero world).

As a result, none of those things are at all out of the realm of imagination for the Squad, specifically because when those stories happened they were were written genre-wise to match what the characters were about. It's all about the execution, less than the pitch.

There's not really such a thing as an inherent "pay grade" for a comic book superhero (especially not a DC one, tbh), no matter who they are or what they do. As Stan Lee put it, any character can fight any other character the writer wants them to, with the necessary corollary that its up to the writer to make sure that that fight is well executed to fit the character's story.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 26th 2021 at 11:29:02 AM

As I said in that same post, they have done more outlandish, traditional super things in the past and continue to do so from time to time. It's I (and a lot of people) just think they work better when dealing with smaller, more traditional black-ops things with a super-edge. There's several other super-teams that fit better the niche of "let's punch gods", no reason to make the Squad less interesting and fun by cramming them into that niche as well.

The Darkseid bit, since you brought it up, is actually a nice ilustration of the point I'm making. That entire plot is framed around how the Squad is hopelessly out of their element (so, their element is mid-to-low black-ops with superpowers stuff for that story's purpose) and the entire mission is a stupid, losing battle that they quite explicitly could not win if not for some specific circusmtances and Darkseid going "Wow, you guys didn't die instantly. I'm impressed. You can go.". It's one of the exceptions meant to enforce the rule. The story doesn't work if they're comfortable and peachy.

It's also why you have to be careful with those kind of stories otherwise you run the risk of just making the Squad JL but with villains (which is less fun) if you keep have them fighting gods every other week.

This isn't a discussion of the inherent value of power levels, I'm not a DBZ hardcore talking about Goku's limits. It's just about narratibe framing. A similar discussion can be found in practically every superhero comic book property, like Spider-Man. His general stomping grounds tend to be "mid-tier" urban stuff. It's fun sometimes seeing him hopelessly out of his element fighting gods and whatnot, but that only works if it's not his element to begin with (which is why the more "cosmic" members of his rogues gallery like Judas Traveler and The Inheritors always feel a bit weird and are often rejected in the long-term).