WHY I THINK SUICIDE SQUAD WILL BE A BETTER MOVIE THAN BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN
People way smarter than me have made great points as to the problems with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN. To be fair, all we’ve seen so far are a couple of trailers and some leaked footage and that’s hardly enough information to use in judging an entire film. But the points seem solid. Here are some of the most popular theories, paraphrased by me.
- BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN is too dark. As in, physically too dark. The massive color correction and dulled tone of the movie essentially cast the two heroes in exactly the same light. When both sides of battle look exactly the same, it’s hard to know what each side is bringing to the battle.
- BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN is too dark. Patton Oswalt perfectly summed up the emotional darkness that seems to be all over the movie by saying, “In the Justice League, you have one brooding character – Batman. Everybody is supposed to be colorful and obvious.” So far, all the promotional material seems to show Wonder Woman and Aquaman both just brooding and sullen as the two main characters.
- BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN is too soon. I’m expecting Affleck to do a good job on Batman. I was a doubter at first, but he’s a solid actor and now has a few films under his belt as a director, which I think can only help matters. But I don’t think you can recast a superhero this quickly. It doesn’t matter if we liked Christian Bale or not…what matters is that his Batman is still relatively solidified in our memories. You need time if you’re gonna’ reboot a character.
I’m hoping the BATMAN/SUPERMAN movie is phenomenal, but I’m expecting SUICIDE SQUAD to actually be the better movie.
- The reboots are in smaller chunks. Yes, there’s a new Joker, but there’s no way Leto’s gonna’ get near the screen time that Heath Ledger did. The number of characters in SUICIDE SQUAD will prevent that. Same with any Batman cameos.
- Lesser known brand means fewer expectations. We saw this in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY – most of us walked in having no clue what to expect. And we were surprised. Same with the squad.
- Harley Quinn. She’s the sleeper star of the DC Universe and far more nuanced that lots of other heroes and villains. If Margot Robbie nails this portrayal, we’ll have witnessed the first substantial female DC villain since Michele Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. (And that one wasn’t even that good.) Would love to see the filmmaker build the whole movie around Harley, but I think it’s going to be Joker chewing all the scenery. (Jack Nicholson, anyone?)
- At this point, it looks more colorful. A purple Lamborghini, Batman’s in a lighter gray suit and there’s rumor of the original jester costume for Harley.
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Okay, time for the shameless ploy to get comments:
Which one are you looking forward to most?
In a perfect world (box office receipts aside) which movie will be the better viewing experience?