John Allegretti ’18 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
The squad’s all here … Margot Robbie, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney and Will Smith in Suicide Squad. Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
Superhero movies are going out of style, at least in their current form. The next five years will be similar to the late 80’s, when audiences rejected fantastical films in favor of more realistic entertainment. Suicide Squad is a sort of transitional movie, a gritty action film with colorful elements sprinkled in. And boy, does the new trailer have so many little tidbits of mayhem to examine.
The trailer opens with shots of a dingy prison set to Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. We are introduced to Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn sipping tea in a cell (which seems to be from later in the film judging from her blue and bubblegum-pink hair). Will Smith is shown looking wistfully out a window, hoping that this movie will revive his once great career (a dream I second). We also see what looks like a tattooed war boy from Mad Max: Fury Road conjuring fire from his hand. These eccentric characters (plus a few more the trailer gives us glimpses of) are put together by Viola Davis, someone with ties to the government and a taste for fine dining. Viola Davis in Suicide Squad. Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
The team of super villains is told that they are going somewhere “very bad”. That very bad place is a city that looks like something out of the Godzilla reboot. What caused all that destruction? Aliens? Jared Leto’s Joker? That metallic blue mushroom cloud we see for one shot? The trailer also doesn’t explain what exactly the team is supposed to do. Were they sent there to deal with Jared Leto’s Joker? Did something happen in the upcoming Batman v. Superman movie that needs cleaning up? What is the deal with Jared Leto and Margot Robbie in that dubious vat of chemicals? But in the end all of these are fun little questions that the trailer isn’t obliged to answer. What the trailer does answer is that Suicide Squad offers plenty of gun-crazy action, missile-spewing helicopters, fist-bumping military bros, and a rifle-wielding killer in a panda bear costume (no, seriously). Jared Leto in Suicide Squad. Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
Another thing to note is Suicide Squad’s diverse cast, something the majority of modern superhero films woefully lack. Along with Deadpool, Suicide Squad is a film that seems to relish in the selfish anti-hero. With an over saturation of morally sound characters, the superhero genre is sure to embrace this type of character just as late 80’s/90’s action movies did with Running Scared (1986) and Bad Boys (1995). We’ll have to wait until August to see if Suicide Squad is good or not, but right now it’s exciting to see the film making (and repeating) history.
Check out the trailer below.
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3OZ0eOTLTU[/embedyt]
