Welp, that was whelming.

Suicide Squad is the third movie in the DC Extended Movie Cinematic Anything Marvel Can Do We Can Also Do Universe, about Amanda Waller, a US intelligence operative, and her handpicked team of really really bad guys who she wants to use to fight Superman. See, since Superman exists, and there are the DC version of mutants evolving (they’re called metahumans here), we need something to fight the Supermen of the universe and that would be Will Smith and Margot Robbie and some other people. Something goes horribly wrong, and they destroy another city.

There are a number of problems, and I shall attack them in a random order.

First: the plot is a mess and doesn’t make a lot of sense. One of the members of Waller’s suicide squad is an archeologist who is possessed by a 6000 year old witch from a culture that was in a unspecified jungle. The Enchantress is controlled by Waller because she keeps the Enchantress’s heart in a box (really) and somehow she still breaks away and decides to end the world because she’s mad about the whole heart in a box thing. So the squad is called to stop her, or something? Lots of things blow up. Lots of people die, so DC is tripling down on the nameless collateral damage of their movies.

Second: I’m deliberating burying The Problem of Jared Leto in the middle. He’s made a bunch of hay out of how ~method~ he went playing the Joker, like sending dead animals and bullets and sex toys to his castmates and being like “Well, it’s METHOD” and asshole, that’s shit you get away with because you’re a white dude, and if any woman tried that, or any person of color, or god forbid, a woman of color, they would be immediately eviscerated in the press and be labeled as difficult to work with. You’re not method, you’re just an asshole. Also you weren’t that good. For fuck’s sake.

Third: there’s some troubling implications with race. Yes, Will Smith pointed out that there were a lot of people of color in the cast, and that’s awesome. BUT the one Latino dude was an LA gang member. The one Asian woman is a martial arts expert who only has a handful of lines where she either talks about killing or crying over her dead husband. There’s a Native dude in this movie! You haven’t seen him in any of the ads! There’s a reason for that (don’t get attached)!

So there’s that.

Fourth: The Problem of Harley Quinn. There’s two problems with Harley Quinn- the first is that she (along with every other woman in the Squad) is super sexualized. Like, Harley has issues (we’ll get to that), but I feel like she would ACTUALLY wear ACTUAL pants for this kind of thing, not sequined hot pants (and sure, the character “chose” the pants, but the male writer and director made her do that). And also spike heeled sneakers are not that practical either.  Plus, her backstory is a version in which the Joker tortures her into falling in love with him, and then pushes her into a vat of toxic something to…make her more unstable? I’m not sure what the point was, except to make her hair multicolored.

Look, Margot Robbie KILLS it: “I am known to be quite vexing!” (I like her more and more and more each time I see her), and there are a lot of layers to what she pulls off, but I swear, I saw more of her butt in this movie than I did in The Wolf of Wall Street. And she was SUPER naked in Wolf of Wall Street.  Harley herself is one of the most beloved characters DC has, and she deserves to be treated with more respect than she was here.

Also, I don’t really feel like I’m qualified to talk too much about the nature of her instability, but there’s mention of voices talking to her, and just generally being “off,” and while this is “comic book mental illness” being portrayed here, the portrayal itself was distasteful to me in a way I can’t quite articulate. Is it good? Harmful? I don’t know, and I don’t know how to approach it except to say it was A Thing That is In the Film, and I Disliked It.

Other problems also include:

• cutting too fast so you can’t read all the text on the screen
• too many people being introduced with too little substance
• lots and lots and lots of destruction porn
• and women getting punched in the face for being mouthy

Yay.

The cast all was great (save Method Bro), especially Will Smith, who is a professional, and Viola Davis, who elevates everything she is in and we don’t deserve her.

Basically, this is a mess, and it’ll still make a buttload of money, just probably not a fuckton. My advice: if you want to see it, it’s not worth spending money on. Wait until you can see it without having to lose a few dollars.

Suicide Squad is in theaters now and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.