Suicide Squad

Does any type of movie attract more hate than the bad superhero movie?

There are certainly enough bad movies out there. There have been bad action movies, bad romance movies and a whole glut of bad fantasy movies.

But bad superhero movies tend to stand out and be remembered.

Ask anybody to name a bad fantasy movie and they'll probably list a few so-bad-it's-good movies. But when asked to name bad superhero movies? There's a whole frigging list of unsalvageable atrocities.

I think the problem comes from the fact that they're attempting to take something that's already beloved by millions and transform it into money via moviedom, but without taking any time to understand why it's beloved.Take today's movie, as an example.

Finally one of my favourite DC characters is on film and boy, was it disappointing.

I honestly don't know what this movie was supposed to accomplish. Most of these guys are recurring villains from DC superheroes who haven't even gotten their own movies yet.

But it does have Will Smith, so I was willing to give it a chance.

I should not have done so.

The movies starts in Louisiana, showing us an establishing shot of a maximum-security prison.

Rehabili-what now?

We enter and get introduced to two of the inmates. The first is 'Floyd', though he objects to the guards' usage of his given name. The guard is an asshole however, because this is a movie and the guards always need to be assholes.

Every last one of them.

The other prisoner we're introduced to is Harley, whose entire personality can be summed up as 'Crazy but sexy'.

She's both crazy hot and just plain crazy.

And by 'Crazy' I of course mean the kind of crazy that is clearly being portrayed by a sane person who's trying too hard to come off as crazy.

It doesn't help that the writers don't seem to have a clear grasp of why she's a part of the team. In the comics the team was never more than 6 members, whereas in the film they have 6 villains, 2 babysitters for the villains and a whole team of special forces. In a team of 6 having a wildcard who's impossible to predict can be an asset, in such a large group she's just dead weight and in fact causes more problems than she solves.

I guess the director couldn't wait for her backstory reveal to get to the torture porn, could he?

Harley smashes her head against the bars to knock herself out in order to get away from having talk to the guard, to which he responds that she's "A whole of of pretty and a whole lot of crazy."

Because DC movies haven't bothered with subtlety before, so why start now?

Now that we've been briefly introduced to the two recognisable characters in the film, we switch to a secret government meeting which is taking place in a fancy restaurant, where there's no chance that anybody will overhear them.

This restaurant is so fancy they allow people to sell home-made t-shirts outside the front, as though it were market day.

Do I need to bother talking about this? DC has this strange idea that people would worship Superman after the events of Man Of Steel and BvS, despite the fact that Supes caused more destruction than he prevented.

Heck, when she's inside Waller even says that "We got lucky that Superman shared our values." Which apparently doesn't include protecting civilians.

Then again, considering the events of this movie, she may be right there.

Oh yeah, did I not mention? This is Amanda Waller, though obviously not the same Amanda Waller from the Green Lantern movie.

She does look a lot more like her comic book counterpart though.

I feel like it would be a spoiler, but since this movie was such utter trash I'm going to outright tell you straight away. This woman is the bad guy. Everything that happens during this movie occurs due to her own incompetence and arrogance, and her attempts to cover up her failures only makes the situation far worse. She crosses the moral event horizon during the movie, but it's not for the sake of saving humanity, but only for covering her own arse.

I am not a fan of this character, in any of her portrayals.

Well, except one, but I'll save that for later.

Waller is meeting the generals in order to convince them to sign off on a plan of hers called Task Force X.

Which basically translates as "Let's force criminals to do our dirty work."

We will now spend roughly twenty minutes of this movie introducing these characters to you.
Starting with the ones we've already introduced.

Waller introduces her chosen team one-by-one, perfectly illustrating why this kind of character introduction doesn't work.

It's the old adage of "Show, don't tell." 

Waller tells us about these people and what they can do. Sure, there're some pretty visuals to go along with it, but you're pretty much stuck listening to Waller telling us their strengths, weaknesses and how they were apprehended.

First up is the one actor that people will recognise.

If they'd done these as an opening credit sequence, it could have worked. But it wouldn't have had room for Waller to eat food, which the director apparently thought was essential to our enjoyment of the film.

Waller explains that they caught Deadshot by telling Batman about his daughter, allowing Batman to confront Deadshot in front of his little girl.

Because there's no reason why the character of Batman would have a problem with taking a eleven-year-old's father away directly in  front of her.

She vowed that night to fight for a world where no little girl will lose her father to some punk in a costume.

What amuses me is that Waller talks continuously about Superman-level threats, constantly saying things like "What if he wasn't on our side?" (Y'know, like Zod and his people, or Doomsday), but her solution is apparently a guy who's really, really accurate with guns.

Because that worked so well before.

Deadshot's daughter acts as a morality pet, preventing him from trying to kill Batman and just handing himself in.

That thing attached to his arm is a specially-made gun, to prevent him from having to draw a pistol.
So I have no idea why he wasted time drawing a pistol.

Next up we're re-introduced to the one character that people will recognise, Harley Quinn.

Better known as Joker's girlfriend.

Better known as the most cosplayed female character of all time.

I can't help but feel as though a movie about the second Robin would actually be quite good.

Waller tells you that she was a psychiatrist assigned to try and cure the Joker, but she instead fell in love with him and busted him out. He then decided to torture her into insanity along with him, including the acid bath drop.

I hope you like these two seconds of her in her actual costume, because they're all you're gonna get.

Harley of course also gets grabbed by Batman, though the sequence is so stupid I can barely watch it.

Basically, Batman chased them into the river, but by the time he'd swam down to drag them from the wreckage of their car Joker had already escaped. Somehow. Batman got there within a few seconds.

But Batman then got distracted by Harley's unconscious body, which he tries to save. Only Harley was just faking and tries to kill him, so he knocks her out.

She does look surprisingly uninjured for a woman who just went through a windscreen.

Why she got put into a maximum security prison instead of an insane asylum is not explained. Sure, I can guess that Waller pulled some strings, but would it have killed them to have somebody mention that? They would only have had to cut out 2 or three shots of somebody eating something to do it.

Seriously, were they just saving on the catering budget?

Next up are some cinematic debuts, all of which are underwhelming.

This jerk's stealing my fetish.

One thing the 'Psych profile' up there doesn't bother mentioning is that Captain Boomerang has one of the worst cases of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder in history. He was caught bank-robbing immediately after stabbing his partner in the back. And yes, I do mean that in the most literal manner possible.

This cameo would have been a lot better if they'd given Flash his own movie first.

After having given Deadshot and Harley roughly five minutes each (Not including the pre-introductions earlier), Boomerang gets about 1 minute.
Same with the next guy, El Diablo.

This guy.

El Diablo doesn't even get any screentime dedicated to his capture. He gets less than 20 seconds while Waller talks about him in the vaguest terms possible.

I'm not even going to bother talking about this guy outside of the picture captions.

Finally we get to Waller's favourite, the Enchantress.
Not the one from the Thor comics, but the one from Strange Adventures (Though the Marvel one came first by a few years).
The Enchantress is a witch from ancient times whose soul was sealed in a magical totem and lost to the ages, at least until the world's worst archaeologist discovered it.

"An ancient artefact that could make my name legend. I should probably break it open."

Interestingly enough this wasn't her original backstory. June Moon was originally an artist granted the ability to transform by saying a codeword, a power granted by a crazy old wizard.
So she was Captain Marvel, but female.
Her backstory here is actually kinda stolen from, of all people, the Juggernaught.
But I digress. Waller says that she has control over the Enchantress due to owning her heart.
I don't mean that in any soppy way, Waller literally has her heart in a briefcase.
Where did they find this heart? Inside the cave where she first showed up. Because why would the evil ancient witch take her one weakness with her when she can just leave it unguarded?

How Waller stopped her initial release and got a hold of her heart would have also made a decent movie.

How do they know her exact age, even down to the year?
Waller doesn't just have her heart though, she's also got a backup plan. This involves ordering a soldier named Rick Flag to keep an eye on her. Flag and Moone fell in love with each other, which was apparently Waller's plan.
Because when you have an unstoppable witch with unknown powers, it's best if you have her bodyguard devoted to her. That way, if she goes rogue, he'll have no second-thoughts about shooting her.
Oh wait, no, that's fucking stupid.
Her stated reason for this? To "Make people act against their own interests for the sake of the US."

Pictured: A guy who already works for the US.

Yeah, Waller assigned Flag so that she could have more leverage over Flag, not the other way around. But this was entirely unnecessary since she's already Flag's boss.
After this scene of Waller trying to convince people in military outfits to back her Task Force X idea, we get a new scene at the Pentagon, where Waller is trying to convince more people in military outfits to back her Task Force X idea.
If that statement seems needlessly repetitive, it's because it is.
One of the people is saying that they had no contingency plan for Superman. He makes this point by talking about other contingency plans they have, such as the 'What if N. Korea has nukes' contingency plan.
The contingency plan doesn't seem to involve blocking the President's Twitter access, btw.

It's a good thing there's no Task Force X in the real world, because everybody would know about it after five minutes.

Waller talks a lot about the Meta-humans who will be fighting the next wars, but forgets to mention that only 3 of the seven people she's chosen are actually Meta-humans. Croc, Enchantress and El Diablo. The rest are just normal people. Skilled, yes, but not Meta-powered.
The head General isn't convinced and wants no part of it, so Waller has the Enchantress steal some documents from the weapons ministry vault in Tehran.

"So if the Enchantress can do this, why would we need those others?"
A question literally everybody should be asking.

They authorise Task Force X with no further questions, because they're all idiots.
Anyway, Waller decides to go round up her team from Belle Reve. Most of the meetings are rather pointless from a cinematic standpoint, though El Diablo refuses to sign up due to his newfound pacifism.

This makes him the only truly likeable character on the team.

For some reason they decide that they need Deadshot to provide them with an example of his skills. Something not required of any of the other members.

Can't possibly imagine why.

When they hand Deadshot a loaded gun the first thing he does is point it at the guard who was a jerk to him before. Which leads to the one funny joke in the entire movie.

"If he pulls that trigger, shoot him. Then go clear my browser history."

For some reason I can't fathom, Waller encourages Deadshot to pull the trigger. It's really confusing, since it turns out that they gave him a working gun after all.
Deadshot proceeds to show off his skills, making holes in targets and then firing machine gun rounds through those holes.
It occurs to me that there sure are a lot of superheroes whose only power is being really, really accurate with guns.
After proving his skill Deadshot tells Flag his terms. Namely, being released, having custody of his daughter and his ex's boyfriend never going near his daughter. Flag nods as if to agree, then responds by saying that he doesn't care what Deadshot wants since he's never getting it.
It doesn't occur to anybody that maybe, just maybe, the professional mercenary might be willing to do the job better if he's given what he wants. He might even be willing to do jobs in the future. Maybe even at a discount if they pull strings to get that custody thing done.
Nope, they'd rather blackmail him and act like arseholes, giving him more than enough reasons to shoot them in the back later.

There is precisely one intelligent person in this picture and he's being handcuffed.

Meanwhile, one of the Joker's henchmen has found out where Harley is and is telling Joker.

Well, some guy with a serious knife fetish at least.

Jared Leto's interpretation of the Joker is very polarising. I've heard a lot of people talking about how he's trying too hard to outdo Heath Ledger. I've also heard a lot of people saying that he's very hot and so it doesn't matter.
My opinion?
Well, if you've read my Dark Knight reviews, you'll know that I couldn't stand Heath Ledger. I found his interpretation unfunny and annoying to watch. His vision of a tortured clown didn't scream 'Joker' to me.
But I genuinely prefer it to Jared Leto.
His appearance may be better, but he seems to be trying to growl every single word he says. This scene here is the one time I can remember him laughing.
And even his laugh sounds like he's in pain.
You know who I want to see as the Joker? Mark Hamill. I don't care if he's super old now, just dye his beard green and call it a day.

He's pretty much already doing it.

Joker manages to get a hold of the jerk guard and squeezes him for information.
How did Joker get a hold of him?
Easy, the jerk was gambling in one of the Joker's casinos.
...
Let that sink in for a moment.
The chief guard for a maximum security black-site prison was gambling in a seedy casino.
...
You'd think the American government would keep better track of the people they put in charge of such places. Some kind of round-the-clock security to make sure he never gets compromised. Tabs on his family and loved ones. Stuff like that.
But nope, let's allow him to go rack up gambling debts. There's no way a casino could have connections to anybody he's in charge of keeping locked up.

Maybe that well-known crime lord who's girlfriend he keeps molesting?

Meanwhile, at a hotel in Washington, Moone whispers the word 'Enchantress' in her sleep, transforming her into her villainous alter-ego.
She then teleports to Waller, but can't retrieve her heart due to some kind of self-destruct lock on the case.
So she just steals the jar containing her brother's soul instead.
Which was in Waller's possession, but not locked away or anything.
Despite them knowing that the Enchantress can teleport.
Could Waller possibly be any more incompetent?

She could have her phone on silent, or at least quiet enough not to wake her.

Enchantress takes her brother's jar to a nearby city and releases him, making me wonder why the heck she didn't do that the moment she was freed from her own jar.
Oh, would you like to know the reason Flag cut his phone call short? Because the Enchantress showed him a vision of June dying.
These people don't even bother fighting for the Idiot Ball, they just hand them out like sweets on Halloween.
So Enchantress has released her brother, named Incubus, in a random city. What do you think she told him to do?
Well, it's a DC movie, so I'm going to go with murderise absolutely everybody within the city. Was I right?

Was I ever?

So the military people from earlier authorise Task Force X to be activated and we get a montage of everybody being dragged out of their cells by force.
Then injected with micro-bombs. Something Waller could have told the military people earlier, rather than arguing for ages.

They didn't put one of these inside the Enchantress because...?
Oh right, they have her heart.
So, they didn't put one of these inside her heart because...?

After everyone is injected with a bomb, they're wheeled to a waiting plane. But on the way, the jerk guard rushes up to Harley and very loudly tells her that she has a message from 'Mr. J'.
Whilst handing her a phone.

And nobody saw or heard him do it.

Meanwhile, at a laboratory owned by Wayne Enterprises, the Joker is breaking in to find the guy who developed the bombs.
Let me run that by you again.
The Joker.
Is breaking in.
To a laboratory.
Owned by Wayne Enterprises.
To find the guy who developed micro-bombs.
That were sold to the US military.

I can't help but feel as though a certain someone should already be moving to intercept whatever's going on.

Meanwhile, back with Incubus.
The other bad guy.
Wait, what's that? This superhero movie has multiple bad guys? And it ended up being an over-complicated mess? You'd think they'd learn by now.
Anyhoo, Incubus is still in the subway murdering people.

Here he is, taking sustained fire from multiple soldiers. I'm sure a chick with a hammer will prove his undoing.

Flag and Moone are directly beneath Incubus and Moone transforms, only to bolt immediately.
Waller starts stabbing her heart, but Enchantress reaches her brother and he uses his power to sustain her.
Yes, it makes no sense to me either, just roll with it.

Stupid movie is stupid.

The process also apparently gives Enchantress a new costume and a power upgrade.

If you came to this movie to see Enchantress working alongside the rest of the team, tough luck.

Enchantress immediately starts using this extra power to build a machine to destroy humanity. Her reasoning is that humans used to worship them, but now they worship machines, and she loves irony.
So the movie gets points for trying to be original with the villainous motivations.

It immediately loses those points by including a giant blue sky thing.

Meanwhile, the titular Suicide Squad is being delivered to their staging point outside the city.
After some (Very bad) attempts at humour we get introduced to YET ANOTHER member of the team.
We're 40 minutes in and we still haven't been introduced to everybody yet, despite having three sequences dedicated to introducing the characters.
Anyway, this member is called Slipknot and is introduced as "The man who can climb anything." Because when you're going up against world-shatteringly powerful supernatural monsters, you really want a guy who's good with ropes.

I'm sure this guy will be vital to the plot.

The villains are given their equipment so that they can prepare for a fight and we see Harley squealing in delight when she sees her costume, though she never actually wears it.
They speak to Waller through a computer tablet and she explains that this is a rescue mission. Inside Midway City is a high-value target which they need to extract.
She explains this surrounded by several support staff.
Little spoiler warning here: Waller herself is the target.
My meaning here is that she's requesting a rescue of herself and only herself, directly in front of her support staff. And none of them question this.

What's the betting that her support staff get to survive?

They clamber aboard the helicopter and are joined by YET ANOTHER member.

For the record, this is not a good way to introduce an ensemble cast.

Flag introduces her as Katana, who's here to watch his back. She's the only outright hero in this movie. It also would have made sense for her to have accompanied Flag earlier, so that she doesn't feel like she was thrown into the movie at the last moment to fulfil a very specific purpose.
Whilst on the helicopter, Harley gets a text message.
Y'know, on the phone she's not meant to have.

I'm sure it's nothing important.

Harley even whispers a "Shhh" to Deadshot.
Whilst Flag is sitting directly opposite her.
This plan to rescue her should not work. But it's done by the Joker, so of course it will go off without a hitch.
Speaking of things that shouldn't go well but do, the helicopter gets shot out of the sky.

Well, they're all dead.

Actually no, they all survive.
The team start moving on foot, making me wonder why the screenwriters even bothered having the helicopter get shot down if nobody's going to even comment on it.
On their way, Boomerang and Slipknot discuss the micro-bombs that have been implanted into their necks. Boomerang is skeptical that such a bomb can even exist and convinces Slipknot to make a break for it.

He didn't even make it ten minutes.

Yup, it turns out that the bombs were real and Flag is willing to explode someone's head at the slightest provocation.
I guess we'll never see the thrilling spectacle of a man and his ropes versus two ancient supernatural gods.
Shame.
After a few moments of shock everybody starts moving again and Deadshot has quite an interesting conversation with Harley.
Namely, asking if her 'friend' will be helping with his neck bomb too.

You'd think the soldiers would pay attention when the career murders were chatting to each other, but apparently not.

Around the next corner Flag's right-hand man spots some 'hostiles' down the street.
Y'know what, Flag's right-hand man pops up every now and then and is actually relevant to the plot, so I'm going to have to come up with a nickname for him.

 I shall call him Cappy.

And speaking of the 'hostiles', we get a good look at them.

I didn't know that Lord Zedd was the main bad guy in this movie.

The hostiles spot Flag and start charging, completely shrugging off all of the bullets directed at them. Except for headshots.
Once they reach the soldiers Katana charges into battle and is basically a badass. Turns out that her magic sword is very good at stopping magic goons.

Why are they bothering with the squad again? They could just send this woman in and call it a day.

The squad do help fight off the monsters, except for El Diablo, who just finds a place to sit the fight out. 
This doesn't make sense.
Sure, El Diablo is a pacifist an refuses to hurt anybody. But these monsters clearly aren't people anymore. And by not fighting them he's just allowing more people to needlessly die.
But anyway, the fight ends when Deadshot climbs on top of a police car and just headshots all of the charging enemies.

Horde mode.

It looks call and everything, but since all of the monsters go down from a single headshot, I can't help but feel as though the trained soldiers should have been able to hold them off without his help. The monsters were all coming from a single direction, just aim at head height and pull the trigger.
After the battle everybody (Cappy included) are asking Flag questions about what just happened. Flag declines to actually answer anything and they all start moving again.
Meanwhile, the other group of soldiers that had gone on ahead have managed to get themselves captured. I wonder how they're doing?

Quite well, by the looks of it.

Enchantress's kiss turns the soldier into one of her monsters. On one hand, this explains how she can turn people into Putty-patrollers. On the other, considering how large her army is, did she have to snog all of them?
But that's enough of that, let's get back to the squad and see what they're up to.

They're busy being eye candy.

This scene perfectly encapsulates my problem with this movie.
It starts off with Harley stealing something and making a joke about it.
Then Deadshot spots something that reminds him of his daughter and he has a serious moment.

That outfit is almost identical to the one his daughter was wearing. What a coincidence.

My problem with this isn't necessarily anything specific. But imagine if they'd been cut the other way around. Imagine if Deadshot was having a serious moment, maybe Flag could be about to say something, and then Harley smashes the window and steals something.
That would have been a good scene. It's the kind of scene you expect from Guardians Of The Galaxy. It works on film.
This?
It feels as though they didn't know what they wanted the film to be.
Serious? Funny? A deconstruction? A parody? Dark? Light? Realistic? Supernatural?
It can't decide what it wants to be and so it tries to be everything but succeeds at none of them.
They reach their target building and Flag runs through the plan.
It involves landing a helicopter on the roof.

I wonder who John F. Ostrander was?

Gee, if only they'd had some helicopters earlier. Like the spare one they were using at the beginning of the mission.
And also, we know that Waller is the target. Waller's supposed to be the kind of government type who's prepared for anything. So why didn't she have a helicopter on the roof earlier? Heck, why didn't she evacuate when Incubus first started killing people in the subway? Or at least request an escape helicopter be sent before she sent in Enchantress?
In fact, when Flag approahces the building, he radios Waller and asks her to get the chopper ready.
Meaning that she did have a chopper prepared to extract her.
So why the heck did she need the Suicide Squad?

They enter the building, which appears to be empty. Harley jumps in an elevator without bothering to wait for anybody else and gets jumped by one of the monsters.

Why the monster was waiting above the elevator is anybody's guess.

Harley manages to fend off two of the monsters in the elevator by herself and when she exits she smirks at the rest of the team, who're there waiting for her.

How did they get there before she did? How did they know what floor she was going to?

They get to another room and are ambushed by more monsters, but the fighting is kinda boring and doesn't amount to much other than wasting more time.
After that room's cleared they face yet more monsters in the next room. 
So Deadshot decides to rile up El Diablo in order to get him to actually help.

Impressive.

What annoys me about this scene is how out-of-the-blue it is. Deadshot so far has barely spoken two words to El Diablo. And El Diablo himself has barely had any screen time to build up his character.
They bust through into a stairway and start climbing, with Harley having a flashback to when she jumped into a vat of acid to be like the Joker.
When she comes out of her flashback she's alone with Deadshot, because none of the soldiers thought to keep an eye on the two serial killers that they bought with them.

She refers to Deadshot as "A textbook sociopath", reminding us of her Psychiatry Doctorate.

Once again, it was a mostly pointless scene, giving us nothing more than time spent with the two characters we already know most about.
They finally reach their destination and Flag goes on alone to meet her.
Waller reveals why she didn't leave when she had the chance earlier.
She says that she was studying Enchantress and her ability to, and I quote, "Take a yoga mom and turn her into a soldier that can take a headshot and still fight."
Remember when Deadshot was shooting the monsters and I very specifically kept using the word headshot? Since it was the only thing that could take them down?
Yeah, Waller's an idiot.

Pictured: An idiot.

As Deadshot walks in Waller finishes packing her things and she decides to clear up some loose ends.
By murdering her support staff.

Told you that she was the bad guy.

There are a million things wrong with what Waller's doing here.
She says that none of her people had clearance, but considering that they were all working for a clandestine agency which Waller had to get permission to run, it doesn't line up. She's just trying to prevent anybody from revealing that the destruction of Midway City and the deaths of presumably thousands of civilians lie on her incompetent hands.
After they leave and get to the roof, a helicopter is already there waiting for them.

Why yes, this does make the entirety of the action scenes completely pointless.

But don't worry, the movie's not over just yet (Sadly), because this helicopter isn't actually there to save them. It's there to save Harley. Because it's been hijacked by the Joker. Somehow. The details aren't important.

Also not important? How Joker plans to ensure Harley doesn't get hit by a stray bullet.

Harley's bomb gets disarmed just in time for her to stand up and walk towards the helicopter.

Somehow still managing to not get hit by any of the bullets.

Harley jumps onto a rope dangling from the helicopter, which turns to fly away. Waller tries to explode her neck, but finds out that it's disarmed, so instead she orders Deadshot to do it.
He at first refuses, but Waller offers him his freedom, so he shoots her.

Just like Silverfox, she looks surprisingly uninjured after a fatal injury.

Harley springs back up and Deadshot tells Waller that "He missed".
So why Waller doesn't blow his head up for disobeying orders is a complete mystery.
Seriously, she's literally just killed people for less.
Waller gets on the radio and orders the helicopter to be shot down.
So why the heck did she bother with ordering Deadshot to do it?
This movie is so stupidly inconsistent.

That's two helicopters that have been shot out of the air and nobody important died either time.

Harley falls out of the back of the helicopter and lands on the roof of a skyscraper, completely uninjured because she's popular.

Yeah, this looks survivable.

The second helicopter comes to extract Waller.
Meaning that this was entirely pointless, since the objective got completed anyway.
Waller tells them to wait for another helicopter (Because she's proven herself so trustworthy so far) which makes no sense. If the next helicopter would have enough space for them, surely this one would? I wonder why she would need to be in a helicopter all by herself with none of the other major characters?

Ah, so that when this (Third) helicopter crash happens, nobody else is inconvenienced by it.

Flag gets told about the crash, so he and the team set out to rescue her. Again.
On the way, they run across somebody that they didn't expect to see again.

Making the ENTIRE 'Joker rescues Harley' subplot COMPLETELY POINTLESS.

Harley is accepted back into the team with literally no comment from Flag. He doesn't say anything about the fact that her escape attempt cost the lives of several of his men.
Meanwhile, back with the actual villain of the movie (Yeah, Joker was just a minor villain) and Enchantress has retrieved her heart from Waller.

Remember this plot? This is supposed to be the main plot of the movie.

In the wreckage of the helicopter Deadshot finds Waller's top secret files. He demands that Flag tell them what happened and he does so. Namely, he explains how Enchantress escaped from Waller's control.
Deadshot gets angry and decides to walk into a nearby bar and get a drink, because this movie clearly has been going too fast and needs to slow down for a moment.

No explanation for why Katana's there with them though.

Deadshot starts talking about how he hoped he could be seen as a hero or something, it doesn't really make much sense and I've stopped caring. El Diablo explains his backstory in an attempt to put Deadshot in his place.
Basically, El Diablo was a gangster who was on top of the world due to his powers. But in a fit of rage he murdered his wife and child, which caused him to re-evaluate who he was and he turned himself in.
I don't have a major problem with the story, though I don't see why they had to change it from the comics.
See, in the comics it wasn't his wife and child that he killed. It was the wife and child of a rival druglord. He was just exterminating a rival and he found their charred remains in the wreckage.
I think the original's better. Because even though he was angry and a murderer, he never purposefully killed a child. In the comic, it was the revelation that he had caused a child to die which provoked his change in attitude. Since he attacked his wife on purpose in the movie, it lacks some of that 'Gut-punch' feeling, and you lose some sympathy.

In other words, I have less sympathy for El Diablo.

Flag shows up and explains to them about his love for June Moone, who's trapped inside the Enchantress. He emphasizes his point by breaking his phone, meaning that he can no longer explode their heads. He says that it means he isn't ordering them, he's asking them to help him.

Good-bye Captain Boomerang.

Why is Harley checking her neck? Her bomb was already destroyed.
They all decide to go with Flag and save the world, being joined by Boomerang when they get outside.
They get to the subway station but stop when they catch sight of Incubus. Flag tells them about the massive bomb he left beneath the subway, but the tunnel's been flooded.

This looks like a job for Aquaman!
But since he ain't here, Killer Croc will do.

Yeah, that's literally the only thing Croc does the entire movie. It really seems as though the tunnel was only flooded for the sake of him having something to do.
Whilst Croc and the remaining soldiers swim below to get the bomb in place, Flag and the team ready up to fight.

Anyone else come close to forgetting that Katana was here?

They sneak into the station and discover the Enchantress controlling her magic with the bizarrest dance ever put to film. It's supposed to be both seductive and other-worldy, but it looks more like one of those weird balloon crazy men outside American car dealerships.

If you can even tell what's going on through the lightning.

Enchantress notices them there and starts trying to persuade them to fight for her instead. She's helped by giving them magical visions of what they truly desire.
Deadshot sees himself defeating Batman so that he doesn't get arrested.
Harley sees herself living a normal life with Joker and some children.
Flag sees himself waking up with June, the whole 'Enchantress' thing a nightmare.
El Diablo also sees himself with his family, having never lost his temper.
An awful lot of these guys just want to settle down and have a family.
Sadly, we don't get to see what Boomerang or Katana want (Though with Katana we can guess), since El Diablo realises what's happening and breaks out f the vision.

What a nice-but-ultimately-pointless distraction.

Enchantress tries to convince El Diablo to join her side, talking about "The magic arises" and similar stuff that would make sense if anybody bothered to explain it.
And Deadshot, played by Will Smith (An actor known for quippy one-liners) comes back with a blinder of a quip.
"Lady. You are evil!"
Okay, maybe 'Blinder' was the wrong word.

When even Will Smith has given up on being funny, you know your movie's bad.

Enchantress calls her brother to come and force them to bow and he fails miserably.
Somehow.
Seriously, this guy was tearing people to ribbons and plucking helicopters out of the sky, but he somehow can't hit any of six mostly-stationary targets standing directly in front of him.

Captain Boomerang hadn't even ducked by the time the attack happened, he's got no excuse for missing.

El Diablo powers up fully and transforms into some avatar of an Incan god or something and attacks.
Yeah, turns out El Diablo is some sort of reincarnation. I'm guessing it's explained in the comics, but here it's just a giant Deus Ex Machina.

Is it still PG-13 if it's never spoken out loud in English?

As El Diablo and Incubus tussle, the swim team manage to get the bomb in place. Croc got held up by some monsters, so Cappy has to trigger it himself.
Meaning that the water-themed guy wasn't even the one to handle the underwater job.

Meaning that this un-named soldier extra was more vital to the lot than Killer Croc was.

The explosion kills not only Cappy, but also Incubus and El Diablo.
This angers Enchantress, who for some reason decides to attack everybody with hand-to-hand combat.
Which is entirely unnecessary, since the fighting ends when Enchantress just uses her magic to disarm everybody.

She couldn't have done this five minutes ago and saved us all some time?

Enchantress decides to give them one last chance to join her, because the writers need the heroes to actually win at some point. Harley steps forward to join her, but it is in fact a very obvious ruse to get close to Katana's katana and stab Enchantress in the heart.
Which is something she should have seen coming but as I mentioned, the writers need her to lose at some point and it's pretty much the only reason they had Katana be in the movie anyway, since with El Diablo dead she's the only one with a weapon that can actually hurt her.

How fortunate for Harley that the Enchantress went and stood right next it.

Flag throws a bomb into the Enchantress' machine and Deadshot uses Harley's pistol to detonate it, despite some last-minute visions of his daughter telling him to stop.
It's actually rather tiresome at this point, since the symbolism is so obvious and overdone.

The bullet that saved the world came from a chamber that had 'Love' engraved on it.
And yes, the score does decide that a violinist having a heart attack is the most appropriate music to go with this scene.

With the machine destroyed the world is saved. From the threat that Waller put it in.
Anyway, Flag grabs the heart and demands Enchantress give June back, but she instead refuses, so Flag crushes the heart in front of her.

This would have been heart-breaking if we'd actually gotten to see any of their relationship with each other.

Turns out though that crushing the heart only killed the Enchantress' spirit, not her body. Which is actually June's body, meaning that June got to survive the whole thing.

Speaking of people that have no business being alive at this point.

Waller tells them that they've earned ten years off of their sentences, but is willing to grant other boons as well, such as letting Deadshot visit his daughter.
What confuses me is why Harley goes along with it. She doesn't have a bomb in her neck and this is the only device that can activate the others. She's also the only one still armed. She could just shoot the phone and let Croc eat Waller's face.
It would be a much better ending than what we've got.

Joker Ex Machina.

And that's it. That's the movie.
It sucked.
It just didn't know what it wanted to be.
From what I heard the trailer was part of the problem. The trailer was edited so that almost every single joke from the movie was included and the fans went wild for it. It gave the impression that this was going to be a laugh-a-minute riot similar to Guardians Of The Galaxy, but instead it wanted to be another Nolan-style Batman flick. So they did a whole bunch of reshoots and jammed them into the movie.
It's also reported that Jared Leto was angry that his Joker wasn't in the movie enough, so they reworked the script to involve him more. Hence why he got so much screentime despite not affecting the actual plot in any way.
But next time we get to watch a good movie, with Dr. Srange.
Does this mean that we're finally going to be getting you out of my head and into this nice LMD I've had specially built for you?
Yes, though I do have one question Wade.
Oh yes?
Why is the LMD female?