Why Did Suicide Squad Fail? The 2016 Movie, Not the Game

Quick clarification, because search results mix them up: this is about the 2016 Suicide Squad movie, David Ayer's film, not the video game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Different disaster, different autopsy.

Why did Suicide Squad fail? The 2016 movie never gives the audience a way into its own story. It introduces its entire team in a 20-minute montage with no central point of view, tells instead of shows every important relationship, defines its characters by their powers instead of their personalities, and treats its most famous characters with open disrespect. It is the messiest film in the DC Extended Universe, and it is not close.

Dinner With Amanda Waller

The film's fatal scene is its first act. Amanda Waller sits at dinner with government officials, pitching her Task Force X idea, and the movie uses her pitch as an excuse to introduce every squad member at once. We start in Deadshot's point of view and think, all right, this is his story, he is the one I should care about. Then we jump to Harley Quinn's point of view. Then Batman's. Then Captain Boomerang's. Then Killer Croc's, El Diablo's, the Enchantress's.

The issue is not the introductions, it is that they all happen at once, with no anchor. It is like watching teaser trailers for six different movies cut together. The audience never gets access to the story because there is no one perspective to experience it through, and without a perspective there is no emotional connection.

This is a solved problem, and the film ignores every solution. Ocean's Eleven does not open with a montage introducing all eleven thieves. It opens with Danny Ocean. The Lord of the Rings does not open at the council with Hugo Weaving presenting the fellowship. It opens with Frodo. You can branch into multiple perspectives later, once the audience has someone to follow. Suicide Squad never earns the branch because it never plants the root. You could argue Waller anchors the sequence, except she is barely in the movie and functions as an antagonist. So the first act is twenty minutes of noise, and the film never recovers.

Why Did Suicide Squad Fail? No Hero First, No Team

Here is the single idea underneath all of this film's problems: simply introducing a character is not enough; you have to make the audience care about at least one of them. Pick a protagonist, build the movie around their eyes, and let the audience meet the squad the way the protagonist meets them. Everything else in this autopsy is a symptom of skipping that step.

Because there is no central character, every relationship in the film has to be established by narration instead of by scenes. The entire third act depends on the love between Rick Flag and June Moone, the archaeologist possessed by the Enchantress. So how does the film establish this load-bearing romance? In one shot, Flag meets her. In the next shot, they are totally in love. The evidence offered for the audience to believe it is a line of voiceover. That is the film asking for the reward without doing the work, and it signals something ugly: the filmmakers think the audience will believe anything they are told.

Harley gets the same treatment in reverse. Everyone insists she is terrifying and dangerous. What do we ever see her do that is dangerous? Nothing. We see her act unhinged, which is not the same thing. When I go to the movies I want to see a story. If I wanted someone to tell me one, I would stay home and listen to an audiobook.

Powers Are Not Personalities

The montage introduces each squad member with a wall of text about their abilities. Crocodile man: he is a man, and also a crocodile. Soldier man: he is a soldier. Witch: she is a witch. Harley: she is crazy, like a female Joker. All of this tells us what these characters are on the outside. None of it tells us who they are on the inside. Why is Harley obsessed with the Joker, other than because the movie says she is crazy? Why does Killer Croc want to eat people, other than because he looks like a crocodile? Why does the Enchantress want to conquer the world, other than because she is an ancient witch? The film has no answers, because it never asked the questions. (For what a villain needs on the inside, see how to write a villain.)

The exception is Captain Boomerang. He robbed every bank in Australia, came to America for fresh targets, and will betray anyone for his own gain. That is who he is: a selfish backstabber defined by greed. The boomerangs are secondary information. So when he finally chooses the team over himself, we can see he has changed. If this movie were only about him, it might have been good.

Then there is respect. The Joker, the same Joker who helped kill Robin, hangs out at a club in the open, and Batman, who arrests Deadshot in front of his daughter, never comes for the man who murdered his sidekick. That is not a new interpretation. It is a violation of the character's own logic. Harley, canonically a brilliant psychiatrist who uses her looks as a weapon, gets dressed up to wonder innocently why everyone stares. You can take new directions with famous characters. You cannot ignore the essentials of who they are.

Key points

• The 2016 movie's first act is a 20-minute montage introducing everyone at once with no central point of view, so the audience never gets access to the story.
• Ocean's Eleven starts with Danny Ocean and Lord of the Rings starts with Frodo for a reason: anchor one perspective first, then branch.
• The film tells instead of shows its load-bearing relationships. Flag and June Moone go from first meeting to true love in two shots, backed by voiceover.
• Character introductions list powers instead of personalities. Captain Boomerang is the lone exception: a defined selfish person first, a boomerang-thrower second, which is why his arc lands.
• The Joker hanging out openly at a club contradicts the film's own continuity, since this is the Joker who helped kill Robin and Batman never comes for him.

Try this

• Watch the opening dinner sequence of Suicide Squad (2016) and notice how many times the point of view jumps in the first twenty minutes. Then watch the opening twenty minutes of Guardians of the Galaxy and count how long it stays with Peter Quill before branching. That difference is the lesson.
• Take any team in a script you are writing and rewrite the introductions so the audience meets each member through your protagonist's eyes, in scenes, with no text cards.
• Watch Harley Quinn's introduction scenes and write down everything the film shows you versus everything characters say about her. If the say column is longer than the show column, you have found the film's core disease.