The Suicide Squad was released on Friday, August 6th, and, while pretty much flopping critically, it’s been doing financially well so far with 2021 and has already made 26 million alone in America, and nearly double that outside of America, at 46 million, altogether totaling to 71 million on its opening weekend. 

   The Suicide Squad was directed by James Gunn, the recurring director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. While familiar faces are seen for fans of the original, such as Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, and Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, there are plenty of new, unique characters as well.  For example, the Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), who literally just throws polka-dots; King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), a very hungry toddler; Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), (Ratcatcher 1 was unavailable) who controls rats with a glow stick; and other… interesting characters that make a weirdly diverse cast.  

   “I think I wanted to create a group of characters that were extremely disparate in where they came from, what their lives had been.” Says director James Gunn in an interview. “I wanted to look at the group of characters and feel as if they were from, almost from different genres.”  

   The movie makes it clear that it’s R-rating was no joke, with characters right off the bat dying gruesomely creative deaths even before the 10-minute mark hits. The survivors are then sent by the Task force-X to an island called ‘Corto Maltese’ To destroy any and all evidence of the giant alien starfish ‘Starro the Destroyer’ (aka ‘Project Starfish’) who, funny enough, was the comic Justice League of America’s first villain they faced all teamed up together. Along the way they ‘rescue’ Rick Flag, the original leader of the first suicide squad, again attempt to rescue Harley Quinn, who had been kidnapped by Silvio Luna, the dictator of Corto Maltese, and an enemy of the Task force-X, only to discover Harley had already escaped herself.   

   And then finally, they go to capture ‘The Thinker’, aka Gaius Greeves(Peter Capaldi), the main geneticist in charge of Project Starfish who, later reveals the fact that Starro was brought here via reckless American Astronauts seeing him float in space and deciding to take him aboard their ship. They later invade ‘Jotunheim’, the Lab that holds everything about Project Starfish (including Starro himself) However, everything goes wrong when Starro the Destroyer escapes and wreaks havoc upon the Corto Maltesians. The characters are then forced to work together instead of just fight and argue with one another. 

   They do lose a few more members along the way, but Harley ultimately finishes the job by stabbing Starro the Destroyer in the eye, giving Ratcatcher 2’s rats a passage into Starro’s brain, which the rats tear apart like a dot with a chew toy. The story finishes off with the suicide squad blackmailing the Task force-X into letting them go free.  

   And finally, the movie ends off with a post-credit’s scene confirming that the Peacemaker, played by John Cena, is alive, teasing the future 2022 hbo max tv series ‘Peacemaker.’ 

   In my opinion, as weird and hard to follow as this movie was, it really wasn’t as bad as some critics suggest. The movie was, well, crazy. And the characters and villains? Even more so. But it had its funny and, even sometimes emotional moments. The cast may have been weird but it’s what made them so memorable compared to, in my opinion, the 2016 Suicide Squad. Like all movies, there were things that could have been done better, or things that just straight up shouldn’t have been in the movie in the first place.