What's the deal with villain-centric films?
What was my issue with 'Suicide Squad' then? Well, I actually had many. Jared Leto's portrayal of the Joker is the most painful experience I've ever had in a cinema (seriously, what on earth was he doing in that film); while the costume and production design were incredibly poor. Director David Ayer clearly had a vision for the film to look grim, dark and "edgy", but Harley Quinn's costume was certainly a far cry from her iconic original costume - that, you know, looked like a harlequin. The film was horrible to look at from a visual standpoint, having either a muddy brown filter applied to it or bright neon colours over the top. Neither worked well together, or even separately. The film also had no sense of structure, with absolutely abysmal editing and a story so bafflingly misguided one would almost think it had been written by a teenage film student and not an experienced auteur filmmaker.
By far the worst offence from 'Suicide Squad', however, was in its attempt to create an emotional core, to make heroes out of these supervillains. The climax of the film sees El Diablo (who comes completely with a hilariously tragic backstory) going up against...I can't even remember who or what the villains were in the film, and shouting something along the lines of "not my friends!" Ignoring the fact that the film had never built up any kind of dynamic between the titular squad to constitute the word "acquaintances" over "friends", but it's bizarre that a film about supervillains thinks that we want to see all be BFFs and love each very, very much. Strangely enough though, this moment made me think of the climax to 'Guardians of the Galaxy', in which the characters who have grown closer to each other over the course of the film to establish a great working dynamic come together to fight the big bad Ronan the Accuser through the power of friendship as well. Five minutes beforehand, 'Guardians' had also killed off a main character in a scene that people still cry over today. Strangely enough, 'Suicide Squad' was officially announced by Warner Bros not long after 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (a comic book-based film centred around anti-heroes fighting a common enemy) conquered the August box office in 2014, garnering around $770 million in total. Strangely enough, like 'Guardians of the Galaxy' before it, 'Suicide Squad' featured a jukebox soundtrack with "Spirit in the Sky". I wonder if 'Suicide Squad' was intended to cash-in on 'Guardians'...?
'Suicide Squad' had absolutely no reason to rip-off 'Guardians of the Galaxy' - the concepts are actually quite different - but saw the need to turns its villain characters into tragic anti-heroes. Even the abusive relationship between Harley Quinn and the Joker was entirely excised from this film, presenting their relationship as "true love". Essentially, the villains in 'Suicide Squad' aren't villains, making it theoretically the worst possible villain movie you could make.
Then we get onto the subject of 'Venom', a Sony and Columbia Pictures film that takes one of the Spider-Man's greatest enemies and gives him his own solo adventure. Like 'Suicide Squad' before it, 'Venom''s lead protagonist hasn't been established as a villain in a traditional superhero film as some would expect, but instead is going to be introduced in his own standalone motion picture with his entire backstory reworked and simplified to ensure that by no means can Sony build-up any sense of character or narrative with 'Venom', but instead simply let it exist to please a pre-existing fanbase.
Tom Hardy will be playing Eddie Brock, with Sony hoping to use star-power in much the same way as Warner Bros sold 'Suicide Squad' as a big star-studded ensemble with Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie, and the movie is set to feature Venom acting as an anti-hero as opposed to a straight-up villain, fighting (who else, but) evil Venom in the form of Riot. Riot, for the record, looks just like Venom, but instead of being black is very dark grey, making their big fight (based on the trailers) look like a crash-course in how to not to depict a big superhero fight sequence. At least Carnage would be a good colour-contrast with Venom. In doing this though, Sony is framing Venom as the good guy in the film, essentially a full-on superhero fighting the evil villain. Venom is a supervillain who actively chooses to be a superhero, but so long as he's really cool and edgy and threatens to eat random people - all of whom appear to be bad guys, while we're here.
So, question for you Hollywood: what's the point in making movies about supervillains if you're just going to reframe them as superheroes? It's not about a complex morality - 'The Dark Knight' came out 10 years ago and explored that, not to mention that we've had nearly twenty years' worth of 'X-Men' films with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine - so what's the point?
Regardless of what I think though, such films are set to continue for a while yet. Sony have 'Venom', 'Silver and Black', 'Morbius the Living Vampire', 'Kraven the Hunter', 'Nightwatch', a rumoured Mysterio-centric film and 'Sinister Six' in the works, while Warner Bros are working on 'Joker' (an origin film about the famous Batman villain), an untitled Joker film (separate from the origin flick), a Harley Quinn solo film, a Gotham City Sirens film, a Birds of Prey film and a Joker vs. Harley Quinn film. Notice how Marvel Studios - the most consistent superhero filmmakers - haven't announced any villain-centric films? It's almost like they're aware of how terrible an idea those are.
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