The Suicide Squad—An Overlooked and Underrated "Sequel"

Suicide Squad (2016) simply wasn’t a good movie for all the hype and anticipation it’d gotten up until its release—and frankly, it didn’t give DCU the greatest look in comparison to the MCU. However, despite the reviews, it did well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel. As is evident from the title of this review, The Suicide Squad (2021) was simply a much better film than the first—having made a genuine effort to connect with the source material while still ensuring that it would be enjoyable for audiences. Despite being the sequel, The Suicide Squad does everything the original film should have—giving each character the respect and depth they deserve, all written within a thrilling yet easy-to-follow plotline.

The Suicide Squad follows Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) as she assembles two Task Force X teams—aptly nicknamed “The Suicide Squad”—from dangerous metahuman inmates from Belle Reve penitentiary in exchange for reduced sentences. She sends these teams specifically to Corto Maltese, a Southern American island nation—which, due to a separate force overthrowing their government, was no longer aligned with the United States—to destroy Jotunheim, a lab that contained a secret experiment known as Project Starfish. When the first team makes it to island, the majority of them are killed by the Corto Maltese military—all but Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), who is captured, and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), who manages to escape. In another part of the country, the second team—consisting of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), Peacemaker (John Cena), King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian)—are able to enter without any problem, as the first team had been a clear distraction. Waller then orders the team to find Flag, and they slaughter their way through the rebel base he’s being held at only to find that the leader of the rebels Sol Soria (Alice Braga) had saved him, not captured him. Even so, Sol Soria agrees to assist the group to sneak into the capital to where Project Starfish is, where they’re able to take the lead scientist, the Thinker (Peter Capaldi), hostage.

Meanwhile, Harley is taken to Corto Maltese’s new dictator, Silvio Luna (Juan Diego Botto), who wants to marry her. After she finds out about Silvio’s plan to use Project Starfish on any politicial opposition, just as the previous regime had done, she kills him and is immediately captured by the military. She is then tortured extensively by her Corto Maltese captors under orders of the new president, Mateo Suarez (Joaquín Cosío), who try and fail to get information from her. As Harley is escaping her own with flashy acrobatics and gymnastics, the rest of the Suicide Squad plans to take a detour to save her. Harley walks out of the building and into a taxi to watch the rest of the Suicide Squad attempting to save her, and casually walks up to rejoin them.

The Suicide Squad, now newly reunited with all of its members, then makes its way back into Jotunheim where they find out the truth—Project Starfish was an experiment on a giant starfish-like alien named Starro that creates smaller versions of itself that latch onto people to kill them and control their corpses. It’d been brought to Earth by American astronauts, in which it was then sent to Corto Maltese in a deal made with the Corto Maltese government. The US secretly funded experiments on Starro while the previous regime would use Corto Maltesean citizens, particularly political dissidents, as test subjects to strengthen their rule—and the Suicide Squad had been sent in order to erase all American ties to the project after said regime had been overthrown. Flag is furious, insistent on leaking the disk with all the evidence—but Peacemaker, who’d been ordered by Waller specifically to make sure of its destruction, holds him at gunpoint and demands he hand it over. Meanwhile, their plan begins crumbling all around them as a scuffle with the Corto Maltese military leads Polka-Dot Man to set off the explosives they’d planted prematurely. What happens now that the team is now cleanly at odds with each other despite being so close to completing their mission?

Even though it’s a sequel, it’s still better watched alone considering just how jarring of a difference in both quality and tone—a clear result of the switch in directors from David Ayer to James Gunn. The plot seems fairly straightforward with dangerous criminals fighting for their freedom, but it has a ton of heart between all of the bloody violence—each interaction between all the characters is carefully thought out and Gunn is able to craft heartwarming and humorous moments even despite all of the hostility between them all. It’s dark and gritty as one would expect, but the personalities of each character—demonstrated in well-written dialogue and stellar acting—shine through it all. The first film sorely lacks in this regard, using recognition as its main way of appealing to audiences—and unfortunately, recognition alone without proper representation is simply not enough to carry a film. Gunn succeeds in giving Harley Quinn a proper voice in his movie whereas Ayer failed.

That being said, this film still has a big issue. The Suicide Squad is in a weird predicament where it feels much more like a remake but is stated to be a sequel even though it never references the first film directly. That, and with its curiously chosen title name resembling its predecessor, led many viewers (including myself, admittedly, until I did research on this film) confused on just exactly its relationship with Ayer’s Suicide Squad. The only real similarities it has is part of the cast—Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, and even Will Smith had been set to return as Deadshot but was unable to return due to scheduling conflicts. It’s all rather confusing, and likely caused audiences to stray away from the film entirely.

While the marketing isn’t fantastic, it doesn’t detract from the fact that the film is a well-executed story that remains faithful of its source material. That is made even more evident with the way this film has directly inspired not one, not two, but three spinoff shows—these being Peacemaker, Creature Commandos, and the upcoming Waller. For those who watched Ayer’s Suicide Squad back in 2016 but hated it, go give Gunn’s The Suicide Squad a try—the bar is low, but it truly is an excellent movie.

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