Walking out after seeing Suicide Squad and I’m struggling to find the words to describe what I’ve just seen. I’m going to do my best to try and articulate what’s going on, there’s more at stake here than the fate of DC. I warn you now this will probably be the longest post I ever make on Facebook so read at your own risk. What follows are my worthless musings on the state of Hollywood, the death of film criticism, and the decline of the modern American blockbuster.

What has happened? On one side we have fanboys and the other we have haters, and no one is in the middle anymore. It has simultaneously and paradoxically become cool in our culture to love superhero movies unconditionally and to hate them WITHOUT HAVING WATCHED THEM

Both parties are full of fools who ironically decry the other without realizing they are part of the problem. How about you actually watch the movie and decide what you think? Everyone is arguing and everyone is making up their mind before walking into the theater (if they even make it that far.)

Film criticism died, as far as I’m concerned, the day Roger Ebert did. The greatest film critic who ever lived, who changed the game completely, who inspired millions, who always told you exactly what he thought of every movie and didn’t care what anyone thought of his opinion. The very first critic to use “I” and “me” in reviews and tell you how he personally responded to them, rather than everyone else trying to be an objective robot. He wasn’t bought off or influenced by other critics or fanboys. He avoided trailers and publicity for all movies because he believed in knowing as little as possible about each movie before he saw it so he could judge it fairly. The void left behind by his absence has yet to be filled, and I don’t know if it ever will be.

All we have now are the androids who mostly comprise Rotten Tomatoes who only care what other critics think of their opinions and writing, and the Youtube reviewers like Chris Stuckmann and Jeremy Jahns, who are constantly worried about upsetting their millions of fans. There’s no honesty in it anymore. Everyone’s concerned what everyone else thinks more than their own personal experience.

Hollywood is collapsing. The reason the best writers/filmmakers have flocked to television over the past 5 years is because of the freedom they have in the medium. The movie industry has a stranglehold on the filmmakers who are trying to do some good. As soon as a movie hits it big the sequel is automatically not allowed to advance the plot more than 15 minutes. They want to stretch out every installation so they can keep making more sequels. This is happening right now with Marvel, who started off so strong albeit with some hiccups (the Thor movies, the awful Iron Man 2 and 3, the supremely disappointing Age of Ultron, and Civil War). You’ll notice the recent films have thinned out, they’ve stopped trying to address any sort of philosophical or profound meaning in the premises they were so good at setting up. Everything now has to lead to other things at the expense of itself. Age of Ultron was the same Avengers movie all over again and far less interesting. Civil War was okay, I did enjoy a lot of it, but it was not what was promised. It barely advanced the story and although the climatic showdown was an impressive technical achievement that was a lot of fun to watch, the reason for it being there and the motivations for the cast was very subpar. I could feel the studio begging the Russo brothers to not put too much into the movie aside from the action scenes, and to save anything deeper for Infinity War and more.

The fucked up part about all this is the studios love to seize control from talented directors like David Ayer (who directed Suicide Squad, and also made the great End of Watch), but then they give unlimited power to trash like Zack Snyder.

Here’s an experiment: go into work on Monday morning and do the worst possible thing you can imagine. Destroy your office or surroundings and cost your company as much money as possible. Then go to your boss expecting a reprimand, but instead all that escapes his lips are, “You’re promoted”. Then go into your new position the next day and repeat your actions ten fold. Go to you boss, but now he says “You can have my job”. Sounds pretty unrealistic, a pretty stupid implausible scenario I’ve just set up isn’t it? I’ve just generously described the career of Zack Snyder. And if you think that’s harsh please keep in mind of the millions of broke artists out there who will never get the chance to make a movie. Think of all the women who will never get to direct anything simply because they are a woman. Apparently gender is super important when selecting a director, but not species, since they’ve given the reins of their most prized comic book properties to a mentally challenged rhesus monkey.

To say DC lost the race to Marvel is inaccurate because it suggests they are on the same plane of existence. Marvel finished in first place after getting hit by the Blue Shell. DC couldn’t stay on Rainbow Road with TAS.

The fanboys who petitioned for Rotten Tomatoes to be taken down for giving Suicide Squad 30% were correct. This movie should have received a 0%.

It’s not that Suicide Squad is one of the worst movies of the year. It’s that it might be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen that I was initially excited for. That Jeremy Jahns said he loved it and that’s it worth seeing and buying the blu ray is a tragedy. It’s not that he disagrees with me or literally anyone else on this film, it’s that I don’t believe him.

When he reviewed Interstellar he criticized the film and still recommended it, but received a huge backlash from the Nolan fanboys. The dislike bar was insane and he had to immediately make a follow up vid with spoilers to explain in more detail why he has some problems with the film and repeat over and over that he still liked it. He has a 1.1 million subscriber following, he has a lot more to worry about than his reaction to the movie. Watching his review to Suicide Squad and I feel his heart is not in it and that he’s scared of offending millions of fanboys (who have judged the film before even seeing it), so he decided to appeal to them more than give an honest review. I don’t doubt that he enjoyed a lot of it (I enjoyed some of it as well) but his review feels dishonest to me and I think this is why. I can’t say I blame him. He makes his living off his subscribers watching him, if they don’t like what he says than he is likely to lose some of his income.

But back to the movie. The first 20 minutes give off the promise of a wacky, silly, fun time despite its obnoxious editing. After that it descends into total awfulness. The movie is essentially one big action scene against useless villains that are so weak they easily explode at the contact of Harley Quinn’s wooden bat. Who are they even fighting, why is their team even assembled in the first place? I wish I could tell you who the main villain of this movie is, but I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you anyway.

This whole thing is plagued by the desperate reshoots and re-edits that the studio forced on David Ayer. This feels less like two different movies combined and more like a cluster fuck of the worst ideas a room full of stoned high school kids came up with. And the color scheme! I’ll have to quote my sister on this, who when watching the trailer remarked, “Why does it look like Lisa Frank vomited everywhere?!” That pretty much describes the look of the movie. It’s so dim, so dark, I thought I was watching it in 3D. It was hard to look at the screen at times.

I will always be honest about my movie going experience to anyone that cares what I think. I did enjoy some parts of this movie, I really did. And please keep in mind I wanted to love it. After the first trailer came out I was very hopeful we’d get a great interesting different kind of movie than we’re used to seeing.

I laughed out loud a good number of times during this movie. I sat with a packed sold out audience who was mostly quiet during the run time. They clearly did not enjoy it. Whenever something funny happened,my friends and I laughed louder than anyone in the theater. Sometimes we were the only ones laughing. There is some great humor in this movie, some genuinely hilarious moments. However, for every time I laughed there were two or three times I cringed in agony. At times I felt like Oberyn and Suicide Squad was the Mountain. This movie is so poorly cut, so erratically thrown together that while you’ve just figured out what going on in one scene, another one has past and you’re in a third with no idea what’s going on.

Will Smith, who seemed so awkwardly cast in the trailers, is actually one of the better parts of it. He’s one of the only developed characters in this film. He has motivations and we understand his actions. I can’t say the same for anyone else. Margot Robbie tried her best as Harley Quinn. I think she really was good for some parts, but others I was confused by her actions and performance. The other members of the Suicide Squad are pretty laughably thrown in last minute, with barely a reason for them to be in the film. Viola Davis is a strong onscreen presence as Amanda Waller, a great force to be reckoned with. But again, the editing and sloppy writing at times leaves many of her scenes puzzling.

Jared Leto is a joke (no pun intended) in this in my opinion. For all the freaking out of him being in the film, he’s in all of ten minutes, and his scenes are not very good at all. His joker laugh is pathetically bad 0/10 and I could not take anything about him seriously. His relationship with Harley Quinn will probably upset a lot of fans, I mostly was trying to keep up with the offensive editing. MY GOD that will be the hardest part for anyone watching this. Just try and keep up scene to scene with what the hell is going on. It seriously changes randomly and sometimes doesn’t bother explaining where anyone is or what they’re trying to accomplish.

And THEN, some characters are brought in still, that we have no clue about their backstory or identity. The SAMURAI CHICK what the absolute fuck?

All this wouldn’t be so bad if they movie took the time to establish relationships with its characters. But it’s not interested in that. Not for one second do you believe any of these people are friends, partners, enemies, or even a team. Harley Quinn has some sort of dramatic moment at the end and not a goddamn person cares because it wasn’t built to at all.

Imagine The Avengers without all the movies that built up to it. Now imagine no Loki, imagine no good action scenes, imagine every scene being intercut into another without much reason or direction. Imagine there being no sense of danger at any point in the film. Well you don’t have to imagine because you can just see Suicide Squad and find out what that looks like.

I must repeat I wanted to love this movie, but it just doesn’t let you get into it. The best short summary of it I could offer is that it’s a mess. Warner Brothers used to be my favorite studio once upon a time. Not anymore. They need to clean house with whoever has been in charge of these blockbusters. Firing Snyder is not good enough. They must fire everyone who hired him, everyone who agreed with his ideas, and every person involved with the DC movies who didn’t instantly question the decision making process behind these movies. And yes, I realize it was Christopher Nolan who hired Snyder for Man of Steel, but he immediately regretted his decision and abandoned the set so he gets a pass. I like to think he stayed in his home, hotboxing in his bathroom dreaming up the imagery he would eventually use for Interstellar. It was certainly a better use of his time.

If you love Green Lantern, Man of Steel, and Batman vs Superman then go see Suicide Squad. You will cherish it. I hope you do have a good time because somebody should have. I don’t begrudge anyone that loves movies that I hate. I’m happy for you and I always want people to have a good time at the movies. What I can’t tolerate is bullshit hypocrisy and weak arguments. And please, don’t think me hating these movies makes me better than anyone that loves them. It’s the opposite really, you are better than me because you found joy in something I could not. I tried my absolute best to enjoy this film, but I failed. I failed miserably.