Suicide Squad: How The Internet Is Taking These Early Reviews
The summer movie season is almost over! Believe me, I've tried my best to be optimistic about this year's summer movie line-up, but it's hard. Sure, we've had some decent summer movies, my personal favorites being Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, Finding Dory, and the recent tech-thriller Nerve. But besides those movies, this summer has been a total disappointing snooze fest.
Luckily, the summer season is coming to an end with one of my most-anticipated releases of the year- Suicide Squad! Yes, the fast-paced, action-packed super-villain ensemble film from DC. I may not have been a fan of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but I can tell you right now, I am heavily looking forward to seeing the likes of Joker and Harley Quinn run rampant in Suicide Squ-
Hm, alright then.
Suicide Squad had its premiere this week, and while it hasn't been released for the general public yet, early reviews are swarming in and painting the film in a pretty mixed light.
What was supposed to be the dark-yet-hilarious DC film of the year is apparently a bit of a mess. Now, I couldn't tell you exactly what critics think of the movie, because I've been avoiding reviews so my mind will still be open come Friday morning. I also couldn't tell you if the film really is good or bad, because like the majority of moviegoers, I've yet to see it.
But man, if you've been on the internet at all today, you would almost believe that movie is already out. Why? Because once again, fans are absolutely demolishing critics!
We saw this with Batman v. Superman, a movie that quickly divided fans and critics upon its release. Critics hated it, hell, most of the general audience wasn't too crazy about it either, but the hardcore DC fans absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, some of them loved it so much, that they felt the need to viciously attack anyone who felt otherwise.
Before I go any further, let me just say that there's nothing wrong with being a "hardcore fan". I'm a devoted fan of a lot of things, and sometimes my love and appreciation for what I grew up with blinded me from seeing any fault in it. There is nothing wrong with a huge fan of something that other people don't like. However, I do have to cross the line when you use your hardcore fan status to bully and berate others who don't share your opinion. I'm looking at you, random guy at computer getting ready to burn me in the comments section.
I don't think there's a single movie out there that is beloved by everyone. There are certainly movies that are appraised by the majority of people, but every movie is always going to have haters, some more than others.
This is why I'm completely shocked at how quickly Suicide Squad, like its fellow DCEU film BvS, has caused fans and critics to be at each others necks. Some critics are bashing the film, for reasons I don't fully know (again, trying to stay spoiler-free), whilst some fans are attacking critics for daring to dislike the film. What's worse is that Suicide Squad isn't even out yet! At least BvS had come out for everyone to see before the internet started a wildfire over it!
Honestly, the outrage that early Suicide Squad reviews have caused is pretty ridiculous. Critics have received death threats, been accused of being paid off, and been told to quit their jobs. There's even an actual petition going around to shut down Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator website!
If you're one of those fans sending death threats, or if you believe that there's some conspiracy in the world of critics, listen up, because you need to stop. I am still looking forward to Suicide Squad, and while these reviews make me worried, I'm not going to get mad at someone for sharing their opinion. That's all reviews are, critics sharing their opinion in order to open up room for film debate. Reviews aren't meant to be the final word, and most critics never intended them to be.
Wishing death upon someone for voicing their opinion is completely uncalled for. Just imagine if someone asked you "Hey, what's your favorite color?" and they threatened to stab you in your sleep because you said red instead of green.
Furthermore, can we please, PLEASE stop with the whole "Marvel conspiracy" thing? If you don't know what that is, there has basically been a rumor (or rather, a theory with zero evidence) going around that Marvel, the multimedia superhero powerhouse, has been paying critics to bash DC films. This is an incredibly wrong thought for several reasons.
The first is that Marvel has nothing to gain from DC's failure. NOTHING! You may be thinking, "but if DC fails, Marvel will make more money", but that's not true. If DC keeps failing at the box office, then eventually that failure is going to catch up to Marvel. Why? Because of a little something called "genre fatigue".
Just look at the Western genre. It became so oversaturated with rip-offs and generally bad movies, that despite all the good Westerns out there, the genre temporarily died out- only just now starting to pick back up a little steam.
Should DC keep messing up, we'll eventually get tired of superhero movies, and expect them all to fail. This would cost Marvel its audience, as well as DC. Plus, Marvel does not hate DC. This whole "Marvel vs. DC" war was started by the fans.
In truth, the people in the comic and film industries have a large amount of respect for each other. Just because they're competitors doesn't mean they're enemies.
Marvel has been at the movie game much longer than DC has, and they've come up with a pretty solid plan for building their MCU. That's not to say that Marvel movies don't get poor reviews- just look at Thor: The Dark World or Iron Man 3- but it does make them the standard for supehero movies. After all, the MCU is what made the modern superhero genre so incredibly popular.
So even though it seems like critics have a huge bias towards Marvel films, the fact is that Marvel has been at it a while, and has more hits than misses. This doesn't mean Marvel is paying critics, it just means that, believe it or not, they know how to make good movies.
Listen, I know how much it can hurt to see a movie you love get bad press (WHY DON'T PEOPLE LOVE THE GOOD DINOSAUR?!), but that doesn't mean that the critics are wrong. Everyone has an opinion, and even if the general opinion is that a movie sucks, it doesn't mean you have to hate it. Go ahead, love your movie, defend it until the end of time, but don't attack someone for saying they hated it. Suicide Squad comes out in two days, so until we can all see it, let's all agree to keep an open mind.
Thanks For Reading!
