The DCEU Is Dead And We Can Say This Is The Worst Of All
Now that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is out, we can officially pronounce the DCEU dead and buried. And as much as we’d like to say the DCEU had a good run, it was pretty hit-and-miss—mostly miss. No miss hurt the brand as badly as Suicide Squad, easily the worst DCEU movie to come out of the so-called “Snyderverse.
David Ayer’s Suicide Squad Was The Worst DCEU Movie
For any readers not quite up on their comic book movie universe lingo, DCEU stands for DC Extended Universe. Warner Bros. decided sometime around 2013 or so that those Disney folks were on to something with the MCU and wanted in on all that sweet capes-and-tights cash. As a result, the studio decided to create its own interconnected movie universe full of comic book movies based on its DC properties—including the 2016 disaster Suicide Squad, the worst DCEU movie ever made.
The name DCEU never really caught on. Most fans called it the Snyderverse after Warner Bros’ brilliant decision to put Zack Snyder in charge of the whole shebang. Meanwhile, most moviegoers just called it hot garbage. The hottest, smelliest, foulest garbage of all is David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.
There are many things that make Suicide Squad the worst of the DCEU movies, so let’s get into them.
Suicide Never Knew What Kind Of Movie It Should Be
The Suicide Squad is a team of superpowered criminals created by DC in the ’80s. The basic premise is this: the DC universe’s lowest lawbreakers are offered time off on their prison sentences in return for going out on clandestine missions that the “good guys” would never be caught dead performing. These missions usually included a high chance of death, hence the team name.
A Suicide Squad movie should have been a low-stakes Dirty Dozen with supervillains. Instead, it’s a convoluted mess with no coherent plot that somehow still ends with the “heroes” saving the world from a giant beam of energy like the end of Man of Steel or the Avengers.
The tone-deaf use of a covert black ops organization as a traditional superhero team—complete with an endless supply of faceless canon fodder to mow down indiscriminately—isn’t what makes Suicide Squad the worst DCEU movie, but it’s definitely part of it.
Crams Too Much Into One Film
Another contributing factor is the movie’s lack of identity. It tries to be an origin story for several of the characters but can’t devote the appropriate amount of time to any of their backstories without the runtime ballooning to four hours. At the same time, it tries to squeeze in a “romantic” subplot between Harley Quinn and the Joker that really adds nothing to the worst DCEU movie other than the poorest live-action portrayal of the Joker we’ve gotten so far on the big screen.
Jared Leto’s Joker Is The Worst
To say that Jared Leto’s Joker is offputting is an understatement. From his tattoo-covered body to his blinged-out grill to the choice to give the man no eyebrows whatsoever, Leto’s Joker is easily the cringiest ever portrayed.
He serves no purpose in the movie whatsoever. Take him out, and Suicide Squad would still probably be the worst DCEU movie, but at least it wouldn’t be “Wash your eyes out with bleach and schedule a lobotomy to have the part of your brain that remembers movies cut out,” bad.
David Ayer Blames Suicide Squad’s Failure On The Studio
Director David Ayer maintains that his original version of Suicide Squad is a banger of a movie. According to Ayer, the movie was recut by the studio and had its score replaced by way too many needle drops in an effort to make it more like Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure Jan.Look, the mythical Ayer Cut may someday see the light of day and miraculously turn Suicide Squad into a good movie. If that happens, we’ll eat our words. But unlike with Justice League, we’re pretty sure that adding 40 more minutes of Jared Leto and his “Damaged” tattoo to Suicide Squad won’t be enough to change its status as the worst DCEU movie.
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad Is A Superior Alternative
If you want a good Suicide Squad movie, you’re better off with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad—the word “the” apparently makes all the difference. If you want the best Suicide Squad movie, then seek out Batman: Assault on Arkham. Arkham might be a 2014 direct-to-video animated movie, but it gets the Suicide Squad right and blows both the live-action versions away.
While movies like Batman V. Superman might still divide fans, Suicide Squad is universally considered a low point for superhero films. It may have made a profit, and it may have won an Oscar, but Suicide Squad is the worst DCEU movie, hands down.
