A thought about Suicide Squad...

A thought about Suicide Squad...

So today I was trying to find a certain BTAS Harley Quinn reaction gif but you know who turned up to the party? Margot Robbie, and sometimes the Harley Quinn from the games.
This ticked me off because a) it made me trawl through several gifs of her 'acting' and b) she's a shitty, second rate imitation of a Harley Quinn knock off who fell in a sewer.

Look, movies have a lot of issues with portraying women - I... fail to see why because ARE WE NOT PEOPLE?! If you cut us, do we not bleed? If we take liberties with characters, do they not instantly put on hot pants and stop being hilarious?

Then I realised one movie in particular where I had seen this all before but didn't connect until now.

Mother Funking Space Jam

Now, bear with me on this one - there's a thin strand of thought connected to this. 

• Both were pretty bad movies. 
• Both had at best - a convoluted story-line and at worst, no story or plot at all
• Both dressed their main female character badly and had her act like a sex pot
• Both were loose adaptations of a comic book or a cartoon

Like many girls my age when Space Jam came out, I was both excited about Looney Toons in live action kind of, as well as seeing another girl as not only a main character but one that actually kicked ass. I was never really sure how I felt about her as a character though, even my younger self knew she was only really there to draw kids like me in and be a love interest for Bugs. That and apart from being good at basketball, hating being called 'doll', strutting around like a minx.... she didn't really have any personality? 

I had a hard time as a child understanding why she was so sexualised. As a girl, you grow up seeing fictional or live action girl characters always wearing less or more stylised clothes than her male counterparts and unfortunately, you start to accept it as the norm. 

You know, like the women in Mortal Kombat going from acceptable battle bathers to basically fetish armour while the men are wearing about three layers each? The old TV trope you would see in Charmed and other shows where if there's more than one female - they have to all wear different kinds of shirts - IE one wears a singlet, one has a v-neck one is strapless? You see something similar in anime, where if they're all in school uniforms they'll have different socks or stockings or if it's a magical girl show a combination of different style outfits or shoes if they're the same outfit. 

One Power Ranger has a skirt.... because..... hmm. Yeah, I never really got that?

Both Harley Quinn and Lola Bunny are blonde, have pigtails/ears, wear the least amount of clothes possible, whatever skills they have are outdone and over looked in favour of the way they walk, the way they bend over, and who their love interest is 

while being attractive to everyone else on the field. 

Damn, even Tweety got a full size basketball singlet!

But more than that - they both are not characters. They don't get fleshed out.

Lola begins as cool and put upon - having to call out the male characters for calling her cutesy names and underestimating her. She has to prove she can play basketball - no one else has to and they're G-D Looney Toons... guaranteed to make a mess of things!
She is never considered 'one of the toons' because she's so high up on her pedestal that she can't do anything gross, be too funny or be subject to any cartoon violence. Predictably, she falls into Bugs Bunny's arms by the end of the movie and seems to lose her cool factor entirely.

Harley Quinn starts as a parody of a professional psychiatrist and is quickly demoted to wannabe gangster moll hench wench who is just so crazy you guys, the grossest looking prisoner ever and finally a drowned cat with a baseball bat in a bad uniform.

Seriously, what is that? She's got a million diaper pins stuck in her ear and not one of them gets ripped out during her ridiculous 'combat' scenes? My arse.

She's also not really one of the group. She has no reason to be there, yet can't do no wrong. Her jokes are nowhere near an acceptable level of comedy. She isn't even a player in her own 'relationship' - anything that wasn't the Joker being full wovey dovey to her was seemingly cut, heaven forbid anything happen to Harley Quinn! She can't be in the abusive relationship that defined her character when first debuted but getting a punch in the face from Batman is where she gets the most laughs of the movie goers?


That's a new kind of messed up. Damn, at least Lola Bunny was fun to watch while adding a new level of uncertainty to my childhood. Whenever I see Suicide Squad... I just feel... well, nothing but disgust for the complete lack of understanding anything about her character, what appropriate mission gear is, how humour works, what mental health is actually like, what a plot is for and how these kinds of movies actually get green lighted.

Margot either farted or is mocking mental health. Or both. 

I really mean that. How did this get past screenings, proof readers and shit, anyone?
How did people honestly get paid for their work in this?
Why do people still want to live and make sequels after this?
Your shit movie is going to cost Wonder Woman's movie... which might actually not be a flaming pile of shit.

Today I went and saw "Their Finest" with only a handful of people in the cinema and that movie was amazing. It had depth, drama, humour, great characters, and immersive story... yet received none of the over the top media hype like this flop of a movie.

It does currently rank at 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.... #burn.

DC.... WB...... You blew it big time.