But, hey, if the film’s box office totals fall in the coming weeks, there’s always “Wonder Woman” next year. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was widely dismissed by critics, and now the latest DC film, “Suicide Squad” is meeting a similar fate, scoring 41 on MetaCritic and just 27% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Variety reports that the film’s level of violence and dark tone are making it increasingly unlikely that, despite Warner Bros.’ best hopes, the film will not be making its way to the Chinese box office.
As good as Robbie was in the role, Suicide Squad would certainly benefit from a little more time put into the writing process. However, despite all the excitement over Jared Leto’s performance in the film, the DC villain only had about 20 minutes of screen time.
The DC films are one of three key franchises for Warner Bros. going into the next decade, along with movies from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and pictures based on the Lego toys. It’ll open big – but just like Batman v. Superman – will crash fairly quickly thereafter. $11 million of the weekend total came from 382 IMAX theaters, where the film averaged $28,871 per location. The studio was projecting a more conservative $US100 million to $US125 million. Throughout “Suicide Squad”, the Joker is on a mission to rescue Harley, but the entire subplot is delivered in short spurts and leads nowhere. “There’s so much that we shot that’s not in the film”, Leto told IGN. Foreign markets accounted for 62 percent of sales for Batman v Superman, which went on to gross $US872.6 million globally, according to Box Office Mojo. He after he broke the news that a lot of Joker scenes had been cut for Suicide Squad, he did some other interviews where he sounded a bit annoyed.
Not everything was roses for “Suicide Squad”, though.
How upset is Jared Leto over “Suicide Squad”? The film centers on a team of super villains who are recruited for a black ops mission by the US government.
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Most critics seemed to love the characters – particularly Will Smith’s Deadshot and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. Co-writer and director David Ayer borrows ideas liberally from an assortment of successful entries in the genre including the X-Men series, and most notably Guardians of the Galaxy whose rollicking style and irreverent tone this film squarely fails to duplicate.
