#(and I also don’t like him in TDK)

[dentpx]

If they would let me tweet I would QRT and say something nasty about him

[justsomerandomfanfic]

Broken Glass On The Floor - Joker X GN Reader

Title: Broken Glass On The Floor

Joker X GN Reader

Additional Characters: Batman (Mentioned)

Requested by @getmesomethingreal!

WC: 2,592

Warnings: Fighting (verbal), angry J, J doesn't like feelings, J also hates being wrong, death mentioned, the ending of TDK mentioned, J's in love and he hates it, anxiety, hurt/comfort, angst, and a fluffy ending

You hummed a soft tune as you adjusted the beautiful bouquet of flowers into your favorite vase. The vase was a tall one, with lovely shades of blues and greens to complement the pale yellow roses that sat inside perfectly. It sat in front of your window overlooking the small garden behind your home. A few pots of sunflowers and irises were scattered throughout, giving off a relaxing scent. It felt perfect for the springtime season. The vase was your most prized possession, it was the first item you bought when you got your first apartment, and it had been with you for years ever since; plus, you greatly admired the way the blue and green swirled and contrasted against each other. You smiled at the memory as you put away the remaining flowers, turning to see Joker enter your home from the back door, slamming it shut.

Your smile dropped, watching as the Crown Prince of Crime stalked angrily to his office, completely ignoring you, slamming the door shut. Your shoulders drooped, biting your bottom lip as you wondered what happened while he was out. You wanted to do something for J, to make him feel better, so you wandered over to his office door. You paused at the door, letting out a small breath before you knocked. Now, you weren't scared of J, you never would be, J never turned his anger toward you so you didn't hesitate in helping him when he was angry. Normally when he did come home angry, you'd let him calm down a bit and ask him if he needed anything, or even, rarely, you'd hug him. Even though he normally didn't hug back, you felt like it helped him; to an extent.

You slowly opened the door, spotting J sitting hunched over at his desk, hands in his hair; the dim light made the room a little eerie but you ventured in nonetheless. You hated seeing J so upset, you loved him, so you wanted to help him in some way. "J?" You softly, not wanting to startle him. His head whipped up, his eyes dark as he glared at you, slightly startling you but you continued, "Was it the Batman again?"

Joker practically growled as he dropped his hands and clenched his fists, "Are you trying to mock me?" He asked through gritted teeth as he drew out his words, voice rough and laced with anger. 

You frowned, "No, I'm not, J." You said, walking slowly to him. "I'm just worried about you. If you need anything, or if there's something wrong, you can talk to me-"

"I don't need your help. In fa-ct," He licked his lips slowly, "I don't need you." Joker interrupted, standing abruptly as you bit your lip to try and hold in your tears of confusion and rejection.

“You… You don’t need me?” You asked softly, voice breaking slightly before J pushed past you and out of the office. 

You turned, following, your heart hammering in your chest and eyes widening as J stormed back over to the back door, backhanding your precious vase off the windowsill, causing it to shatter on the ground below. J then left the house, leaving you all alone again. You stood frozen where you stood in the hall, staring dumbly at the shattered pieces of glass and petals in front of you. You couldn't believe what just happened. Tears pricked your eyes as you sank to the ground, burying your face in your hands. This isn’t fair... You thought, tears spilling down your cheeks as you sobbed quietly, mourning over your now broken vase.

~~~

J didn't come back for the next couple of days, probably staying over at that abandoned warehouse, and you were actually glad he wasn't home. You didn't want to see him. Even though he broke your treasured vase, you still loved him. You would never stop loving him.

You sighed, staring blankly in your bed, unconsciously cuddling J's pillow to your chest, curled up into a ball as you replayed over and over your vase falling to the floor. You sniffled, tears stinging your eyes once more. “I can’t believe he broke my vase…” You mumbled to yourself sadly. “I really loved that vase...” You trailed off, sighing sadly once more. J had never done anything like that before, yeah, sometimes he let out his anger, but he never broke things.

Sitting up, you sit back against the headboard of your bed, lazily grabbing the tv remote and turning it on; maybe your favorite show or movies are on. Flipping through channels, you stopped at the news when you saw a glimpse of your Joker on the screen. You watched as police helicopters recorded Batman dropping J off the high skyscraper, before catching him with some device and just letting him hang there. You felt as if your heart fell to the pit of your stomach. J almost died. He was caught by Batman, his plans were foiled, that was why he was so upset. 

You shook your head, that was no excuse for J to snap at you and break your vase. You sighed again, feeling defeated. You didn't know what you should do or what to think. What you did know was that you still didn't want to see him, no matter how much you missed him. 

~~~

The next day, J finally came home. His gloved hand holding a piece of paper, he went straight to his office. Dropping the paper on his desk, he exited and looked around the living room, not seeing you anywhere. The room was deathly quiet except for the sound of the occasional car driving down the neighborhood road. You didn't even have the radio playing. J narrowed his eyes in thought, normally when he came home you were doing something in the main room, reading, cleaning, watching tv, dancing even, humming while you put those flowers away in that dumb vase of yours... J turned his head to where the vase had been, the windowsill was empty and the wooden floor underneath was clean. J didn't mean to break your vase, he was just blinded by his fury and the vase was just there. Batman had ruined his plans and destroyed everything he worked so hard for... He was just so angry he needed to do something.

But J would never hurt you. Never. You were his and only his. Though he would never admit this out loud to you, and it bothered him just thinking about it, he cared about you, enough to probably call it love, but J hated that word. And he knew you loved him too, since you told him all the time. But, he hated how weak it made him feel, he hated how weak you made him feel. It was disgusting. It made him feel terrible, he'd get this weird icky feeling in his stomach around you, and his heart would hammer in his chest from just you smiling at him. Disgusting. Though the thought of you with someone else made his blood boil, he wouldn't let anyone else touch you, he wouldn't let them get close. You were his. Only his and no one else’s. 

So, where were you?

J wandered around the home, slowly, his defense up just in case, J checked each room, before stopping at the bedroom. The door was closed and J tilted his head to the side as he stared at the dark oak door. It was usually open during the day, so why was it closed? J licked the scars on the inside of his cheek, glaring at the door as he heard a tv playing on the other side. You were there. Normally, J would just enter the room, but when J tried to turn the door handle, it wouldn't budge. Locked? He thought, staring at the door a little bit longer before heading back to his office.

A few hours later, heading to the bathroom, J passed you in the hallway. Stopping he turned and watched as you ignored him, making your way down the hall and to the kitchen. J continued to stare as your body turned the corner, confused, before he continued to the bathroom.

A couple hours later, J couldn't find you again, and you weren't in your room, his mind racing as to where you could've been before he found a Post-It on the fridge . At least you told him you were at the store. He'd have to send a goon or two to watch over you.

And only later, when you came back and were reading in your favorite chair and he had entered the living room, only then did Joker realize that you were actively avoiding him as you got up from your chair and left the room, almost as quickly as he entered. 

Now, Joker hated being wrong, being stubborn,  but what he hated more was you ignoring him. After spending so long getting used to your presence after all these years, you were always with a hand on his arm or doing some sort of physical contact, only to now be ignoring him... It was irritating. He hated it. It made his skin itch. No matter how much he hated it, he knew he had to do something to try and get you to talk to him again; look at him again. He was becoming restless. Obsessed with the thought of you as he thought up a plan. So, J did what J thought was best, went out into the Gotham streets.

~~~

You sat in your chair, a few hours since J had left again, and you let out a sad sigh. You had been finding it harder and harder to distance yourself from J, but you had to do it. You hoped he'd understand that you were angry and that you were hurting because of him. You did want nothing more than for him to apologize, but you didn't want him to make an attempt to comfort you if he didn't actually mean it, you didn't really care anymore. You knew deep down under that hard exterior, under the mask, J loved you. You knew it. That was all you could ask for.

You sighed, watching the sun begin to set over the horizon, turning the sky a pinky-blue. You wanted J to come back and hold you and kiss you... And tell you that you were his, something you took as his way of showing that he loved you; along with his very actions alone, the way he held you told you everything. You didn't want an apology, all you wanted now was for your Joker to come home and for things to get back to normal.

As the minutes passed and your eyes began to droop, you heard the back door open. Opening your tired eyes, you slowly blinked, your neck straining as you sat up in your chair after falling asleep oddly on it. Looking over at the back door, J stood there, watching you. You felt your stomach flutter softly at just the sight of him, you were happy he was back. You both said nothing as you adjusted awkwardly in your seat, pushing your legs out from under you as you stood, eyes raking over him as you looked at his overall appearance. His hair was all over the place and the grease paint on his face was cracked and slightly smeared. Looking closer, it seemed that he was holding something, his arms up in an odd way that looked like he was crossing his arms; dare-say like he was holding a baby. 

You watched as J slowly walked over, stopping before you as you looked up at him with a small frown. You stared at him as he did the same to you, silently asking him to speak up first, along with asking him where he had been. With no answer, suddenly, J opened his arms slightly, revealing a small gray kitten with little black stripes and bright blue eyes. You gasped lightly, staring at the baby cat in his arms as the kitten meowed; looking up at J, you could tell he was uncomfortable with the little animal on him, so you took the cat into yours. The kitten meows again as you hold it to your chest, feeling the kitten nuzzle its head against you. You couldn't help but smile down at the little one, before looking up at Joker, who just stared at you and the feline in your arms.

"J..." You whispered out, tears forming in your eyes as you tried to push them down, only for J to let out a gruff hum in return, reaching his finger up to gently poke the kitten on the head, as if he was trying to pet it. It was adorable. You then looked down at the kitten, your mind racing with different name ideas as you thought about all the things you now needed to get, like cat food, a fluffy bed, treats, toys, a food dispenser, and maybe even a cool cat tree. You looked back up at J, a small shy smile growing on your face, "Thank you." You went on the tip of your toes to press a soft kiss onto his lips, your cheeks flushing as his hands immediately reached to your sides, pulling you flush against him, one hand going behind your back and one hand weaving through your hair as he possessively kissed your soft lips. Your eyes slid shut as you melted against him, kissing back as passionately as he kissed you. As the kiss slowly died down, you let out a small laugh, J's finger coming up to brush against your bottom lip, smearing the red grease paint that transferred there.

You hummed happily before hearing the kitten meow, looking down, you scooted the kitten to one arm, the kitten's tiny claws digging into your sweater lightly as you grabbed J's arm with your free hand. 

"Let's go to bed. I'm going to make the baby's bed and find him some food." You spoke, your voice mimicking a child's as you merged to talk to the kitten, "Yes, you are so cute, the cutest of cutes. Who wuvs you, I wuv you!"

As J watched you from the doorway of the bedroom, he placed a hand over his heart, rubbing the purple suit slightly as he felt the faint rapid beating of his heart. His eyes almost softened as he continued to watch you interact with the kitten, seeing that smile on your face, the red grease paint still on your lips, he wished you would keep that paint there forever, showing that you were his. J swore he would protect you from anything and everything, not even Batman could get close to you. Mine, mine, mine, mine. With those words echoing in his head, he entered the bedroom, getting rid of the grease paint on his face before joining you on the bed, and taking you in his arms. You smiled as J buried his now clean face in the crook of your neck.

"I love you." You mumbled, your hand going behind you to brush your fingertips against his cheek briefly as your eyes began to drift close, sleep beginning to take over.

J kept his eyes shut as he felt your breathing slow into a soothing, peaceful pace before he opened his mouth only to close it a moment later; pulling you closer into his chest.

[about-faces]

I’ve been thinking for a long time that I should write a full book dedicated to the history of Two-Face, just because I’ve spent years looking through essay books like Batman and Philosophy and whatnot and getting frustrated how they always ignore Harvey.

And even when he gets even the slightest analytical attention, it’s only about BTAS or TDK, with no mention of the comics (unlike the Joker), but even those analyses are superficial at best.

But I keep self-sabotaging my attempts to write this because I know no one’s going to care, and I don’t know how to craft/sell such a book to get people to realize that he’s a character who is RICH with worth for critical analysis, not just as a literary figure but also in terms of psychology, philosophy, and more.

But most people don’t even think the character is even worth the attention in the first place. I can just imagine publishing such a book and getting a bunch of reactions like “A whole Two-Face book? Why? Who asked for this?” Because there haven’t been enough popular stories that treat him well enough to actually make people see his potential as a character. All the best stuff is in comics most people haven’t read, and no one gives a shit about comics anyway.

[j0kers-light]

hii, i have a doubt, how do you imagine joker's scars?? They aren't quite visible with his make-up so I was wondering if you feature them like the scar's on tdk where Joker isn't wearing any makeup for like five seconds (When he dresses as an officer) or I've also seen some edits in your account of joker without makeup, are they just visuals or is it how you write him??

I shall clear your doubt sweet anon. 😘 You wanna know how he got these scars? 🖤✨

They’re written exactly as they are anon. Why alter something thats already perfect? Ugh he’s so cute okay. I have a sensory issue so textures are ✨ just imagine kissing J with those scars 🤤 God yes!!!

And he rarely wears makeup around us anymore so we get to see Joker all day every day like this! 😭 I need several minutes.

I can’t. I really can’t rn. And his wittle freckles? I’m on the floor and I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. Yall got me crying at my desk!!!

[5-7-9]

This panel is pretty funny 😂 just because of how wish fulfillment it is

Like, you wish this happened, huh?

I don’t like it when stories use their citizens as some kind of monolith hive mind, they just suddenly get inspired to do good or bad for no reason or the reason is too superficial. It bugs me, what can i say? 🤷

Interesting part to note is how they treated people taking up Joker's masks though.

Joker’s mask seems to be what gives these hooligans the freedom to cause mayhem. I’ve already said it before, but this comic treats Joker’s smile as insincere, something to hide, fake. As if being allowed to a secretive identity removes guilt over responsibility. Like when internet trolls can’t be tied to their face. This is expanded on through Alex Kayes the best. Although I don’t like her character’s existence, she highlights the part of Joker’s legacy that was perhaps misguidedly applied to Joker. Social media and public outcry.

Remember Logan Paul’s infamous apology video? James Charles? Etc. social media people? The comic even got the YouTube logo on it.

Red Flag is having a political podcast 🚩😙 sorry~ but if you’re anything like Andrew Tate, the alt-right pipeline is one you don’t want to stay in. Don’t believe everything you hear.

“It’s about sending a message” …was it hate speech? Jkjk. But this is exactly what Heath Ledger’s Joker’s mission in The Dark Knight Rises movie by Chris Nolan was like.

He was also described by Alfred as “Someone people just want to watch the world burn” with absolutely no reason to be evil, he just is evil 🙃 So there is some similarity to Punchline to this movie’s Joker.

Social media and the constant criticisms done by people reacting and adding their own stuff like idk tiktok i guess? Oh right, the comic said it, yeah. Idk any tiktok challenges like this one, so no video example 🤷

Joker War was also mentioned in other comics. I think it’s interesting how Bao Pham’s origins with Joker and Harley was, and his eventual rise to being Joker Hunter and protecting his city. Then i think he left eventually (idk). Huh.

More Punchline, this time from oftentimes copaganda and all times police commissioner Jim Gordon! More teenagers that support Punchline being bullies, what else is new. I totally forgot what I wanted to say, so I’ll just skip to the end of what I really wanted to comment on. Y’know I only recently learned about this so that’s why I’m talking about it but I think it was really awesome that Joker 2019 traveled all the way around the world because people were using his face masks in activism. That’s the positive side of having a brand, DC comics can go across countries and be recognizable. The more recognizable you are, the more people hear you. That’s what happened in the case with the Joker from the protests in Lebonon, Chile, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Colombia, Spain, Catalonia, and Ecuador (there may have been more but idk). (Warning! Talks of death and possible SA in this video!)

(I’d like to take a special time to acknowledge the Iraq Joker (mustafa makki kareem) since I found a rather in-depth interview video of his efforts). (This was 4 years ago, so I’m afraid the political landscape of Iraq has taken a turn… I hope he’s okay).

An interview with some Hong Kong protestors that wear masks to protect their identity. Interestingly enough, this video calls the mask similar to Batman :)

Also they mention reasons for hiding their identity, and methods!

There’s a few clips of Bolivia’s Joker too

Some faces of Lebonon Jokers (this video is edited with TDK Bane’s message but the original video isn’t allowed in my country?)

More edits of Chile Lebonon and Hong Kong (again, original video linked in description but unavailable to me)

In fact, that’s what happened to the Joker 2019 movie. Nowhere in the comics had Joker been depicted as he was in that movie, a victim of an oppressive system. That movie essentially took back a villain and made him this icon. That was the first time ever after Joker’s further evilization after “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Death In The Family” and “The Killing Joke” made Joker one of the evilest Batman characters (considering the ever so slightly sympathetic side to the rest of the rouges). Not to go off on it, but I think it really was a good thing for Joker. I think his criminalization crossed a line at some point, so in a way, this makes up for it.

Of course, even with all of this, it’d be unfair of me to not mention all the bad that did come from Joker. I will not discount that. And no- the 2012 Aurora shooter James Holms had orange dyed hair and is NOT inspired by Joker, he didn’t even know the movie was going on, fyi. • The Florida man Lawrence Sullivan who was arrested in 2017 for allegedly pointing a firearm at an officer. (I reached my 10 video limit 😭). • The recreation of Joker 2019 bus killing scene with suicidal 24-year-old Kyota Hattori in Tokyo train. • The “Gypsy Crusader” or Paul Nicholas Miller was a popular troll that liked to cosplay as Joker in the 2019 movie and comics Riddler while making jokes (i think he did offensive humor?) of the “radical” alt-right stance. (Ironically, the racists didn’t want a Roma descent racist on their side 💀). He was arrested for possession of an unregistered rifle and a lot of ammunition. He also lived in New Jersey…

• 2014 Jerad Miller from Las Vadas Nevada shot two police officers and one bystander dressed as the Joker with an accomplice. Essentially doing a murder-suicide when they then shot themselves. He posted videos to Youtube of his messages. (I think there was some mental illness going on? But idk) (there is also mentions of political stuff like angry at drug laws and the corrupted government and a swatsika?) (yeah idk, it was confusing).

Yes, the criminal turned devil turned sympathetic villain leads to multiple interpretations of Joker, who would’ve guessed? (sarcasm). Even London and Clermont mocked their presidents with the clown face. It’s not entirely black and white 🤷

Still, despite all the flaws in Joker 2019’s movie, all the good that came out of it… I feel as though it outweighed the bad. So, it’s not easy to hate it. Shout out to this video analysis essay that made me critically think about the Batman movies!

[georgiapeach30513]

I know you are a fan of Bucky, and that’s fine, but for me Steve Rogers has always been my favorite character.

It’s 99% due to Chris’ performance. I never cared about the MCU or avengers until I watched TWS and I realized how fantastic a job he did. I also love every variation of Steve so that includes the animated skinny versions of him in what if and voiced by other people. But his performance in the MCU caused me look up other versions of Steve and I love them all.

I had only known him to be Johnny storm (which I also never watched but seeing the commercials back in 2004 was enough for me to be like pass) and I had no opinion about him. I have since watched both 2000s FF movies and actually find them hilarious. He’s the best part in those films for me.

But after I saw him play cap I watched all the MCU films and and the cap trilogy is the only one I will still watch.

Before that, I hated comic book movies and the dark knight was the only comic movie I liked.

Looking back, rewatching TDK now I’m over it. It’s way too long and I really only am here for heath’s performance as joker. It’s interesting to see how I could love a film so much ten years ago but change my mind when in my mind, I saw a better film years later.

But the cap trilogy has my heart. I have probably seen all three movies about combination of 30 times.

It doesn’t get old for me. And for me, it’s because of him.

So if he can have that impact on someone who had no interest in the genre or even him before seeing those films, I say he did something with his career.

It’s why I still am rooting for him. I believe he has a future yet and I simply do not care if people disagree with me.

Don’t say I didn’t tell y’all first. His time will come.

❤️ your blog, Jen!

I love this! I don't hate Steve. In fact the reason I watched CATFA is because of Chris. I had been a casual fan of Sebastian's, so was pleasantly surprised to see him as well.

I don't think anyone could have done Steve the way Chris did. Chris has amazing talent. He demands attention when he's on screen, and your eyes naturally find him. He's charismatic. But there seems to be a dull in his passion for acting, and I'm wondering if it is because of the negative reviews, or even lack of view he's gotten.

I will die on the hill that he deserved more recognition for both Defending Jacob AND Pain Hustlers. Chris was the best part of that movie. I'm hoping with him branching out of his comfort zone we get some amazing performances from him.

[anicomicgeek]

Kevin Conroy and Jason David Frank

 I don’t look it, but I’m 37, soon to be 38, years old.  I’m a child of the 1990s and I’m a geek.  I grew up with the DCAU and Power Rangers – and the past couple of weeks, reality took a baseball bat to my childhood’s balls. First with the death of Kevin Conroy, then the death of Jason David Frank.

 Batman and Tommy Oliver are dead: By cancer and possibly suicide respectively.

 I didn’t even get the chance to meet either one – but it still hurts knowing they’re gone.  It’s taken a bit of time to compose my thoughts on these events, so I feel like I should share them.

 Everyone who’s known me for a long time knows I’m a massive DC fan. But Conroy, believe it or not, wasn’t really my first Batman.  Believe it or not, thanks to reruns, that’s Adam West.  I remember wanting a Batman action figure from the toyline based on the first Keaton Batman movie due to it color scheme matching the suit West wore (and the comics) and despite him not being in the film, being happy that Robin got a figure in the Batman Returns toyline. Speaking of the latter film, that’s where Batman: TAS comes in, since it was a tie-in for Returns.

 Like a lot of people my age, I watched Batman: TAS.  I wish I could say that even as a kid, I knew how special it’d be when I first saw it – but while I did like the show, my first impressions, due to familiarity with the West show and the Keaton films were “Why do Alfred and Commissioner Gordon look like this?” (unaware that’s how they looked in the comics) and “This doesn’t sound like what I was expecting.”  Of course, that went away after watching the show a bit more and the DCAU grew.

 Like most kids, I also grew up with Power Rangers, though thanks to the local channel airing the show in the morning, I missed out early on until they shifted it to the afternoon some months later, so I missed out on quite a bit, including Tommy’s introduction and wouldn’t learn his origin until reruns.  Still, he was part of the team when I really got into the series and I was saddened the first time Tommy left (imagine what’d happened if they’d actually had Tommy die like his first Sentai counterpart Burai), and then again during season 2 before the mysterious White Ranger kids were waiting all season for turned out to be him.  Unlike his costars, he lasted until midway through Turbo, but I kept up with the series until the end of In Space, leaving only with the start of Lost Galaxy.  In fact, the Wild Force episode “Forever Red” was the only time I made an effort to watch the show – and it was due to him, Jason, TJ, and Andros.

 Back to Batman, I didn’t really tune out of the DCAU, though I did most of Batman Beyond after season 1 and The Zeta Project and Static Shock, but that was due to wanting to sleep in as opposed to waking up in the morning.  Still, I did see most of the crossover episodes of Static Shock and I did tune in for Justice League.  In fact, my favorite DCAU show was JL due to seeing multiple heroes appearing, even after stupid mandates affected Batman’s supporting cast and villains’ appearances on the show (look up the term “Bat-Embargo if you’re interested in stupidity).  After the JLU finale “Destroyer”, that seemed to be it for Conroy as Batman himself; he appeared in the first episode of season 4 of 2004’s The Batman cartoon as Dick Grayson’s dad.

 Then came the animated film Batman: Gotham Knight, a tie in to The Dark Knight – supposedly set between Batman Begins and TDK.  Supposedly being set in that universe, Batman wasn’t voiced by Christian Bale like one would expect – but by Conroy.  Then came the Superman/Batman films, Justice League: Doom, the Arkham games, the Injustice games, the Killing Joke adaptation, Infinite Crisis, Justice League Action, LEGO DC Super Villains, Scooby-Doo and Guess Who, even the recent MultiVersus, all featuring Conroy as Bruce Wayne, along with a number of his DCAU co-stars (though it varied based on what we’re talking about) in tow including Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker himself) as the Joker, Tim Daly or George Newbern as Superman, Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman, Ed Asner as Granny Goodness, Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor, and Michael Ironside as Darkseid. Hell, even the DCAU itself did get revisited with a mobile VR game and two sequel films, Batman and Harley Quinn and Justice League Vs. the Fatal Five.  While I liked a lot of the other DC productions, a lot of the times, the DCAU, Arkham, and Injustice casts were the voices I heard.

 While I didn’t actively tune into Power Rangers anymore, I did occasionally watch it if it came on the TV and didn’t feel like changing channels.  That said, I did go out to see the remake movie in 2017, which featured Frank and Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly) in a cameo at the end.  The post-credits stinger even set up an appearance for Tommy in a sequel – one that, due to the film’s performance, would never come.  Even for all of the film’s issues (including the recurring problems of Power Rangers films barely featuring scenes of the heroes in costume), I liked it.

 One of my hobbies is fanfiction (fan-written stories) and another is fancasting (hypothetically “casting” actors in roles).  A fanfic idea I’d been kicking around, but never actually gotten around to writing, was something called “Multiversal War”, where different things I’d like would meet each other to stop threats from each other’s universe – ad as you can imagine, a lot of my “casting choices” for DC characters were DCAU voice actors, including, yes, Conroy as Batman.  Even had Frank “as” Tommy and the Emissary, a character from the Transformers: Prime Wars web series.

 Granted, a lot of deaths of other actors also affected my “choices”, but truth be told, Conroy’s passing is what made me tempted to just give up ever writing Multiversal War.  I could respond to the passing and retiring of others by sliding someone else in the role, but even trying it with Batman, maybe it’s due to me being the Spectrum, it didn’t feel “right”; it felt off.  Every time I think I got something workable, it didn’t feel right.

 Granted, I could work around the passing of Frank as well (just replace the Emissary with Spike Witwicky for Fortress Maximus as it was with the earlier Headmasters stuff and write out Tommy), I still grew up with Power Rangers for a long time and Tommy was still my favorite Ranger.

 There’s a lot of actors I thought whose passing we’d talk long before Conroy and Frank, including Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime from the original Transformers cartoon, the live-action movies and even some recent stuff), Peter Weller (the original RoboCop), Patrick Stewart, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, but as of November 10 and 20 respectively, that’s no longer a thing.  There’s been speculation that Conroy was sick for years, but given it was years of speculation, I didn’t put much thought into it recently anymore than I did then.  And, as someone who suffers from depression myself, it’s still hard to accept that even famous people can also suffer from it and as I generally don’t keep up with actors’ daily lives, I didn’t know Frank lost a stepdaughter nor that he was going through a divorce.

 So, like a lot of people, their deaths took me by surprise and I was in a state of shock after reading about them when I woke up.

 So, how do I feel after writing all of this?

 Still hurting (after all two of my childhood heroes died), but feeling a little better writing it and sharing my thoughts.  Hopefully, this helps me and hopefully, I didn’t ramble too much.

[twinhood-2dot0]

the entire history of the dceu, i guess

I wanted to write about the entire history of Batman or The Flash but uh, their histories might take a whole book to write. Then I thought of Batgirl, but uh, as much as I love her, I’m only really familiar with her later Oracle days and her Batgirl days from 2011-2018, whereas in the case of the other two mentioned I’ve read pretty much every consequential issue (am I flexing? maybe). I am gonna try to read every single comic she’s in though :P. Huh, it’s only 61 TPBs. The list is not complete, but if we factor in all those that I’ve already read and those yet to read, I think they level out. There are probably much more complete lists, but I can’t find any as easily scrapable ones.

Man Of Steel (2013)

Budget: $225–258 million

Box Office: $668 million

IMDb: 7.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes: Critics: 56% Audience:75%

(Note: None of these are actual metrics for how good the movies are, you’ll see why I’m including those.)

In 2008, after WB’s disappointment with the box office of the sixth instalment in the Superman series, they decided to reboot the film series. 

The writer for The Dark Knight trilogy, David S. Goyer, expressed his idea for a Superman movie to Christopher Nolan, and impressed, Nolan pitched the idea to the studio, and were both hired to write and produce the movie respectively. A few directors were considered, notably Ben Affleck (Batman, in the future) and Matt Reeves (directed The Batman, in the future), but ultimately Zack Snyder was chosen in 2010. There was an idea to set the movie in the TDK trilogy universe, but it was decided against (thank god for that, please, the movies are perfect as is). Anyways, the movie was a box office success, even while critical responses were not so much. Okay, well, it’s Superman, so it’s not very unexpected. I, for one, am not a huge fan of the movie. As much as I looooove darker stories, come on, it’s Superman, the paragon of hope! It’s not a terrible movie, but as a Superman movie, yeah, no. Anyways, seeing the success of the movie, they went along with their idea for a connected universe.

I’ll write a summary for the plot below every movie’s sections, skip if you don’t want to be spoiled. You know what, just read it through. There’s nothing much very consequential since the axing of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and like every superhero is gonna be recast and rebooted, so it doesn’t matter.

Plot: Basically a Superman origin story. If you don’t remember, you can go back to my shallow dive into the Justice League :) The villain is Zod, who wants to terraform (Kryptoform?) Earth and make it habitable for Kryptonians. And Superman also has uhhh the genetic code to fabricate baby Kryptonians placed in him? Which Zod wants to use to repopulate.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016)

Budget: $250–300 million

Box Office: $873.6 million

IMDb: 6.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 29% A: 63% (Yikes)

In 2013, it was announced that Zack Snyder is going to be returning for a Man Of Steel sequel, and later confirmed by Snyder that Batman and Superman (and Wonder Woman) were going to meet for the first time on the big screen and that it was going to be inspired by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns comic, which depicts an older, more brutal Batman.

You can see that clearly in the suit.

The movie opened to a whopping $422.5 million and then experienced an 81.2% decline in its second weekend. The movie seems to have been carried by the hype for Batman and Superman, like wow.

The Rotten Tomatoes website's critical consensus reads: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice smothers a potentially powerful story – and some of America's most iconic superheroes – in a grim whirlwind of effects-driven action." I, too, disliked the movie. I am quite a new DC fan, but even for me, it felt like it butchered the characters of Batman and Superman, although Superman to a lesser extent. Batman kills??? And why exactly does he want to kill Superman??? Also, that plot point would have been made more impactful if Batman didn’t kill freaking goons???

Wow uh, that’s quite a few Golden Raspberries. Yikes, even Catwoman won 4.

Plot: Superman’s fight with Zod created a lot of collateral damage and also destroyed the Wayne Enterprises building, so Batman resents Superman. Lex Luthor manipulates them into hating each other, and he ransoms Superman’s mom to get him to kill Batman. Superman tries to talk to Batman and Batman attacks??? (he got kryptonite). Batman comes to his senses just before he deals the killing blow. Superman confronts Luthor, and Luthor unleashes Doomsday, a monster designed to kill Superman using Kryptonian DNA. Wonder Woman appears. Superman and Doomsday kill each other. Everyone big sad. The End. 

Suicide Squad (2016)

Budget: $175 million

Box Office: $747 million

IMDb: 5.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 26% A: 58%

The film was announced in 2009 and David Ayer signed on to direct in 2014. Ah, where do I begin? The movie was set to have a sombre tone, but with the failure of BvS and the success of Deadpool, the studio worked on a second, lighter cut than Ayer’s and then tried to reach a place of “consensus” between the two. The reshoots cost around $22 million, more than the typical $6-$10 million, and changed the entire third act, and changed Joker and Harley’s relationship to be less abusive??? Thankfully, Birds Of Prey later remedied that, but the emancipation of Harley Quinn would have been much better had it been preserved in Suicide Squad.

The movie was a box office success, but the movie is regarded as possibly the worst DC film made, which is not an easy feat, as much as I hate to admit it. 

I have no comments on this movie. Because I have no memory of when I watched this movie, except for Harley Quinn and how badly the movie treated her. Huh. I don’t remember anything except for Harley Quinn. Wow. That is quite a feat considering how much I love the Suicide Squad from the comics and individual characters like Captain Boomerang, Katana, and Killer Croc. Oh yeah, and Amanda Waller. She’s an awesome character in every version, and Viola Davis does a great job. 

Plot: Superman dies, so Amanda Waller creates Task Force X, a team made up of supervillains forced to do Waller's bidding because of a bomb injected in their neck that she can detonate at any time. An archaeologist becomes possessed by a witch named Enchantress. Turns the city into monsters, summons brother to destroy mankind, the Suicide Squad beat Enchantress, yada yada, I’ll fall asleep if I’m forced to read this, just read it here

Wonder Woman (2017)

Budget: $120–150 million

Box office: $822.8 million

IMDb: 7.4/10 (wow I thought it would be higher than that)

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 93% A: 83% (You can see why I thought that)

DC’s first gem. Heralded as DCEU’s best film, the film was a hit among critics and the audience.

Plans for a Wonder Woman film date back to 1996. After going through a lot of directors and actresses, Patty Jenkins took up the role of director in 2015 and Gal Gadot was casted by Zack Snyder to appear in BvS in 2013. This movie is also an origin story, set in the 1910s in World War I. 

Also, listen to this

I loved this so much. I got into DC in 2018, so this movie was my first exposure to Wonder Woman, and oh boy was it a good one. The acting was awesome, the action scenes were perfect, humour and romance weren’t overbearing and bettered the film.

Plot: Princess Diana is a resident of Themyscira, an island of immortal women and only women. The island is usually shrouded from the outside world, but one day, an American pilot named Steve Trevor crashlands into the island and is followed by German forces who were pursuing him. The Themyscirans fight them off but incur heavy losses. Steve is interrogated using the Lasso Of Truth/Hestia and reveals that there is a war going on in the “land of man”, as the Themyscirans call it, and Diana convinces Hippolyta (oh whoops, I forgot to mention, Themyscirans are Amazons, at least, a sect of them. It’s the same Hippolyta from Greek myth, but modified to fit the story. She’s Diana’s mom. Antiope is also there, but she’s killed off.) to let her go and stop the war, believing that Ares is behind it. And she arms herself with the lasso, a “god-killer” sword, and the armour, and leaves for London. She fights Ares. Steve sacrifices himself, and Wonder Woman beats Ares, WWI is over.

Justice League (2017) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Budget: $275 + $25 (reshoots) million

Box Office: $657.9 million

IMDb: 6.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 39% A: 67%

The biggest disappointment in comic book movie history. After the release of Man Of Steel, Goyer was hired again to write a sequel (BvS) and a Justice League movie. In 2014, it was announced that Zack Snyder would be directing the movie. The production went along and filming wrapped up in Oct 2016. However, in the wake of Snyder’s daughter’s death, he had to step down. They then hired Joss Whedon, the director of Avengers and Avengers: Age Of Ultron, seeing the success of those movies. Under his direction, it went through two months of reshoots costing $25 million. The reshoots coincided with the filming of Mission Impossible: Fallout so Henry Cavill was contractually obligated to keep a moustache for it, so uh… His moustache had to be digitally removed which led to uh…

Justice League - Opening Superman Scene - Mustache Movieclip

Anyways, there were a lot of changes made. There are multiple sources estimating how much was changed. The producer said in an interview that the film was shot originally by eighty to eighty-five percent. I’m too dumb to understand what that means, maybe you’ll be able to. Snyder said around a fourth from what he had been told (he didn’t watch the movie), and the cinematographer said 10%. Whedon’s rewrites were also around 80 pages, so it was mostly his work. The movie was mandated by execs to be under 2 hours, which is the dumbest freaking decision, considering the only superheroes in the movie we’ve met so far are Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. 

Controversy and Changes

It was later reported that Snyder’s rough cut was deemed unwatchable by studio execs.

Ray Fisher, the actor for Cyborg, and Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman, came out with claims against Joss Whedon, with Fisher saying “Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.” and Gadot claiming that Whedon threatened her career if she refused to do something.

There’s a controversial scene in AvengersAoU where in the chaos of Ultron’s attack, Bruce Banner (Hulk) falls on Black Widow’s chest. It’s a horrible sexist thing to have in your movie already, but even more egregious is that he does the exact same thing in Justice League with The Flash falling on Wonder Woman’s chest. Gadot refused to do this scene and it had to be filmed with a double. Seriously dude? You didn’t reconsider after the actor said no?

Chris Terrio considered the Whedon cut an act of vandalism and unsuccessfully tried to get his name removed from the movie.

The Whedon cut was significantly lighter in tone and featured much less violence as the studio was not happy with the results of the previous darker movies, and you know, it is directed by the director of Avengers.

Tom “Junkie XL” Holkenberg completely scored the movie, but halfway into post-production, was replaced by Danny Elfman, composer of Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992).

The movie was exactly 2 hours, removing 90 minutes of Snyder footage, but still adhering to the basic outline

Christopher Nolan and Deborah Snyder (his wife and producer) advised him never to watch the film as it would break his heart. I see what she means, it broke my heart as a huge DC fan, imagine being the creator of a work that you poured blood, sweat and tears into and someone else comes in and completely butchers it.

The underperformance led to the studio deciding to ditch Snyder’s vision for a universe of interconnected films to focus on solo movies.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Budget: $70 million to finish the movie

Box Office: Direct-to-video

IMDb: 8.0/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 71% A: 93%

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut

After the release of the “Josstice League”, fans created a petition to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut that gained more than 180,000 signatures. Various members of the cast showed support for the movement. 

Ahead of San Diego Comic Con 2019, a crowdfunding campaign was started, with half to be spent on advertising and the other half going to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. They purchased ad space on billboards, two in Times Square and a flying banner ad that passed over WB Studios. The fans raised over $500,000 for the ASFP in donations by Feb 2021.

In March 2019, Snyder confirmed that his original cut existed, but that it was up to the studio to release it. The following month, he posted a photo of boxes with tapes labelled “Z.S.J.L. Director’s Cut” captioned “Is it real? Does it exist? Of course it does.”

The studio approached Snyder proposing to release the cut unfinished as he had left it, but he refused, insisting on finishing it if it was to be released. In Feb 2020, WB decided to move forward. In May 2020, Snyder announced that his cut titled “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” would be released on HBO Max in 2021.

Differences

At least 10 comic characters were cut, including but not limited to, Iris West, The Flash’s wife, Ryan Choi, the not-yet Atom, and Darkseid, the big bad of the Justice League, basically DC’s Thanos (technically, Darkseid came before, but not in live-action media, so :P) and Martian Manhunter, a main member of the Justice League.

A lot of the backstory for the new characters like Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg. Cyborg was supposed to be the “heart” of the story, but he had barely any character in the Whedon cut. The Flash is relegated to just comic relief and has pretty much no role in the climax when he had a huge role. Aquaman’s backstory was also cut, but it’s less egregious because of the existence of the solo movie. Even Batman was affected. He is more indecisive, oafish, and obsessive, while in Snyder’s cut, he’s more optimistic and inspired by Superman’s sacrifice. His dynamic with Wonder Woman was also similarly butchered, and she was very sexually objectified.

This was cut. Do I need to elaborate? Well, there is symbolism, but eh I’m lazy. Also, this is a reference to “The Death Of Superman.” storyline.

Just look at this. He went from a menacing alien monster to man in armour. His character was similarly butchered. I’ll expand on the plot section.

Dumb freaking jokes and quips. Marvel style. Except it doesn’t work at all in this movie. In the MCU the audience is used to that tone. Shoe-horning in jokes in a movie that was meant to be dark doesn’t work at all, especially when they make no sense and are just plain unfunny. 

Zack Snyder’s Justice League has 4 hours of runtime. Snyder was given free rein, and he made full use of that. It has a lot of his signature slow-mo scenes, and there are a lot more details too because of that.

Story Differences

The outline of the plot is basically the same, but every character is very fleshed out. We see how Victor Stone turned into the Cyborg, his relationship with his parents, how his powers work, etc, and the same treatment is given to Flash and Aquaman. Cyborg did very little in the theatrical cut, but he’s a decent character in the Snyder cut. 

The theatrical version of Steppenwolf was probably the worst villain in comic book movies, but Snyder’s version fleshed him out and has much more of a motivation. In the theatrical cut he wants to destroy Earth for seemingly no reason, and there’s no mention of the Anti-Life equation, which is like Darkseid’s signature weapon. Steppenwolf is on Earth to gain Darkseid’s favour again after betraying him in the past, and he finds out that the Anti-Life Equation is in the Earth’s core. 

Oh yeah, the climax. I’ll talk about it when I explain the plot because it’s the biggest change.

Plot: 

Blue text is only in Snyder cut, red is only in Josstice League, and white text is in both movies.

Thousands of years ago, Darkseid Steppenwolf came to Earth to destroy it in search of the Anti-Life equation and to build his parademon army. But the Atlanteans, Amazons, and humanity came together to defeat them, and his three Mother Boxes were confiscated, and each tribe stored them away safely. In the present day, sensing Superman, Earth’s protector’s death, the Mother Boxes call out to Steppenwolf, and he arrives in Themyscira, defeats the Amazons, and steals their Mother Box, and Diana is alerted, and she finds out about the war against Darkseid. She and Bruce team up to gather other metahumans to fight an incoming threat that Lex Luthor warned Bruce about in the previous movie and one that the Parademon's presence made obvious. Bruce first goes to Aquaman, but he refuses. Then Diana goes to Cyborg, who also refuses, but he returns home to find his place ransacked and dad missing, and Bruce successfully recruits Barry because… he needed friends. Honestly, mood. 

Then, the Atlantean outpost is attacked and Mera and Aquaman fail to protect the Mother Box. Then the team received intel from Jim Gordon, while Cyborg joins them, and they discover Steppenwolf’s hideout under the Gotham Harbor, where he’s interrogating S.T.A.R Labs employees, one of them being Silas Stone, Victor’s dad. They fight Steppenwolf, and in the process, the facility is flooded, when Aquaman arrives and buys them time to escape. The team retrieves the Mother Box Silas used to rebuild Victor’s body after he met with a car accident, and the team realizes they could bring Superman back with it. They exhume Superman’s body and revive him in the Kryptonian ship that he arrived on Earth in. An amnesiac Superman then attacks the team and comes to his senses when Lois Lane arrives at the scene. Steppenwolf arrives at S.T.A.R Labs and tries to take the Mother Box when Silas sacrifices himself to superheat the Mother Box. This allows the team to locate the Mother Box using its heat signature. The team travels to an abandoned Russian city, a renamed Pripyat. I swear, this will be relevant. Aquaman and Wonder Woman fight off Steppenwolf, while Cyborg is separating the Mother Boxes (oops, I forgot, if the Mother Boxes conjoin and create a Unity, the Earth is razed and everyone is turned into parademons.), and Batman and The Flash fights off parademons and later rescues a family of people trying to escape whatever Steppenwolf is doing to the place. Okay, so 1. This is an abandoned town hit with a nuclear meltdown. 2. This messes with continuity. The Flash (2023) and ZSJL establish that he cannot relocate people. In the former, it is explicitly stated, and in the latter, it’s shown to us, when he just helps people along to escape in the Gotham Harbor fight, and he saves Iris with small taps. 3. The Flash barely has a role. I’m not saving people is not a vital thing to do, but like, look at what everyone else is doing! Also, they cut such a badass scene to make… whatever the heck we got. Meanwhile, Barry is circling the area to build up a charge to separate the Mother Boxes. Steppenwolf then overpowers the two of them, stabs Victor and rips him away from the Mother Boxes and then Superman arrives with the cheesiest line.

Steppenwolf: They’re too weak to see the truth.

Superman: Well… I believe in truth. But I’m also a fan of Justice.

And proceeds to curb-stomp Steppenwolf. Yes, I know it’s a reference to “Truth, Justice and The American Way” but eugh, could have been done so much better. Especially when you see what they cut to make that scene.

Superman then leaves to… relocate… a freaking building full of civilians. It’s like the movie forgot that it was supposed to be abandoned. Also, do I need to explain what’s wrong with this?

swings at Victor, when Superman lands in front of him, and says “Not impressed.”, and proceeds to curbstomp Steppenwolf.

Just look at this and tell me which one is badass.

Victor keeps getting interrupted by Steppenwolf, so Barry is unable to charge it, but by the time Superman arrives and Victor gets back in position, Barry gets shot, and the Mother Boxes form Unity, and the Earth is destroyed… until this happens. I don’t want to describe this scene, it’s that good.

Whoo, goosebumps. This here is the scene that Whedon cut out to make him save a random family. Instead of the Earth, and quite possibly multiple planets. And provided a payoff to the scene where he turns back time just a little bit earlier in the movie. And set up The Flash movie. And it felt so good to have him finally play a role after being comic relief for the whole movie.

After the fight, a few things happen. 1. Bruce has a Knightmare (get it? Cuz The Dark Knight is having a nightmare? Yeah… not subtle at all.) where Superman has established an authoritarian role and Batman is teamed up with Joker and most everyone else is dead. 2. Martian Manhunter reveals himself to Bruce and offers to help when the time comes. 3. Lex Luthor tells Deathstroke Batman’s identity to help him kill him.

Ooooookkkkkkaaaaayyyyy that was long. Still alive? Good. We are only halfway done.

Aquaman (2018)

Budget: $160–200 million

Box Office: $1.148 billion (Wow.)

IMDb: 6.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C:65% A: 72%

Huh did not expect that. DC’s highest grossing movie is Aquaman. Aquaman, the butt of every Justice League joke. Aquaman performed better than Batman v. Superman, a movie with two of the most iconic superheroes ever, and Justice League, the team of the most iconic superheroes. Okay, well, the movies themselves were not very good, but like, Aquaman. Sorry, I just can’t get over that fact. I personally love like (let’s not go that far. Despite being King of Atlantis and my love for the ocean, he’s still not very likeable in the comics. The movies are good though, they do his abrasiveness quite well.) Aquaman (No, it’s not just because of Jason Momoa’s abs, shuddup), but he never struck me as a very popular character.

This movie is a sort of origin story..? This movie takes place after Justice League, where he was man with trident who talked to fish, while in this movie he comes into his role as King of Atlantis. 

I loved the movie. Obviously. I loved Jason Momoa’s acting, I love his characterization, his character arc, I love how well the underwater CGI is done, I loved Atlantis, the adaptation of Black Manta, Orm is good enough. Especially after reading the comics. 

Plot: Origin story. Not very many additions, but it includes Black Manta’s origins, a son of a pirate that Aquaman refused to save, and now he made his life’s mission hunting him down. Never really liked him, kind of a boring villain writing, just look at Reverse Flash to see how well it can be accomplished.

Shazam! (2019)

Budget: $90–100 million

Box Office: $367.7 million

IMDb: 7/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 90% A: 82% (Wow, critics score higher than audience.)

From the supposedly “dark” franchise, we get a comedy film. Okay, well, the main character is a teenage kid, would be dumb to make it dark. Okay, I take that back, Damian Wayne stories are about a pre-teen kid, and do they get dark sometimes. Anyways, it’s a pretty funny movie, not very deep, but enjoyable and a reprieve. I just realized I missed Shazam! in my Justice League shallow dive :P. Well, this will be good enough ig. Also, did you know Shazam! was called Captain Marvel? Well, he still is, sometimes, but they can’t market him as Captain Marvel. It is a little off-topic, but let me take you back to the 1940s. In the 1940s, Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero around, outselling even Superman. This led to DC getting salty, and they decided to sue Fawcett Comics, then owner of the character, for infringing their copyright for Superman. In 1941 DC tried unsuccessfully to stop Fawcett from publishing them and from Republic Films from releasing a serial based on the character. Fawcett won, due to a technicality, but found that he was indeed an illegal copy. Then in 1951, DC appealed the decision, and due to the drop in comic sales, Fawcett decided it was not worth fighting and paid DC for damages and dissolved its comics in the coming years, and in 1967 Marvel trademarked the name in 1972 and that was an issue when DC licensed the rights to all Fawcett characters, and that led to them retitling it to Shazam!. Anyways, sorry for lengthening this already gigantic post.

I liked the movie. It does its job as a comedy superhero film pretty well, and it’s a good adaptation of him. Yeah, nothing much to say here.

Plot: Billy Batson is a kid in the foster system, who keeps running away from foster homes in search of his mother, and he eventually lands in the house of Víctor and Rosa Vásquez with five other children, Mary Bromfield, Pedro Peña, Eugene Choi, Darla Dudley, and superhero enthusiast Freddy Freeman. He gets selected by a wizard to be his new champion, giving him the ability to turn into an adult man who has the Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Stamina of Atlas, the Lightning of Zeus, the Courage of Achilles, and the Speed of Mercury (I do not know why the first is Christian, the next five Greek and the last Roman. Although, I guess Shazah doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

In a flashback at the beginning of the movie, we see Thaddeus Sivana also tested by the wizard but is rejected because of his greed, and he lives the rest of his life consumed by anger due to that.

Sivana deduces his identity, and he takes his foster sibling hostage in exchange for the power, but he shares his powers with them and they team up to beat Sivana.

Birds Of Prey And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)

Budget: $82-100 million

Box Office: $205.3 million

IMDb: 6.1/10

RT: C: 79% A: 78%

The film adaptation of my personal favourite DC teams. I mean, an all-girls (most of the time) team with Batgirl and Black Canary (most of the time)?

Margot Robbie, the actress for Harley Quinn, pitched the idea for a Harley Quinn spin-off in 2015, before the release of Suicide Squad, as "an R-rated girl gang film including Harley because I was like, 'Harley needs friends.'” She spent 3 years working on it and WB decided to make and it hired Cathy Yan, which makes this one of the few superhero films directed by a woman of colour. Batgirl was excluded from the movie for her standalone film. Huh, I thought it was because she was a problematic character to adapt. In 2018 it was announced that the lineup would include Huntress, Black Canary, and Renee Montoya. I refuse to call her Cassandra Cain. With so many things that the movie did right, Cassandra Cain is not it. She has 0 characteristics of the comic book character and I’m not even being hyperbolic. Seriously, I dare you to find one similarity. I’ll just be calling her uhhh Pickpocket. Yeah, that’s good enough.

I watched the movie again today, and oh my god, it. is. AWESOME! Harley Quinn is awesome, obviously. Huntress, oh my god, she’s my new celeb crush.

She’s soooo badass. She has this arc like, she just got into the role, and is trying so hard to be badass, practising in the mirror, saying stuff like “Do you know who I am?”, and “They call me… The Huntress.” It’s also a running gag that whenever she says “They call me…” the other party replies “The Crossbow Killer” and “Helena Bertinelli!”. But she’s so badass when she’s not trying, true to the comics version.

Renee is also cool, a little older tho, but that’s fine.

Oh, Black Canary was soooo good too. A pretty good adaptation, though not truly comic-accurate. 

Cassandra Cain. Just read my Batfamily shallow dive, and read her character here. You’ll see why I refuse to call her Cassandra Cain.

Plot: Years ago, all of the Bertinelli family is gunned down for their fortune, but Helena survives and is taken in and trained as an assassin, and is trying to kill all the people responsible for the massacre of her family (The plot is pretty uhh back-and-forthey, and it keeps switching between flashbacks and the present, so I’m going to try to do this chronologically).

Dinah Lance breaks Roman Sionis’s (Black Mask, played by… Ewan McGregor… Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m sorry when he commits all these evil deeds I can’t see anyone but Obi-Wan Kenobi. Not his fault, I’m just really bad at not relating it to actors’ past roles.) driver’s legs and is hired by him to be his new driver.

GCPD detective Renee Montoya is investigating the “Crossbow Killer” murders and tries to recruit Dinah as an informant, but she refuses.

Four years after the events of Suicide Squad, Joker and Harley break up, and because no one believed that they were actually broken up, Harley drives a truck into ACE Chemicals, “publicly announcing her relationship status”. 

Sionis sends Victor Zsasz and Dinah to retrieve a diamond embedded with the account numbers to the Bertinelli Fortune, but Pickpocket steals it, but she’s caught by the police, so she swallows it.

Harley is kidnapped by Sionis’s men, and she offers to steal the diamond back, and after she’s sent to retrieve it, a bounty is placed on Pickpocket. Harley breaks into the GCPD and rescues Cassandra. They hide out at Harley’s apartment, which is bombed by Sionis’s men. Harley calls Sionis to exchange Pickpocket for his protection, Dinah notifies Montoya, Zsasz tells Sionis about her betrayal, and Sionis dons his eponymous “Black Mask” and decides to go after them at Amusement Mile.

At the park, Montoya confronts Harley, but they fight and Montoya is defenestrated. Zsasz arrives and shoots Harley with a tranq, and holds Dinah at gunpoint when he arrives, but he’s shot by Helena. Montoya returns and tells Helena that Sionis orchestrated the massacre when Sionis arrives with an army of henchmen. They fight, but Pickpocket is caught, and Harley and Huntress try to save her. Pickpocket reveals that she had a grenade in hand, and blows Sionis up, in the only scene that I could think of that gave this movie an R rating, aside from the f words. Montoya quits the GCPD, and Helena, Dinah and Montoya create the crimefighting team of Birds Of Prey.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Budget: $200 million

Box Office: $169.6 million

IMDb: 5.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 58% A: 73%

Plot: Diana gets a wishing stone, wishes for Steve Trevor back, and he comes back… in another man’s body??? And they have sex while he is in another man’s body??? Yeah, I don’t know how no one saw any issue with that. A woman jealous of Diana’s beauty and popularity wishes to be like her, and turns into a Cheetah, a businessman named Maxwell Lord gets the stone, saves his company, makes everyone in the world wish for anything and chaos unfolds and Diana renounces her wish and Steve is gone, Wonder Woman and Cheetah fight, Max and Diana fight, everyone renounces their wish, the end.

(Yeah, I’m in a rush, and this movie is too terrible for me to put any effort into it. Sorry.)

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Budget: $185 million

Box Office: $168.7 million

IMDb: 7.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 90% A: 82%

Yeah, confusing name, I know, but it’s more of a relaunch than a direct sequel.

This is the movie I said where the box office will be relevant. For such a critically acclaimed movie, it grossed only $168 million, the lowest of any DCEU film. 

In 2018, James Gunn, director of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 1-3, and several other… let’s just say interesting films, and now co-CEO of DC Films. I didn’t really know much about him, until recently, except that he directed an awesome DC movie, and he’s possibly the best person to take DC forward according to other people.

How James Gunn Deradicalizes the Manosphere | A RETROSPECTIVE

Watch this to see why I love him so much now. Oh wait oops um… His movies have some pretty… disturbing imagery, so uh only watch it if you’re up for that…. Which you probably definitely aren’t.

DC first asked him to make a Superman movie, which he said he didn’t know if he wanted to make, so they told him he could adapt any DC property he wanted to, and he chose Suicide Squad.

He also insisted on an R-rating, which I love it for. The movie would not be the same without the gratuitous violence. Yeahhh, I did a full 180 from cringing at amputations to loving gratuitous violence. Wow. Who knew I’d be here? I mean okay, it’s obviously where I’d have been, after reading Attack On Titan and Chainsaw Man and DC Black Label stuff. 

He took inspiration from John Ostrander’s 1980s Suicide Squad run, drawn to it because of its loser B-grade supervillains.

The first character he chose was King Shark, who was supposed to be in the first movie but was replaced by Killer Croc, and the others added were Peacemaker, Polka-Dot Man, and a gender-swapped Ratcatcher.

He chose Starro The Conqueror as the villain, who struck him as absurd but terrifying, reflecting what he wanted to do with the film. 

I don’t really care much for actors, but there’s one actor I’ve loved for a long time. David Dastmalchian, Polka-Dot Man. Why do I love this guy you haven’t ever heard about? Well, look at his roles.

The Dark Knight (2008) - Thomas Schiff, one of Joker’s deranged henchmen.

Ant-Man (2015), Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018), What If..? Episode 5 (2021), Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania - Kurt, (in the first three ) one of Ant-Man’s friends, and in the latter movie, a being named… Veb?

Gotham (2017) - Dwight Pollard, one of Joker’s followers.

The Flash (2017, 2021) - Abra Kabadra, a Flash villain who’s a technomagician.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One and Two (2021) - Julian Day (Calendar Man), Oswald Cobblepot (Penguin) 

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Yep, he played 8 different roles in superhero movies and 6 in various DC media. If I were an actress, I would want a resume just like that.

David Dastmalchian suffered from bullying due to his vitiligo in his childhood and developed depression and addiction, and comics gave him much-needed escapism and became somewhat of a comic devotee.

He first auditioned for a member of the Joker crew in the famous heist scene from The Dark Knight, but he didn’t get the part and was devastated. Four months later, however, he received a call that he was cast as Thomas Schiff. A small role, but one he credits with changing his life.

That’s why he was perfect for the role of Polka-Dot Man. Gunn wrote the character with Dastmalchian in mind.

Gunn messaged him saying that he wanted him in his film, and he was wrought with anticipation for what role he was going to play. 

“I am very familiar with so much of the DC canon, and I know the DC villains so well, and he’s like, ‘I want you to be Abner Krill, Polka-Dot Man,'” Dastmalchian recalled. “I was so embarrassed. And I’m like, ‘James, I’m so sorry. I don’t know anything about him.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. I want you to read the script and let me know how you feel.'”

“I was jumping up and down. I was crying. I was yelling,” Dastmalchian said. “I was so moved by what I read, and I was so moved by the thought that he would imagine me getting to bring to life a character that was beautifully created. James told me that when he was writing the character, he just saw me in his place.”

Polka-Dot Man’s abusive mother infected him with an alien virus, to turn him into a superhero, but it left him covered in polka dots and pustules, leading to ridicule and bullying. You can see how he could connect with a character like that.

“I connected with Abner from his first line,” he says. Dastmalchian sees Polka-Dot Man as an avatar for triumph against one’s insecurities.

“I love that Abner came to a point where he not only embraces his strangeness, he turns it into a superpower,” Dastmalchian says. “That’s what we all can do. We have things about ourselves that make us insecure, that make us ashamed. We keep things locked up, and they end up eating us from the inside.”

“We can do the work, get therapy or connect with people that help expel those viruses,” he explains. “We can love ourselves and figure we are meant to be the way we are. We’re fucking superheroes.”

Also, Peacemaker is John Cena.

It’s such a great movie, I was shocked to learn that it was the lowest-grossing DC movie. I guess an R-rating, a pandemic, a terrible prequel and a simultaneous streaming release will do that.

It’s a hilarious, gory, self-aware, ridiculous movie and an awesome adaptation of lesser-known DC supervillains that have been given a new lease on life. And also, Harley Quinn is great, obviously.

Plot: Amanda Waller assembles two Task Force X teams, who are sent to the island nation of Corto Maltese, unaware of each other. The movie goes into quite a bit of effort building character, to unceremoniously annihilate them, but Colonel Rick Flag and Harley Quinn survive. Their massacre provided a distraction for the other team to arrive safely. The team is commanded to find Flag and Harley Quinn, and massacre a soldier base, only to find out it belonged to a rebel group. Harley is captured by the dictator who is in love with Harley. Harley, after her experience with Joker, kills him and in a ridiculously over-the-top, awesome action sequence escapes to find… the others executing a “really good plan” to rescue her. She joins them and finds out that the Project Starfish, whose files they were there to destroy, was funded by the US Government, and the team splits, with one side dedicated to their mission, and the other who wanted to expose the secret. Peacemaker, on the former side, kills Flag but is killed by Bloodsport before he could kill Ratcatcher. Then Starro escapes and starts controlling the cities’ population. Waller orders them to leave, deeming the mission complete, but they revolt, and when Waller was about to detonate the bombs, she is knocked out by a member of the team, and directs them to defeat Starro. In a post-credits scene, the revolters are punished by assigning them to a new mission with Peacemaker, who is revealed to be alive.

Peacemaker (2021)

IMDb: 8.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 94% A: 89%

A spin-off series set after the events of The Suicide Squad directed by James Gunn.

It follows Peacemaker and Waller’s subordinates punished for insubordination by having to work with Peacemaker. I won’t go into the plot in detail, because it’s an 8 episode series with long ass episodes. The basic premise is, there’s an alien invasion of Butterflies, who take over people's bodies and give them super strength and such, and are trying to take over Earth, and the team has to destroy their food source. It has the same gory and humorous tone, and there’s a subplot of him coming to terms with his abusive Neo-Nazi dad’s terrible acts, oh oh, there’s a great lesbian character too. 

Black Adam (2021)

Budget: $190-260 million

Box Office: $393.3 million

IMDb: 6.3/10

RT: C: 38% A: 88% (wow that is some disparity)

Dwayne Johnson was set to play the character in Shazam!, but he urged to give him his own movie. This movie was supposedly supposed to be “the movie that saved DC”. Honestly, feels like a movie just to have Dwayne Johnson attached to the franchise. It just ended up feeling like a cookie-cutter superhero (ahem, antihero) film.

Plot: Kahndaq was once ruled by a dictator, and a young boy received the powers of Shazam and killed the dictator. Present-day Kahndaq is oppressed by a gang, and Adrianna Tomaz is trying to locate the Crown of Sabbac, she finds it, but her colleagues are killed and she reads the incantation and Teth-Adam arrives and kills them all. Amanda Waller calls the Justice Society, consisting of Atom Smasher, Cyclone, Doctor Fate and Hawkman, to apprehend him. 

Sidenote, I am so happy that Hawkman finally got a film adaptation. He is such an interesting character in the comics. They stop his killing spree and tell Adrianna that he is not a savior, but an imprisoned killer. Her son Amon hid the crown but they took him hostage. They give him the crown but he betrays her, and Adam gets mad and kills the leader and wounds Amon. Adam reveals to Hawkman that his son was the one who was given the powers but he gave his powers to him to save him and died. He surrenders because he felt unworthy and is imprisoned deep underwater by the JSA.

Ishmael comes back as Sabbac and tries to destroy the city. The JSA fail to stop him when Adam comes back and saves all of them.

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023)

Plot: After the events of Shazam!, Hespera and Kalypso steal the wizard’s broken staff and force him to fix it. Freddy falls in love with a girl named Anne. Anne is apparently Anthea, and her sisters appear and take Freddy’s powers and he is imprisoned with the Wizard. The Shazam family fight them, but Hespera steals a Golden Apple, a seed for the Tree Of Life. Meanwhile, Anthea helps Freddy and the wizard escape. Hespera and Anthea want to revive their realm with it while Kalypso wants to destroy Earth with it. Kalypso steals the apple and plants it on Earth. Hespera is mortally wounded and Anthea loses her powers, and Shazam gets Hespera’s help to beat Kalypso and in the ensuing fight, Shazam dies and Wonder Woman brings him back to life. Also, for some reason, Wonder Woman appears in this movie and The Flash. I have no idea why. Maybe Gal Gadot had too much time on her hands.

The Flash (2023)

The chronological movie that reboots the DCEU and jumpstarts the DC Universe.

This movie, whoo. Attempts for a Flash movie date back to the 1980s, but let’s not start the story there.

DC had plans for a Flash movie when they created the DCEU, and in 2016, the movie was set to release in 2018. 

I became a DC fan in 2018, after reading The Death Of Superman and watching the Zack Snyder movies, and later, a ton of Flash comics, so I have been following the release of this movie well before production began. The movie had been in development hell for a very long time, with so many directors being hired then leaving, until 2019, when Andy Muschietti and Christina Hodson signed on and Ezra Miller, the actor for The Flash finished filming TERF movie, and the movie was scheduled to release July 1st 2022 (I was very sceptical when that news came out, and turns out, I was right to be). The movie was set to adapt the Flashpoint storyline, where Barry goes back in time to prevent his mom’s death, resulting in an alternate timeline where Thomas Wayne is Batman while Bruce Wayne was gunned down, and the Atlanteans and Amazons are in a war that could destroy the Earth, Superman is imprisoned in a government facility, and Barry has no powers, and when Barry corrects the timeline, things have changed, and sets up the New 52, so this can transition into the rebooted DCU slate that James Gunn announced. The movie was again shifted to June 3, 2023, due to the pandemic. Michael Keaton was also hired to reprise his role from the 1989 and 1992 Batman movies, along with Ben Affleck.

Hehe, that’s hilarious

I thought chemistry tests meant like idk CSI stuff and Zoom as in Professor Zoom, Reverse-Flash, or, Zoom, the second Reverse-Flash. I still don’t know what chemistry tests mean, testing the chemistry between actors? I don't know why anyone needed to know that information.

Throughout 2022, a controversy much worse than the development hell it went through hit the movie.

Safe to say, Ezra Miller is a terrible person, but replacing them in the role was pretty much impossible, and the movie couldn’t be cancelled because it was so far ahead in production and had a massive budget. The movie did release, but marketing had to be limited due to this.

Plot: Barry Allen’s dad, Henry Allen is set to appeal for his wrongful imprisonment. He visits his childhood home, and overcome with emotions, he accidentally travels back in time a few hours. He tells Batman about it, and he tells Barry that changing things could have unintended consequences. But he ignores it, and prevents his mother’s death, and on the way back to the present, he is knocked out of the Speed Force by another speedster, arrives in 2013, where his mom is alive and his dad is not imprisoned. He encounters his past self, and realizes that he is currently in the day that Barry got his powers, so he rushes his past self to Central City PD so his past self gets his powers too. But, they both get struck by lightning and 2013-Barry gains powers while Barry loses his. Barry trains 2013-Barry to use his powers when they see a transmission by General Zod on a TV screen, and Barry tries to assemble the Justice League, only to find that Aquaman was never born, Wonder Woman can’t be located, Clark Kent doesn’t seem to exist, and Victor Stone is not Cyborg yet. They then travel to Wayne Manor, where they find an old Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) who retired from crime fighting because Gotham is now a safe place (yeah, right), and he explains to Barry that changing events also affect the past. They use the Batcomputer to locate the Kryptonian pod, which is revealed to have landed in Siberia. They go to the Siberian facility but find an emaciated girl instead, who they rescue, and who is revealed to be Kryptonian and she kills the Siberian soldiers. Then she refuses to help them as she thinks humanity is cruel. She then leaves to find Zod. Barry asks Bruce to help him regain his powers, and he tries twice but fails, but Kara returns, saying that Kryptonians are people of hope, not war, and flies Barry into a thundercloud, which succeeds in giving him his powers. They all go to fight Zod, and he reveals that Kara has the Codex, not Kal-El, and fights and kills her to retrieve the Codex, and Bruce sacrifices himself to unsuccessfully destroy a Kryptonian ship. The two Barrys travel back in time to save them but fail, and they try again but fail again, and Barry realizes that they can’t be saved while 2013-Barry keeps trying again and again, failing each time. The speedster who knocked him out of the Speed Force is revealed to be a future 2013-Barry, who kept trying for years and fights Barry, and 2013-Barry sacrifices himself to wipe the future version out of existence, and Barry goes back to prevent himself from preventing his mom’s death, but apparently, he learned absolutely nothing because he placed the can of tomatoes that his dad picked up on the day of his mother’s death on the top shelf, so the camera could capture his dad’s face, acquitting him. He calls Bruce Wayne to let him know of the good news, and he informs him that he is arriving at the courthouse. And he steps out of the car and we see… George Clooney, from the infamous 1997 Batman and Robin.

Okay, so that was a monstrous post :P. Idk why I did this it was probably hella boring. See ya!

[poisonousquinzel]

So, The Suicide Squad Made You Ship Quinnflag, Huh? A Post Directed At No One But Myself

inspired by my late night urge to rewatch The Suicide Squad and make myself fucking miserable

Starting off, their lil moment in the plane. A great showing of how far their relationship has come since SS.

Her being late and loudly announcing herself could be counted as "vexing", but he's unphased by her.

And her lil salute and "Flag" when she passes by him. 🥰 Idk why but I love the way she says it. I just love how Margot says some words KDNSKS

The entire plane scene is honestly my favorite part in the movie. I adore Harley and Boomer fucking with the squad skdjksks

and Harley's just so pretty and the lighting just mwah She :')

And him following her when she moved across the beach. There was no reason he needed to do that, she's fully capable of taking care of herself.

And just their reaction to watching TDK's power skdjksks

I like to imagine that when their cover got blown up some when Savant was looking around they like covered each other with their bodies :')

I really do wonder how they got separated, so she was able to be captured and he got into the forest, they were the last ones alive and somehow they fought enough so she was able to get onto the other side of the beach and he was able to escape.

Also, at this point Waller and her crew have found Flag, meaning they assumedly believe Harley's dead at this point.

As here's no reason Waller wouldn't have detonated her neck bomb if she knew she was in the hands of the enemy.

-

Also, Harley deserved to be in the club scene with them 😭 a crime

she'd'a called Flag cowboy cause of his dorky hat and flirted with him and we were so fucking robbed will not shut up about it

I like to think they talked about her at some point during their lil moment in the club :')

Also, Bloodsport 100% noticed Flag's reaction to Harley being alive :'))))))

and like the second Flag found out she was alive (and they weren't being held hostage) he halted their entire operation to go save her.

She's the last surviving member of his team. These people have never met her, there is no "we don't leave one of our own behind" for them because she's not, they don't know her.

Waller wouldn't care either.

Flag is the one who took over and said no, we're going to get Harley.

She was right to believe no one was going to help her, no one was.

Except Flag.

-

"no, but I've been around Flag when he's got a rag in his mouth and it's best not to tug it."

imma pretend i figured out what that means cause google was of no help, but it seems like it means he’s determined and it’s best not to try n fight him about it ? 

Bloodsport and him were already friends from before, he can tell when something's important to him and when they're not gonna be able to talk him out of something.

"hopefully Harley's still alive"

And he was risking everything, the mission, their lives, on the slim chance she was alive. Even if she was in bad shape and wouldn't be useful during the mission, even if she was in critical condition and wouldn't survive. He was going after her.

I've already ranted about their "you were gonna save me" moment skdjsks so I won't do it again but I noticed

1. He's surprised by how long she holds on, and after they've talked about her weapon he quietly says "okay, okay," while stroking her back with his gun.

2. "you two alright, yeah?"

LITERALLY THE ONLY REASON FLAG DIDN'T FULLY HUG HER WAS CAUSE BLOODSPORT DISTRACTED THEM HE WAS GOING TO,,, HE WAS MOVING HIS HAND TO HUG HER FULLY AND SHE PULLED AWAY TO INTRODUCE HERSELF

He's also not surprised by her random outburst during their team meeting. They/He is already aware that she was tortured when she was being held captive, they mentioned that when he found out she was alive.

Her nose is still bleeding some when they're walking during this scene, it’s most noticeable during her dialogue. She's cleaned up some, but she's still injured.

ALSO HIS SMILE HE LOVES HER AND HE'S JUST HAPPY SHE'S SAFE AND ALIVE IM GONNA SOB

-

sucks that we didn't get a reunion scene, weird choice since he was alive and completely okay and healthy in the end Ya know

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Suicide Squad Team A

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS! Seriously, as soon as you click that read more, you’re gonna be smacked with SPOILERS! Don’t say I didn’t give you ample warning this time!)

The world’s in danger yet again, and Amanda Waller is in need of some expendable forces to take on some dirty jobs in the name of preserving peace. Last time she did this, it seems like she hired the wrong people. Nice guy Will Smith Deadshot? Bland, boring Killer Croc? El Diablo, who became attached to a bunch of reprobates after spending a couple hours with them? The only one who was useful in that squad was Katana. She had their backs, could cut all of them in half with one sword stroke just like mowing the lawn, and her sword traps the souls of its victims. Unfortunately, she was decidedly not expendable, so what is a girlboss like Waller to do?

Easy: Assemble a brand new squad of criminals to do the dirty work. Harley and Boomerang are the only ones she brought back, because let’s be real, they’re the only ones we give a damn about. Filling out the rest of the squad are the stoic, craggy crackshot Savant; the handsome, German spear-thrower Javelin; the alien warrior Mongal; the frothing, psychotic animal Weasel; the confident and all-powerful TDK; and Blackguard, who is literally just a guy. Together, this team gets deployed to Corto Maltese to do what no one else can do, and with skills like theirs, they are absolutely unstoppable!

They all fucking die before the opening credits.

Motivation/Goals: Considering the goal of the squad is to shave time off their prison sentences by going on the mission, it’s ostensibly the reason every single one of these goons accepted the job. Savant and Weasel are pretty well established in this regard; we get to focus on Savant for much of the opening, so we can get a sense of him, and Weasel is stated to have murdered no less than 27 children. So, yeah, they need to do this mission.

The rest, though? Who knows! Why are Mongal, Javelin, and TDK in prison? How did they even get an alien like Mongal? What did they do to land in the position they’d need to go on a suicide mission? Why doesn’t this movie have flashy, intrusive cards explaining everything to us in a throwaway gag in a montage?!

Blackguard, at least, has some other motivation. He sold out the entire squad to the military of Corto Maltese, which is why they’re ambushed. Now, there’s actually some ambiguity here: Did he do this of his own volition, and was this a complete surprise, or is it, as it is heavily implied, all part of Waller’s plan and she let this happen as a diversion for the other team to get in unnoticed?

Honestly, though, it doesn’t matter what their goals are. They’re all dead within five minutes of the movie starting, with one exception.

Performance: So, the reason these guys are even worth talking about is because, despite their minuscule screentime, all of their actors manage to cram in enough humor and characterization that they’re all pretty fun and likable. Michael Rooker is as stony and stoic as ever as Savant (until he hilariously isn’t), Flula Borg’s Javelin is really sweet and charming in his interactions with Harley, and Pete Davidson’s Blackguard is just amazingly douchey and pathetic. Special mention goes to Nathan Fillion’s TDK, who has an utterly endearing and unwavering faith in his astoundingly crappy ability to… detach his arms. It’s honestly kind of beautiful. Then there’s Weasel as portrayed by Sean Gunn, who is just a hilarious crackhead of an animal man.

Final Fate: Literally every single one of them die horribly thanks to Blackguard’s betrayal. He’s the first to go, because as soon as he walks out saying “Hey guys, it’s me, the one who contacted you!” he literally has his face blasted clean off. The rest go soon after. Mongal, in one of the most astounding moments of idiocy I’ve ever seen, leaps on a helicopter despite Rick Flag telling her specifically not to. Her weight and strength send it careening out of control, which leads to it shredding Captain Boomerang to bits before exploding, burning her alive as she painfully screams and writhes in agony. TDK gets his arms shot into Swiss cheese, leading to him bleeding out since even detached they still are part of him. Javelin is also shot, but gets a dying moment with Harley where he passes her Checkov’s Javelin. Finally, after witnessing all of this carnage, Savant completely loses his shit and tries to swim away, leading to Waller blowing his head up.

You may be wondering what happened to Weasel. He appears to drown as soon as the Squad deploys, because despite being actually smart in this movie, Waller forgot to make sure everyone on the Squad could swim. Thankfully, this lovable child-murdering crackhead rodent was just sleeping, and wakes up in the first credit scene.

Best Scene: Obviously, it’s their one and only scene. It’s a magnificent slaughter that puts the X-Force scene from Deadpool 2 to shame.

Final Thoughts & Score: I’ve gotta hand it to James Gunn. Even though these losers are only onscreen for a few minutes, they all get to cram a lot of charm and personality into that time, to the point it’s actually kind of sad seeing them all die. It’s a beautiful mix of comedy and tragedy. Since their screentime is so limited, though, I’m mostly going to be grading them on style, performance, and so on rather than on villainy like normal. They are all bad guys, as they don’t really get a chance to redeem themselves like the other Squad, so I’m still counting them as villains, which means they could potentially score above an 8 (which is the highest score I’m willing to give heel-face turn villains, because they end up being better as characters in general than as villains).

I’m also not going to talk about Boomerang (I’ll talk about him when I review the original Squad) or Harley (because she not only lives, but deserves her own solo Psycho Analysis). Now here we go, from best to worst:

TDK

If you thought anyone but TDK would get top marks, you’re sadly mistaken. Seeing Nathan Fillion proudly wield the insanely lame power to detach his arms to lightly tap soldiers on the head and gently grab their guns is a sight I never knew I needed to see until this movie. The fact he just seems so darn proud about this power that he doesn’t even bother to use in any way that would be remotely useful is honestly really endearing. Frankly, the sheer fact they adapted Arms-Fall-Off Boy in any way is enough for me to give him a 10/10.

Weasel

Weasel is just disgustingly delightful. He’s just a horrible, nasty, ugly little bastard… But he’s kind of adorable? He clearly has no idea where he is at any given time and is just so goddamn freaky that I can’t help but love him. The fact that, despite being a character who in the comics is noteworthy only for dying on his first mission with the Squad, he manages to survive the entire movie is pretty impressive. Hopefully he comes back in the future, but either way he gets an 8/10 from me.

Javelin

Honestly, aside from Boomerang, his death stung the most. He’s just so cute and charming, and he doesn’t even get to fling his javelin at anyone! Thankfully, he passes it on to Harley, and boy does she ever get to use it! He’s so cute, I have to give him an 8/10. I just wish we got more of him.

Savant

Savant is just an absolutely hilarious bait-and-switch. We follow him through the prologue, with everything seeming to point to him as our main character and the Squad leader. He’s stoic, he’s cranky, and he has impeccable aim… and then we get to the beach and he just freaks the hell out and starts screaming and crying and running away like a little bitch. Seeing Michael Rooker act like he’s shitting his pants after playing a badass like Yondu is just the sort of hilarious subversiveness that James Gunn loves to do when you let him loose. The fact that he looks like, to paraphrase the TVTropes YMMV page for the movie, a “cyberpunk Tommy Wiseau” is the icing on this 7/10 cake.

Blackguard

I was prepared to hate this guy just based on how lame Pete Davidson’s costume was, and you know what? I do hate him. But I love to hate him. He’s just an utterly pathetic scoundrel and a coward, true to his name. The fact he is the first to die, as just about everyone predicted, and is killed absolutely gruesomely makes any annoyance he could provide moot, and his freeakout over being seated next to Weasel on the plane is actually kind of funny. I was originally going to give him a 6, but you know what? He can have a low 7/10. He’s like the only member of this particular Squad to actually do anything evil, so I gotta give him props for that.

Mongal

Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not blame James Gunn or actress Mayling Ng. I’m not actually mad at either of them for what they chose to do, because it is ultimately hilarious and sad. It suited the narrative of the film, and I’m not actually, genuinely mad.

With all that out of the way, Mongal is one hell of a stupid cunt. It is one thing to cause your own death with your stupidity, it is something else entirely to cause the death of a beloved character with your poorly planned attack. The fact she didn’t take into account how her weight and strength would effect an airborne helicopter makes one wonder if she is really supposed to be based on a character who can take on Superman and live to tell about it.

Let’s compare her to two similar characters to really show how bad she is. Like Blackguard, she is directly responsible for a death on the beach, Blackguard being responsible for everyone by selling them out and leading them into an ambush (and yes, I’m including him as well), and Mongal killing Boomerang with the chopper. The difference is, Blackguard’s betrayal was deliberate, he meant to sell the team out, he was actively doing something evil there, while Mongal killed Boomerang out of sheer idiocy.

Now, let’s compare her to Zeitgeist from the similar bloody massacre that occurred during X-Force’s deployment in Deadpool 2. Like Mongal, he accidentally kills a teammate. The difference is, in the case of Zeitgeist, he only accidentally melted Peter, it was a freak accident, and ultimately it does get undone by the end. Meanwhile, Mongal made a conscious, stupid decision and ended up killing her squadmate with her own idiocy. She sucks, hardcore. I don’t do this lightly, but I’m giving her a 1/10. Villains just don’t get much stupider than her.

I will giver her this, though: the makeup work on her is good. She’s lowkey kinda hot if I’m being honest. But being hot and having good makeup does not a good villain make.

[ajokeformur-ray]

I've seen your last post and now I'm too curious to not ask. (I hope you don't mind me asking these question)

What would Joker, Arthur or Patrick say if I say that I'm not worthy, after keeping my distance? That too much is wrong and problematic with me, that the effort to get to know me is too much in contrast to my boring personality. That there's nothing lovable within me, especially in relation to all my insecurities and loneliness.

Hello, my love!💜

I don’t mind you asking me these questions at all, especially because I asked for people to send me questions like this! Thank you so much for sending this in to me, darling, I really do enjoy answering these casual writing asks; it gives me a bit of a break from writing pieces but also means I get to write and it means that you lovely people receive more content and perhaps even some comfort!💙

I wasn’t sure which Joker you were referring to - TDK or 2019 - so I answered this for Arthur, J and Patrick. I figure Arthur’s Joker would react very similarly at any point of his arc because he’s the same man (in my opinion, others may disagree though and that’s okay!) I hope that you enjoy this!💗 I’m so sorry that you feel the ways that you’ve described, nonnie.😔 You deserve so much more than to feel this way. Just as you are in any given moment, you are worthy of and deserving of love and of getting to know. You deserve the world, darling, and I hope that the following offers you some support and comfort!💖🤗

If you would like to talk about this some more or if there’s anything more I can do for you then please let me know, angel!😊💝

What would Joker, Arthur or Patrick say if I say that I'm not worthy, after keeping my distance? That too much is wrong and problematic with me, that the effort to get to know me is too much in contrast to my boring personality. That there's nothing lovable within me, especially in relation to all my insecurities and loneliness.

Individual word counts are attached to the scenarios but the word count for all 3 scenarios combined: 2, 105.

This little paragraph precedes the beginning of each scenario from this point. To avoid repetition I’ve only written it once and it is not included in the word counts: 

You let the words pour out. You tell him that there's too much wrong with you, that you have too many problems, and you're not worth getting to know... you tell him that you're unlovable. You say these things not as a thought, but as statements. You give him facts and there is no room for debate, no room for him to interject. Finally, though, finally, your words run dry and you can only wait for his reaction...

Arthur Fleck // word count: 705.

Arthur is silent for a few seconds, his nicotine stained fingers curling into fists, the material of his trousers bunched up beneath his grip. His nostrils flare minutely and you hold your breath. You can't - won't - apologise for telling him how you feel, because you know that Arthur wants to know everything which you want to share with him. He's grateful, you know, for your honesty, but you also know that right now, he's beating himself up. He's not loving you properly if you're having these thoughts, and he will do everything he can to comfort you and to soothe your insecurities, to be the man you need him to be, to be the one who will love you even harder for the fact that you don't - can't or won't is irrelevant, in his eyes - love yourself.

He inhales deeply and exhales shakily once, twice, thrice... and then when he speaks, his voice is that soft rasp which you know and love so well, though there is definitely tension in his voice. "Wh-why would you say that? Why are you saying those things?"

You shrug, your bravado gone now. You're just so tired of feeling like this. You're tired of beating yourself up over every little thing, for not being able to treat yourself the way that Arthur does. "It's just how I feel, honey. When I look at me, I don't understand how you can - " love me. You cut yourself off as your voice cracks, though you know that Arthur hears what you don't say.

Arthur will always hear you, whether you're screaming, whispering or remaining silent. Slowly do the pieces put themselves together in his mind. You had been distant for a while; you were always with him but you weren’t always with him. It was a subtle but important distinction; one which Arthur knew well. At first had he feared the worst, that you were breaking up with him, but now... oh, but now did he realise that he had been missing crucial pieces of the puzzle. 

He coos softly as you look away from him, finally unable to say anything more for there is nothing else to say. Arthur has brought you to the point where words run dry, as he so often does. Where usually would he verbalise his thoughts, now does he only wrap an arm around your shoulders and pull you into the side of his body the way one usually falls asleep; slowly and then all at once. Arthur is a man of action, he always has been, for he knows well that words can be spoken with little emotion behind them but actions, oh... his are practically screaming at you as he feathers kiss after kiss to the crown of your head, royalty are you.

"I love you, Y/N. You're the only one who's ever really been nice to me and you understand me on a level no one else does. You're not boring - don't you dare say that about my Y/N. You're perfect and I wouldn't want to share my life with anyone else." Arthur shifts in his seat so that he can face you, his legs turned towards you so that you know that you have his full attention. He presses a tender, lingering kiss to your forehead, as if he hopes for his kiss to seep into your skin and soothe your insecurities and raw wounds from the outside in. "You deserve to be loved, Y/N. Anyone who says otherwise has it all wrong," Arthur's dark brows crease, as if he can't even consider someone not loving you, his one and only.

"Thank you, angel." You give Arthur a smile, feeling somewhat better. His green eyes pierce your gaze and you know that Arthur knows you're still feeling iffy, but that's okay. Arthur will tell you his truth as many times as you ask him to. "I love you. So, so much."

Arthur coos again and kisses you soundly, wanting more than anything to show you that you're not alone in the ways that you feel. With time, patience and persistence, perhaps the two of you may learn to love yourselves through loving the other person.

Patrick Verona // word count: 924.

(A/N: @loveletterstoledger just recently wrote a piece in which Pat reacts to Y/N’s relationship insecurities (linked if you’re interested🤗💖) and so I’ve done my best to take on a different approach with this small piece. Any similarities are entirely coincidental but just in case, I’m crediting Rosie anyway (with permission💙)! Thanks, honeys!💗)

You and Patrick are sat outside in the garden when you tell him everything which is on your mind, and he is quiet... too quiet. You shift, uncomfortable in this thunderous silence, which may be dark and foreboding or merely contemplative... such is your anxiety that you cannot tell that which usually comes as naturally to you as breathing. Patrick reaches over with a hand and interlaces his fingers with yours, his thicker digits squeezing around your own, which shake slightly. You are barely holding it together. I'm here, Y/N.

Despite yourself and even with everything else which is going on, you can only smile as Pat communicates with you without saying anything at all, so emotionally intelligent is he. You have always marvelled at this aspect of him; for one so young, he is so knowing. With a twinge of your already tried heart do you know that it is because he has already suffered and gone through so much more than anyone his age should ever have to.

Pat is kind, warm and gentle because he has had to learn to be, and in his own strength and depth of character was your own enriched all the more for knowing him. Indeed, loving him came as naturally to you as breathing, and it was only in moments like this when it felt as though your soul could soar as Pat found you in that seemingly impenetrable darkness and brought you into his arms... back into the light.

You dare in this moment to look up at Pat and all you can see is a deep set frown on his face, his beautiful eyes with flecks of green in them watery and almost unfocused. His mind is clearly racing, trying to comprehend all of which has just spilled out of you like water from a running tap. As your eyes meet, Pat surges forwards, tugging you towards him too with the grip he already has on your hand, and you are pulled into Pat's broad, warm chest.

One arm is wrapped around your lower back, as far down as Pat can hold you without being indecent or too forward, so respectful is he, and the other hand rests on the back of your head, his fingers flexing in your hair. The movement reminds you of a cat when they knead a soft blanket and you smile. Only Pat can do this to you. He rests his chin on the crown of your head and breathes deeply, trying to keep himself under control. Sickness roils in his stomach; he hasn't been a very good boyfriend to you if these thoughts are plaguing you. But this isn’t about him - this is about you and Pat pushes his guilt down as best as he can, channelling it into helping you.

"Do you see yourself the way I do, Y/N?" Pat's voice is deep and it rumbles through his chest. You burrow tighter into him and snuggle into his hold, wanting everything which Pat is willing to give you and more, so needing are you of him and of his particular brand of comfort, which has always been and, time will show you, will always be your favourite. No one loves you in the way Pat does and you love him all the more for the way his heart commands his actions even with everything he's ever been through in his life.

You shake your head against Pat, knowing he'll feel the motion and understand everything you're not saying. He's incredibly intuitive and so wise and even in silence does he understand you perfectly. You are your own people but it's almost like Pat's emotions are mere echoes of your own, so emotionally intertwined are you.

"I just told you what I see, Pat, and I don't understand how you can love me, I - "

Pat cuts you off with a shake of his head, his dark curls brushing lightly against the tops of his shoulders, and shushes you quietly. "Stay with me, Y/N."

You puzzle for a moment over his intentions but then it occurs to you that Pat means here. In the moment. Pat can't take your insecurities away by way of reaching within you and scooping the tar out of your soul and brushing the ashes away from your cracked heart from all that you have ever been through. He cannot change your thought processes or prevent you from feeling as you do. He cannot put you back together (though there is nothing to be romanticised about falling apart) but he can love you every waking and sleeping moment, so thorough a lover is he.

"I would never want you to be anyone but yourself, Y/N. Everyone else is already taken and even if you can't see yourself, I see you and I love you all the more for it."

Pat felt inadequate; what more could he say? What could he do? He wanted nothing more than to soothe away your loneliness and your insecurities, but the only thing Pat could think of doing was simply to stay by your side, just as he had told you to stay beside him. He was so young but he lacked not the life experience required to so selflessly love another.

If loving you was the only thing Pat could do, then he would do it so well that you wouldn't know what else to do with yourself. Such was the depths of his heart, and such was the ethereal bond which existed between you. J // word count: 476. (J's is really short because his comfort style is short and to the point asdfghjkl ~ )

J had had no idea that you had been feeling so badly about yourself. He had known that you had bad days but never had J ever expected something like this to come spilling past your lips like a dam had been broken. So down were you, so lost in all that you were that J had never expected something like this to be on your mind. He thought not of things he had or hadn’t done or of things which he could have done differently. J only thought of you and as your eyes began to look at your feet, as if all the answers you wanted were there, he shook his head as if to dispel the dark thoughts and took a step forward.

“That’s, ah - a bad joke, doll.”

“Who said anything about joking?” You spoke bitterly, your thoughts like acid which had poisoned your self-perception and been so thorough in its job that now was your relationship, a secret and a sacred part of your life, being touched by it, too. J deserved better than you. Your relationship had never made any sense, you had always known that. What you had used to dream about did you now dread, and not even J was able to stop the onslaught of negativity now that it had its grips in you. Usually did you not speak to J like this but you were too far within yourself to be able to monitor the tone in which you spoke.

"Is this why you've been, ah - disappearin' when I come home, doll? Ya' think I don't want ya'?" J took a deep breath, steadying himself, trying to not show his anger too much. He knew not who or what had put these ideas into your head, but he was not happy and he didn't like it. Not. One. Bit. He tongued the scars on his inner cheek and stared at you, his dark gaze seeming to look into your very soul.

You nodded, finally unable to say anything more, and J made a contemplative noise, happy to be getting somewhere and knowing what you were saying but not understanding. He was with you, wasn't he? What further proof did you want or need that he wanted to get to know you and that he thought of you highly?

"Don't, ah - don't think like that, toots. Y're better than that, I know ya' are." J reached out to you and grabbed you by the waist, hoisting you up into his lap and held you tightly. You were going nowhere until J felt like you knew that here, in his lap, was right where he wanted you to be. There was more he wanted to say, there was more he needed to say, but for right now you were going nowhere and neither was J.

AF/J  @nothingclown  @astheworlddturns @fluffedstar @jokersqueenofchaos @germansarechill  @lynnesm @sagyunaro  @greghouse  @flowerglitterwoman @ben-solos-writing-avenger  @scaredclowncat @lilliryth @hotpacino  @obsessedandthirsty  @call-me-harley-quinn  @cbloodmarch  @askmrfleck  @justacomedy @takemepedropascal

Ledger!Joker @anyatheladyclown   @joker-daddy    @rinbyo    @imightaswellnotexistatall    @vladtoly    @joker-is-my-hero    @liz-rdwitch   @enigmaticandunstable      @ledgerskitten   @germansarechill   @acw1   @harlequinautumn     @mermaleizroseglasses   @justawriterinprogress     @truthbehindthemysteries  @hotpacino  @call-me-harley-quinn   @mermaidpowers1  @scaredclowncat @jslittlebirdie   @ang3l-d0ll @sacredempressnatlyia

Patrick Verona  @itsthejoker @royaleclownx   @arianatheangelworld   @scaredclowncat    @hotpacino  @call-me-harley-quinn @mountainjiwish

[engagemachine]

I’ve noticed your joker doesn’t really have many speech ‘tics’ that he does in the dark knight, all the uhs and ts in his sentences when he’s speaking to Taylor, do you think he puts this on or plays it up in the movie?

omg I read this in the car on my way home from work this morning and I'm so hyped up to answer this ask

LET ME TELL YOU.

Very few things turn me off from a Joker fic more than people who over-emphasize the Joker's speech patterns. It is so. Fucking. Annoying. And it's unnecessary!!!!! Listen, we all know TDK Joker has little tics and speaks with a fascinating voice inflection and often puts a hard emphasis on certain consonants (especially the letter T). We know this. As a novice writer, I used to focus on emphasizing these tics in my writing a lot -- but I really, really do think they're completely unnecessary.

While I think the Joker probably does play up his speech patterns a bit depending on who he is talking to/what he's trying to convey -- at least to some degree -- I also think some of his speech inflections/patterns/tics are pretty second-nature.

That being said, when it comes to my own writing, what I tend to lean towards doing is focusing on italicizing certain words or phrases as opposed to italicizing/emphasizing every little T at the end of sentence, or peppering too many "uhs" into his dialogue. It's like when authors constantly write, 'the Joker licked his lips' in every other sentence. We already know the Joker licks his lips a lot, you don't have to remind us of this fact every two seconds. It's truly so redundant and unnecessary. I also don't think the Joker is coming down hard on every single T, as so many Joker writers tend to highlight. It's only something he does occasionally, and he reserves it for special emphasis -- it's not a constant.

My biggest grievance is that when writers constantly overdo this tic, it loses its value and its importance. Think about how frightening it was hearing the Joker say, "No I'm no-t" in response to Gambol telling him he's crazy. That was a powerful moment, and his emphasis on the T was brilliant -- and the way he works his mouth after is another great Heath!Joker quirk that I love. When writers constantly overemphasize this trait, however, it just sounds and reads completely ridiculous, and it tends to lose its power as an intimidation tactic -- because that's often why the Joker does it. It sounds unsettling and unnatural and it sets you off-balance, and he likes that.

Also, for me personally, it's very, very hard for me to take Joker dialogue seriously when it ah, constantly, uh, looks ex-act-ly like thiiiiis.

I also just think it bogs down the reading and I find the speech tics very annoying and borderline unprofessional; generally speaking, you will not find those sort of speech inflections in a published novel.

And like, I get that this is fanfiction and we're all here to have fun, blah, blah, blah, but I do take my portrayal of the Joker very seriously -- I take all of my fanfictions very seriously -- so there's always a certain level of professionalism I am trying to maintain in my work. My target audience are the kind of readers who genuinely appreciate and seek out good, solid writing. I work really hard on my fanfictions, and I want that to be reflected in all aspects of my work.

Also, I want to be clear that occasionally emphasizing the Joker's tics/speech inflections is not at all a bad thing -- it's when it's overdone, in my opinion, that the writing tends to sour.

[courferre-stan]

Imagine Adrian returns for Suicide Squad 3 and it's called Suicide Squad: Forever Evil as the story is about the Legion Of Doom defeating the Justice League and traps them all in a pocket dimension using tech from White Dragon with the government reactivating Task Force X and has Waller back as she recruits old and new squad members consisting of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, King Shark, Killer Croc, Peacemaker, Bloodsport, Deathstroke, Vigilante, Ratcatcher, Killer Frost (Louise Lincoln), Copperhead (Jane Doe), Multiplex, Katana, TDK, and a resurrected El Diablo (sporting his black and white costume and wields dual revolvers) as their objective is kill Black Manta, Cheetah, Maxwell Lord, and Lex Luthor.

Ayo that would be super cool! Though I have to be honest, I think I’d rather have Vigilante appear in other series, much like how he’s a side character in Peacemaker. I like him best when he’s paired with another character, and I could totally see him branch out in the DCEU (not just the justice league, plus I would sell my left kidney to see Nightwing and Red Hood in any form of film or TV since they might just be my favorite parts of the comics), but Suicide Squad doesn’t seem like his deal. In the comics, Adrian is a much more D-list character, and he appears very infrequently, but when he does, hes got significance, like how hes appeared in Teen Titans issues. Furthermore, Adrian really only tagged along on the Butterfly mission due to Peacemaker giving him that connection, and he wasn’t getting paid at all. I don’t think he’d willingly join the Squad and Amanda Waller would want him FAR tf away from anything the team does.

However, I would also sell my left kidney to see a new line up of characters! I think, though I love Harley, I’d want her to get her own solo projects or a project that’s Gotham City Sirens related, and for her to sort of leave the Suicide Squad behind for now. But characters I’d kill to see are Killer Frost (they need to do her serious justice), Parasite, Rag Doll, and Nightshade! I doubt they’ll use most of those, but I’d like to see them at some point, considering the 2021 suicide squad brought the Weasel on screen.

[agentnico]

The Suicide Squad (2021) Review

This may be the better of the two, but the first Suicide Squad film will always hold the crown for managing to win an Oscar... somehow.

Plot: The government sends the most dangerous supervillains in the world -- Bloodsport, Peacemaker, King Shark, Harley Quinn and others -- to the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese. Armed with high-tech weapons, they trek through the dangerous jungle on a search-and-destroy mission, with only Col. Rick Flag on the ground to make them behave.

“So that’s it, huh? We’re some kind of suicide squad?” says Will Smith in the original first film, with the line in itself being a poor attempt at a fourth wall break, yet, that movie never reached that promise of being a true Suicide Squad film. Because hardly anyone died, and as a whole David Ayer’s film was a generic mess, regardless of studio interference or not. In comes James Gunn from Marvel, who seems to have cracked the code for how to bring this comic book series to live action in proper gratuitous form, with even the ‘The’ in the title symbolizing that this is the one!

I remember going to see the first Guardians of the Galaxy film at the cinema, and back then I was still only just getting acquainted with watching western media, and that included superhero films. Heck my first ever Marvel movie was Thor: The Dark World! I know, what a banger to start with.......NAAAWT!! Anyway, I went to see Guardians and it was one of the first superhero films I came out of feeling like I truly witnessed something special. It had action, comedy and a good heart to it, and wouldn’t you know, my good old pal James Gunn was behind that flick. I don’t know why I called him my good old pal, I don’t even know the fella. Except in my dreams, but we don’t talk about that. So, flashforward to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which I absolutely hated, and for that movie I’m pretty sure Marvel gave Mr Gunn mostly full reigns of creative freedom, as long as he kept it family friendly, and the result was a mess. Hence naturally now I was really sceptical when James Gunn ended up at Warner Bros. following the controversial moment when cancel culture decided to aim it’s slimy fingers at him, as he was given directing and writing duties for this new The Suicide Squad film, and also it was heavily insinuated that Warner Bros. basically told him he could do with the movie whatever the f*** he wanted, excuse my French. And we remember how it panned out last time when James Gunn was given a lot of creative freedom. 

Flashforward to present day; here I am wondering and scratching my head thinking what in the heavens has happened, as by golly I am happy to report that The Suicide Squad is a total winner and a blast with a capital B - Blast! Gosh goodness golly goblin, this movie is so much fun from beginning to end. Right from the opening sequence you know that this film isn’t holding back any punches. It’s going at a 447.19 km/h speed of a Koenigsegg Agera RS crashing through any barriers like it’s nothing. Speaking of the opening sequence, it establishes why the movie is called what it’s called from the get-go. You straight away are proven how not a single character is safe, minus the obvious one that we know who it is, as there ain’t no way Warner Bros. would have allowed James Gunn to kill off that one character. But besides that person, everyone else feels like they could die at any given moment. That’s really a big charm of it, as it is frustrating how in many superhero films, let alone any blockbuster action flicks, so many characters always feel so safe and unstoppable, no matter how many times they get shot or how many buildings crash down upon them. And yes, this movie features a certain CGI character that constantly gets that treatment and survives, although it’s very self aware in that regard and is purposefully humoristic. But overall the entire set of characters feel easily disposable, and so so many of them die in such gruesome fashion, so indeed don’t get attached, as they don’t. 

Speaking of which, this movie is hardcore gory! You see limbs and intestines flying round left and right, a guy gets ripped in half by a humanoid shark, another’s face gets teared off by a shotgun bullet and so on forth in all kinds of gruesome fashion. Visually this is one for the big screen, as here’s the thing: you’re either a mummy’s boy or you grow some cojones and go see a man’s heart get stabbed with a piece of debris glass in 4K high rate definition! Your choice! Oh, and it’s not just the violence, also the cinematography and the practical set pieces all look incredible. This is easily James Gunn’s best looking movie. The entire think LOOKS incredible!

We also have to talk about the cast, as they are all great! There literally isn’t a single weakling among them. Each one, no matter how big or small their role is, brings something to the table. I can’t talk about all of them, as we’d be here all day, so I’m simply going to mention a few of the stand-outs. Idris Elba comes in to replace Will Smith as a character called Bloodsport, who is in some ways a different character but evidently is a replacement of Smith’s. But that’s no bad thing, as with any ensemble movie you still need a main character to latch onto and have an emotional hook towards, and he is that character. In fact, I’d say he’s arguably better than Will Smith in the last movie, or at least he seems to be having more fun here. He works as a solid leading man, however what works even more is his banterous competitive genital-size-measuring back and forth with John Cena’s Peacemaker, who by the way is awesome as that character. He is not a good character, in fact he is as bad as a bad guy can get, especially cause he’s someone who believes that what he is doing is right, making him much more of a dangerous wild card. This is easily John Cena’s best role, with him adding to the comedy one-liners, but also delivering such an interesting character who I’m looking forward to seeing more of in his standalone spin-off show confirmed for next year. Oh, and he wears a toilet helmet on his head which he defines as “a beacon of freedom” which says it all. We also have returning characters from the last film Joel Kinnaman and Viola Davis as Rick Flag and Amanda Waller respectively, and both are given much more room to stretch their talents and spread their beautiful acting wings like the Hollywood angels that they are. Kinnaman’s Rick Flag is the moral compass of the group, as even though Elba is our main guy, he’s nonetheless a villain still, whilst Flag is a genuinely good guy and what is defined as a true American hero, to which Kinnaman fits the part well. And Viola Davis as Amanda Waller is on an absolutely different level. You can tell she’s an Academy Award winner through and through, as she plays such a serious character in an otherwise goofy movie, and so her presence is felt and it is felt BAD! She’s such a despicable yet intimidating personality and she gravitates all of the screen presence to herself. Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn, and she gets even more chance to develop this character that she’s played in multiple DCEU films now, and as per usual the Harley Quinn shtick works well for her, though I do kind of wish she didn’t always get all the attention. Look, I think she’s a fun character and Robbie plays her well, however she’s constantly used to overshadow others in these films which I don’t think is too fair, and its evident as ever in this film too. Anyway, the remainder of the cast including Jay Courtney as Captain Boomerang, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, Michael Rooker as Savant, Nathan Fillion as TDK, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2 (who gave me strong A Plague Tale: Innocence vibes) and many more all play villains, but villains that don’t have particularly great superpowers. This is where the tragedy of Task Force X as a team plays a part, as many of these villains aren’t even good at being villains. They are useless, and the movie is really self aware of this and so treats all characters as they should be. Dare I also not forget to mention the CGI characters in this film, with both Weasel and King Shark being absolute scene stealers! 

The Suicide Squad is the type of wham-bam-thank-you-mam batshit crazy entertainment which exists for the pure reasons of fun. It doesn’t set out to be the best superhero film ever, nor does it need to be. It’s an exhilarating, shocking, funny and amusing ride from beginning to end, with the energy never stopping, and is easily the best time I’ve had with a comic-book film in a long while, and I’m even talking about before COVID! Do yourself a favour and watch this one as soon as you can, as I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - The Suicide Squad is a BLAST!!

Overall score: 9/10

[n1ght5h4d3-24]

The Suicide Squad Drabble

A/N: ⚠️ CONTAINS TSS SPOILERS⚠️

This is just a little something I wrote up because I thought it was a funny thought and I wanted to share it with y'all. Nightshade is my OC (my very first one actually) and Shadehlyne is @shadehlyne 's OC.

TaskForce-X was gathered on the the plane, headed for their next mission. Nightshade sat between her friend Shadehlyne and Harley Quinn. She was also across from Blackguard and diagonal to the Weasel. She leaned her head back into the straps behind her, mentally preparing herself for the mission. The Weasel let out what sounded like a cough and Blackguard turned his head to look at it.

"Yo, is this a dog?" he questions.

"What?" Kaboom Boomerang Captain Boomerang asks.

"Is this thing a dog?" Blackguard repeats, gesturing to the beast beside him.

"A dog?"

"Yes."

"What kind of dog do you think it is, mate?" Captain Boomerang asks him.

"I don't know. I'm not familiar with all the breeds." Blackguard tells him.

"I'm going to go with Afghan Hound." TDK inputs.

Nightshade moved her head forward as she listened to the conversation take place.

"Since when does an Afghan Hound have bloody thumbs?" Captain Boomerang wonders.

"Oh my God, is it a werewolf?" Harley asks in excitement. "I wanted to meet a werewolf foreva."

Nightshade glanced at her friend Shadehlyne just as Blackguard started to freak out.

"Yo, they sat me next to a werewolf?!"

"That's not right," TDK mutters.

Blackguard struggles with getting out of his seat, "Yo, let me out. I do not fuck with werewolves."

Harley squealed in excitement, clapping her hands. Captain Boomerang laughed in amusement.

"Hey, hey. He's not a werewolf." Colonel Rick Flag says, turning around to face the team. "He's a weasel. He's harmless. I mean, he's not harmless, he's killed twenty-seven children, but, you know, we got him to...I think he's agreed to do this. Whatever the case, just everyone get into position to drop."

The Weasel began to chitter as everyone got ready. Nightshade shared a smirk with Shadehlyne before her gaze flickered to Rick's. He caught the mischievous gleam in her eyes and sighed as the young girl turned her attention to Blackguard.

"Hey Hertz," Night called, gaining the platinum blond's attention.

"What's up, dollface?" he asks in curiosity.

"They didn't sit you next to a werewolf, they sat you across from one." she tells him.

Blackguard tilted his head slightly in confusion. Nightshade allowed her eyes to change color, her natural brown eyes becoming a golden color and her canines altered to resemble those of wolf canines. She leaned forward and growled lowly and Blackguard started to freak out again. Nightshade's features returned to normal and she snickered while the others laughed. She did her handshake with Shadehlyne and Rick pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. This was going to be a long mission.

[sepublic]

Let’s talk about a Bionicle AU for The Suicide Squad (2021), starring the Dark Hunters as our titular chumps! I know we already have the Federation of Fear as our canon answer to the Suicide Squad, but part of the Suicide Squad’s premise is using forgettable, C-list villains that nobody remembers nor is gonna miss, and if that doesn’t describe 90% of the Dark Hunters to a T then I don’t know what does. I don’t have everyone figured out, but to start with Team A, the expandables;

Spinner is Savant- Savant is set up as a main character only to die anticlimactically, so let’s do the same for Spinner, who’s basically a bootleg version of angsty Nidhiki! Seriously, they’re both treacherous Toa of Air who want revenge against their brethren and were mutated into insectoid creatures, losing their elemental and mask powers in the process. Spinner is literally Nidhiki and thus perfect sacrificial main character bait.

Guardian is Rick Flag- He usually acts on behalf of the Shadowed One himself, keeping Dark Hunters in like by threat of punishing traitors, similar to Rick Flag. However, Guardian’s origins and motives indicate that for all of his harshness, he DOES have a moral center, which I imagine would be similar to Flag drawing the line at kids being experimented upon and these crimes needing to be exposed.

Airwatcher is Weasel, because I wanted an animalistic Dark Hunter for this role, and Airwatcher is dumber than even Krekka. He also gives me ugly, squat vulture with molting feathers vibes, which fits with how Weasel is. That. He can fly but chooses to swim and the water getting into his feathers keeps him from flying out, hence the drowning. Conjurer asks if Airwatcher is a parrot, much to the disbelief of the others.

Speaking of, Conjurer is Blackguard! Both pompous, dumbass idiots and backstabbers, what with Conjurer hoping to overthrow TSO. Like Blackguard he’s proven himself to be obnoxious, hyping up his own abilities beyond what they actually are, and biting off more than he can chew with the Makuta of Stelt.

Lurker is Captain Boomerang- Boomer stands out as a previously-seen teammate who actually accomplished something, and one of the only competent ones. I chose Lurker given his success with capturing Varian, plus his morbid revelry in death and destruction seems to fit that playful personality of Captain Boomerang best, compared to Gatherer, Eliminator, or someone like Lariska whose death is off the table.

Mimic is Javelin, both skilled melee combatants but apparently only that, so naturally Mimic is screwed against a small army wielding ranged weapons, of which he is approaching from a distance. Also Javelin’s brief flirting with Harley makes me want to connect him to Mimic, who is evidently kind of a romantic in his motivations to find his friend- Though would this mean he’s lowkey cheating on his friend when he flirts with Harley’s equivalent? Maybe they’re just an open couple.

Ravager is Mongal as a powerful, reckless warrior who SHOULD be an utter powerhouse... But when we look at the reality it’s kind of disappointing. Mongal was a Superman foe in the comics yet gets killed by regular fire, and is less buff than her comic counterpart alas. Ravager is supposedly one of the strongest Dark Hunters and leveled a third of the Odina Fortress, yet in practice he’s just a Toa Metru with transplanted Nivawk legs.

Vanisher is TDK, there’s not much else to say other than that he uses his power of portals to place his arms across the beach to ineffectually slap some soldiers, and then gets hilariously killed. I chose Vanisher solely so I could play around with his portal abilities and expand them to sort of resemble TDK’s. Since Vanisher was confirmed to have not been working for the Makuta, perhaps the reason why his teammates die is because he’s just a really bad luck charm...

Vezon is Harley Quinn. Obvious choice and I know Vezon is kind of A-list amongst Bionicle villains, but then again so is Harley Quinn, as the insane one who doesn’t really have anything particularly special to their abilities besides sheer force of personality, as well as favoritism by the writer that means they always have plot armor, no matter what. Said plot armor also stems from their recognizability as fan-favorites and whatnot, so it fits!

Primal is Bloodsport, they’re both hired killers, but Primal has a noted sense of honor that fits Robert Dubois enough, and naturally puts him at odds with his rival near the end;

Eliminator is Peacemaker, as another operative of the boss sent to ensure missions go through- But like Peacemaker, Eliminator is even more ruthless and kills Dark Hunters for failure. This puts him at odds with Guardian who like Rick Flag still has some morals... And in the end, Eliminator survives and the objective is sort of achieved, just like Metru Nui.

Subterranean is Polka-Dot Man. I wanted to choose a suitably tragic Dark Hunter for this, and Subterranean being a Matoran who was shunned because of a science accident and had nobody else to turn to feels fitting. Likewise, Subterranean’s ability to disassemble things seems like it could be really OP, which fits with Polka-Dot Man as the hidden powerhouse of the team... Plus Subterranean backstory and disliking loud noises seems to match Abner Krill’s more meek and depressed personality. His death is extra-tragic because Subterranean likens himself to a Toa, as a transformed Matoran himself...

Phantom is Ratcatcher 2, another suitably tragic and sympathetic Dark Hunter, and another Matoran transformed by science and shunned for it. In Phantom’s case, he has an explicit morality that makes him difficult for the Shadowed One to use, which fits with Cleo being such a kind sweetheart.

Now King Shark is down to a couple Dark Hunters; Poison, Minion, and Savage. I briefly considered Prototype because he’s also dumb, but ultimately he’s not canonically animalistic (unlike the others, one whom is a literal Rahi) and too machine to be characterized as a monster that eats people. Between the trio I’ve settled with, all make sense for Nanaue’s friendless background- Poison’s species underwent genocide, Savage was rejected by his teammates, and Minion was only ever an escaped lab experiment and then a Dark Hunter. Poison is the only one described as dumb amongst the trio, but Savage has Minion have the physical powerhouse strength of King Shark, plus Minion being made by a Makuta could match Nanaue being the descendant of a demigod.

The Shadowed One is Amanda Waller. No discussion.

As for Waller’s team of aides, probably original characters that might include the Recorder, because we don’t really have anyone in the Dark Hunters that fits that role I feel, and not quite morally at least- We’ve definitely used up all of our moral Dark Hunters I believe.

Tyrant is Suarez as the evil dictator of an obscure country, he survived and now he wants revenge against the Dark Hunters and the world! Unlike Conjurer, his subjects are other members of their species and not measly Matoran, and he isn’t framed as an overconfident showboat who bites off more than he can chew... At least not all the time.

Silvio Luna is... Nektann? Can’t think of any other dictator in Bionicle who’d have anything to say about Vezon. He’s not important so he’ll probably just be an original character.

As for Starro, I’m thinking Morbuzakh, who probably survived through a lone seed, but then again this is an AU so strict adherence to canon isn’t necessary. Morbuzakh’s powers have expanded to spread seeds that grow into people and take over their minds.

Sol Soria might be an original character who’s also a member of TSO’s species as one of Tyrant’s rebelling subjects (the same goes for Milton), or an OoMN member such as Johmak or Helryx. Maybe Dalu?

And finally, the Thinker is... I’m not too sure to be honest. Spiriah? Mavrah? Maybe someone the Morbuzakh would’ve had a grudge against like Starro... But that doesn’t really match anyone who’s a villain save Ahkmou, who tbf would be satisfying to see die. His role might just be an unnamed rogue Nynrah Ghost, like the one who helped Vultraz and/or had a hand in Phantom’s mutation!