Welcome back, me!
Yes, I'm writing again in the blog.
Since very few of you would see this on a site that has been dormant
for 9 months, of course I have promoted it on Facebook again. Feel
free to check out one of the many other posts available to your
right.
Some things have changed socially in my
life – quite a few good things occurred, against a couple bad things, but on balance, things are good.
Professionally, I have moved to a
better casino, but I'm still dealing cards and dice and enjoying it.
The only real difference is that one day a week I now supervise the
other dealers. Nearly everyone at my new place does that one day a
week.
I still live in the Denver metro area,
but I have moved twice: once at the end of May to Boulder
temporarily, then again in mid August to my current place in Arvada
(a northwest suburb of Denver). I'm on my own again, and won't be
moving anytime soon. I prefer to have roommates, but it is what it
is.
**********
On to the Super Serious Matter I
absolutely must discuss with you today: the tragedy that became of
the movie Suicide Squad from this summer.
I couldn't have been more disappointed
in this movie.
I was first alerted to this movie
through a friend who was plenty excited about it long before it ever
came out. She was and is an extremely devoted follower of Harley
Quinn. I didn't really follow much in the comic book world much
before I knew her. I've watched almost all of the movies ever since
the comic book movie push started in earnest with the X-Men. Sure,
there were movies here and there devoted to comic books, like the big
Batman and Superman movies. However, it was nothing like it is
today, with the huge, expensive budgets devoted to everything related
to either Marvel or DC Comics.
What I didn't do was read the actual
comic books growing up. My parents never thought of them as
legitimate reading sources, so I read other, more traditional stuff.
Since getting interested in Harley
Quinn, I've come to understand the character a bit more. She has the
potential to be a nuanced, fully fleshed out character with lots of
opportunities to develop the potential moral gray areas, while still
making her fall somewhat on the “bad guy” scale.
The Suicide Squad movie was supposed to
be her vehicle to shine.
It wasn't. The whole movie was
terrible.
This was the kind of big budget,
summer, tent-pole blockbuster that just turns into a tragic mess in
the simple pursuit of gathering in ticket fares. The writing was
lackluster and meandering. The backstory on all of the “bad guys”
who are forced to work together was basically a bunch of vignettes
with no cohesion. The “super bad guy” they had to team up for
was a rather lame witch.
I also wasn't terribly impressed with
Margot Robbie, the actress playing Harley Quinn.
Cons:
There were three different accents that
I detected throughout her performance. The first was Australian,
which Robbie is. The second was the standard Midwestern non-accent
you typically find in the movies so that it appears like standard
dialogue to most Americans. The third was the Brooklyn accent Harley
is supposed to have.
Pros:
Robbie's non-verbal acting was actually
quite good. I can't fault her for that.
The bit of color and brightness in her
personality was a welcome relief from the overwhelming sense of doom
and gloom and incredibly dark colors used in the rest of the film.
The actual phrases she had to speak
pointed back to the comics quite well.
Robbie was fighting for the lead amount
of screen time with Will Smith's character, Deadshot. It wasn't
Smith's best performance by a ways, but it was passable. The rest of
the squad was just fill in the blanks kind of superheroes. I'm sure
they get a played up treatment in the comics. That just didn't
translate into well into exciting cinema. The others should have
been ignored like most of the standard, non-enhanced soldiers, or be
given more than generic, keep-the-story-moving dialogue. There was
even one member introduced and killed within 2 minutes just to prove
the suicide squad was forced to perform their mission.
In terms of a rating, I give this **
out of *****.
