On Sunday everyone was complaining about how Avengers: Age of Ultron only made a huge fortune, instead of a mega-huge fortune, at the box office. By that evening, despite Ultron swallowing money like a ravening monster, the thinkpiece machine was in motion, cranking out essays about superhero fatigue (not happening), what went wrong with Marvel this weekend (nothing), and should we consider a movie that raked in $188 million, bagging the second-biggest domestic opening weekend of all time, a disappointment (no). There was a palpable feeling of frustration in nerd circles. How do we parse Avengers: Age of Ultron? Let’s argue about it until we’ve talked ourselves into feeling bad for a powerful entertainment conglomerate bent on world domination.
And then David Ayer, director of Warner Brothers’ supervillain team-up movie Suicide Squad stepped in and said let’s not do that, let’s talk about Harley Quinn instead, and tweeted the first photo of the Squad in costume. I am WAY more into this than I am Superhero Face Punch. For one thing, I actually like Ayer as a director and I can’t stand Zack Snyder, but I generally just like the look and feel of this photo. It looks a lot like the awesome run of Batman: Arkham video games, and it’s not reading so much “dark and gritty” as it is “stylized pulp”. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE that everyone is frowning except for Harley Quinn.
Who are these people? From left to right: Slipknot (unconfirmed, Adam Beach), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), Katana (Kara Fukuhara), Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshot (Will Smith), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez). As you can see, some of these people have extremely stupid villain names—I’m looking at you Captain F*cking Boomerang. They also don’t have equally cool looks.
Killer Croc kind of looks like the goombas from the Super Mario Brothers movie, Will Smith’s Deadshot costume inspires exactly zero reaction, but Delevingne looks really cool as Enchantress, appropriately weird and otherworldly between the two souped-up soldiers. Harley looks like Roller Girl, but if Robbie gives me the live-action bonkers Harley I hope for, I really don’t care what she’s wearing. Harley’s costumes are either really dumb or super sexed-up—given that her tits aren’t out, I’m going to call this a win and enjoy Robbie’s expression, which is perfect Harley. They really ought to just call this movie Harley Quinn and Some Randoms. She’s the only part I care about.
David Ayer’s tweet: https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/595000883420749824/photo/1
