Could the Suicide Squad be saved by dynamic advertising principles?
Instead of letting bad reviews and irate fanboys devalue a franchise, perhaps DC could have used public feedback to cut the film everybody wanted to see, suggests Julian Schreiber.
Let me confess something. I am a comic book nerd. And I knew all about the Suicide Squad, say, about 20 years before it came out as a movie.
I knew the characters, the basic story line, that you don’t mess with Amanda Waller unless you want to end up dead and buried in an unmarked grave.
And when I saw the first trailer of the film my immediate reaction was unreservedly “Hell Yeah!” It had everything: charismatic actors, check; cool special effects, check. Witty one-liners, check; kick-arse soundtrack, check (Ballroom Blitz…I mean how good is Ballroom Blitz?) I was intrigued and excited.
And then trailer number two came out. More character depth, hints of an interesting plotline, more witty one-liners. The hype was beginning to build and so was the chatter amongst the non-comic book nerds or, as I like to call them, my cooler co-workers around the agency.
Interesting perspective Julian.
While the movie certainly had some problems, it was nowhere near as bad as some critics made out, and as a fellow geek I really suggest that you give it a look, if only for the performances of Margot Robbie and Will Smith as Harley and Deadshot.
The concept of iterative movie making, is something that DC/Warner have already played with on the DVD release of Batman vs Superman, albeit in the longer term than you suggest. With a rumoured 10-12 minutes of additional Joker footage in existence I would be surprised if we didn’t see an extended cut of the film on DVD. In terms of the opening weekend recut approach that you suggest, I think you slightly underestimate the logistics of global film distribution…
The problem with the film is that they handed it to the marketing company to re-edit without the directors input as the original film did not resemble the trailers, which in turn were created under instruction from the production company to make the film look like a fun romp ala Guardians of the Galaxy due to the panic over Batman V Superman tanking.
They focus-tested three different edits. The iterative process already happened.
The last thing this film needed is *additional* marketing input.
I got so frustrated with the Seven coverage and so sick of Bruce McAvaney (time to move on Bruce) that I turned it off and went back to the best broadcaster – ABC radio! Apart from Jim Maxwell who made hockey sound like grass growing.
I had a feeling that film would be awful from the trailers. Obviously I couldn’t tell whether it would be too cutty though you could guess any movie of this sub-genre would tend that way. It was more the glib, self conscious, too cool, cold, nihilistic feeling that permeated the whole thing. (But I assume that vibe is common to the comic book too?)
What did surprise me is that the rest of the world seemed to respond like I did to the trailer once they saw the actual film. I assumed audiences just like that junk now. Deadpool seems like it has a similar tone (I’ve seen that. i’m guessing about Suicide Squad).
Then again in the 1950s kids watched B-grade vampire films. Now Hollywood makes B-grade multimillion dollar films.