This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Molloy chapter.

*If you haven’t seen Suicide Squad, there are some spoilers in here*

Suicide Squad is a movie based on a DC Comics squad of anti-heroes, including Deadshot, Diablo, Harley Quinn, Slipknot, Captain Boomerang, and Killer Croc, along with Katana and Rick Flagg, who are brought together by a secret government agency to execute special missions in return for a shorter sentence in prison. Suicide Squad was released on August 5, 2016, and became the eighth-highest grossing film of 2016.

The movie and its characters, each with large personalities, quickly became immensely popular shortly after it’s release; Harley Quinn was even the most popular Halloween costume of 2016. Despite all of its success, many fans and critics believed that there were a lot of plot holes and choppiness throughout the movie. An extended cut seemed to be the only hope for the many people who were disappointed by this interpretation of the squad.

On November 15, the Suicide Squad Extended Cut was digitally released on iTunes and Amazon, leaving fans and critics of the movie excited to see what extra scenes they had to discover. To many people’s disappointment, the extended cut only included an extra 11 minutes of scenes. After hearing many mixed reviews of the new release, I decided to buy the movie and decide for myself. Since I am an avid superfan of the Suicide Squad movie and concept, I will try my best to keep my review as unbiased as possible.

Although Suicide Squad has been one of my favorite movies since it was released in theaters back in August, I am very aware of all the plot holes and choppiness the theater version of the film had. I was hoping the extra 11 minutes of scenes would fill in the holes many critics seemed to be complaining about. After fully watching the extended cut, some of the plot holes were semi-filled, but I still think there was a lot missing from the movie.

The full extent of the extended cut includes:

Approximately 30 extra seconds of the Joker mistreating Dr. Harlene Quinzel in Arkham Asylum in the introduction/flashback scene.
An unimportant, slightly longer Killer Croc introduction/flashback.
Killer Croc getting sick on the plane to Midway City.
Full conversation between the squad members planning to escape from Rick Flagg and Amanda Waller.
Harley Quinn chasing the Joker on a motorcycle during another flashback scene, pretty much forcing him to love her. (AKA the scene someone recorded from their apartment window and posted to Twitter while the film was initially being filmed.)
Harley Quinn psychoanalyzing the squad members while walking to the building to defeat the Enchantress.
The extended bar scene with the squad.
Some extra small talk between Deadshot and Flagg.

Now, do you notice something a little odd about this list? Most of the extended scenes seem to favor Harley Quinn and give little to no expansion on any other squad member’s character development. Honestly, I would rather a full scene explaining Katana’s background (since she was literally in the entire movie and had almost nothing explained about her) than have 567456475 scenes about Harley Quinn. This is really saying a lot since Harley is one of my favorite characters in DC comics.

Even an introduction to Slipknot would have been more proper than all of the extra Harley/Joker scenes since Slipknot is technically in the squad (for 5 minutes.) Slipknot kind of just shows up out of nowhere punches out a prison guard, gets thrown into the squad, and dies 5 minutes later. He was the main character who was treated as a very minimal secondary character. The directors could have done a little more with him before he died.

I don’t think the director realized that Harley Quinn was famous enough after the original movie was released. They had and completely missed the opportunity to expand on the characters who didn’t become as popular among the mainstream, which was pretty much every other character minus Harley Quinn and the Joker.

Another issue I had was the fact that there was nothing else put into Diablo’s backstory. Diablo, being another favorite character of mine, was not given much to his sad and tragic backstory. Although his backstory was sad, it was dull and seemed so thoughtlessly put into the movie that there was no time to connect with the story and feel extreme emotion over it. I was hoping the extended cut would have added something to pull at the heartstrings, sort of like the Deadshot scenes with his daughter.

Lastly, I was expecting to have a slight explanation of the after-credits scene with Amanda Waller and (for some odd reason) Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman. Although it wasn’t an official scene in the movie, it still was supposed to add to the plot and provide a cliffhanger for a possible second movie, which it did not execute well. It was just thrown into, I guess, to throw off the audience, since Amanda Waller was supposed to be the one working with the villains. She herself seemed like a villain throughout the movie, making the scene odd. I still really just need that scene explained.

Many questions were still left unanswered which made me a little upset, but despite all my critiques, I still somewhat enjoyed the extended cut and have some positive thoughts about it. Yes, the extended cut was overly focused on Harley Quinn, but I still did enjoy the way the extra Harley scenes were executed, even though they were not necessary to the plot. Margot Robbie is such an amazing actress and executed Harley Quinn so perfectly, in my opinion. Robbie was the reason the non-ancillary scenes were still so beautifully brought to life. She really put all of her deep emotion into that character, making her so raw and real, even playing a comic book character.

Another plus side to the extended cut was that the extra little scenes of Deadshot and Flagg talking and planning the operation out with each other. These scenes showed a clear, upward progression of the relationship between Deadshot and Flagg. In the original cut, the relationship between Flagg and anyone else in the squad was really choppy and unclear; it was really hard to tell if the squad gradually came around to liking him after the movie ended. Although the relationship between Flagg and most of the squad was unclear in the extended cut, it was nice that the Deadshot/Flagg unlikely friendship was able to emerge.

I may have some strong opinions of the Suicide Squad Extended Cut, but this movie will always have a special place in my heart. Although this extended cut seemed to be a flop, I really hope that these characters (and the actors who play them) are not shelved and are able to come together on the big screen again. My favorite part of the movie has always been the chemistry between the main characters; they all work so well with each other. Whether it’s a prequel of Harley Quinn and the Joker (which is extremely likely) or a Suicide Squad 2, I would love to see what the filmmakers would do the second time around.

Photo/gif creds:

Suicide Squad Extended Cut REVIEW

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