The Appeal of the Suicide Squad Trailer

As I have mentioned several times by now, I don't read many comic books. I know, every time I mention it, someone's head probably explodes, and someone else probably ignores everything else I have to say. It's not that I haven't tried - the most recent attempt was Watchmen, and I made it through, damn it - but the medium doesn't get my gears running quite like others do. Video games? Aw yeah, that gets me pumped, especially if it's a new Zelda title, or some unexpected random genius from the minds at Nintendo. Movies? Throw me in to an action movie or an art-house film - either one can get me excited (unless the art-house movie turns out to be pretentious garbage). TV? With my limited time (I am a teacher with two foster children, after all), I find it hard to get into many shows, especially the new ones where I need to wait until the next week to catch the next episode (thanks, Netflix, for helping busy people like myself). Nonetheless, I get into shows when the time permits, and I always want the time.

Comic books, though? Sorry guys, although I will keep trying, I promise.

My reason for bringing this up today is the Suicide Squad trailer that recently premiered at Comic-Con. Yes, I know - this news is at least a week old, so why bring it up now? Because I have had to watch it several times during that span of time to really get at why, as someone that knows very little about these characters, I want so badly to go see this movie and for this movie to be good. Sure, I know a few - anyone that doesn't know The Joker probably lives in another dimension (and anyone that doesn't have an opinion about the new Joker ... yeah, I haven't found any of them yet), and Harley Quinn is notable because I play Batman: Arkham City (I also periodically watched the 90's Batman cartoon). Overall, however, these guys are quite new, even if I know some of their names. The biggest challenge in these comic book-based movies is getting those that know nothing about the comic on which the movie is based to go and see this movie. I know very little here, so here's what I find so goddamn fascinating about this trailer.

It starts out with eerie music and those rotating, clicking logos. That music really does it for me - it lets me know that something here is off, and man, when things get off in superhero movies, I am all in. Too often, we get the typical hero doing the typical heroic thing. Even the Marvel movies, as awesome as they are, stick with some tired stereotypes (although, in their defense, they had to do this in order to effectively give some of them origin stories). The hero is powerful and has his or her heart in the right place, but has a bad attitude? Yup, all over the place. Nobody understands the hero, so some people think he's the villain? Yes, between Batman and The Hulk, we've heard that a lot. Even though those sorts of stories can be done well, I crave something new and different. This music lets me know right away that maybe, just maybe, something is going to be different this time.

And it is - we've got three people talking about some horrible, heinous villains they have locked away (rather, put them in a hole and "threw away the hole" - what a line). We know right up front that these guys aren't going to be model citizens, and that no one expects them to live up to any sort of standard of goodness. They want to recruit them to save the world, and if they don't? They're bad guys - can't blame us! The thing the TV show Dexter does really well is present characters that are neither good nor bad - they all have shades of gray, even the ones that are supposed to be "good" or "evil." Right away, we've got a table full of characters, and possibly a "hole" full of villains, that could fit into these shades of gray. Maybe we're actually talking about characters with ... gasp! ... depth!

We then get the obligatory montage of these guys (which happens in every ensemble movie trailer, superhero-themed or not). Yeah, nothing too special here - it goes on just long enough for us to go, "Hey, where's this Joker everyone's been talking about?" More on that later, though.

The music continues to grab me, and naturally, I did some research on it. Growing up in the 90's means I don't get every reference to every song made before the 80's. So, finding out that this song is a song by The Bee Gees surprised me. Yes, for those that aren't as meticulous in their research as myself, the song is titled "I Started a Joke," and the cover is significantly more haunting than the original. It's an incredibly sad song, though, and it really wasn't as much of a stretch to get it to resonate with the "villains" in this trailer as I thought it might be. As the trailer continues, the chords get stranger and stranger, slowly pumping up the twisted nature of this trailer and, naturally, pulling me in deeper and deeper.

As the music gets stranger, so do the visuals - we get several great shots of Harley Quinn as the music amps up a bit, the most notable featuring her licking what appears to be a bar from her jail cell at 2:16. Then Harley is tied up and gagged at 2:18, definitely the darkest image given so far. Then there's Harley in a car, biting the air, at 2:21 and then

HOLY CRAP IS THAT BATMAN?!?!?!?!

Sorry, sorry - my inner fanboy just came out. I don't actually think a Batman appearance would help this movie, given he's in the rather boring-looking Batman v. Superman (maybe I'll write more about that one later). We all have those random, instinctual outbursts, right? Those moments where you get surprised by something, even if, after giving it some more thought, you aren't quite as interested in that surprise as you initially thought? I don't think I'm alone there. This was one of those moments for me.

As I went back and watched this part of the trailer, though, I was stuck by how much more twisted and insane Harley got after her initial appearance in the trailer. And that's something that really amped up my interest in this movie - its ability to show a villain/hero/character with such range. She starts out simply hanging around (pun intended) in her jail cell, and then she's doing crazy things later, and we perhaps get a look at where the crazy was born. This trailer does what most trailers should - leave us asking questions about how things happen, or why things happen. I want to know more, man, because at this point in the trailer, the focal point of the trailer has become Harley Quinn and what appears to be a rather dark, twisted background.

And then, after the music gets a little less intense, we get what most people have been waiting to see. The appearance of The Joker was one of the most talked about pieces in any of the comments I read accompanying articles about this trailer. Does it look like a good take on The Joker? Is he copying Heath Ledger at all? Does he look like The Joker? Or does he look ridiculous? From my end, it looks like a different take on The Joker than we have seen from the movies thus far - I read someone point it out as a cross between Jack Nicholson's Joker and Heath Ledger's Joker. At first glance, I definitely get that comparison. But really, people, you won't know how Leto's Joker will be until you actually watch the entire movie. We just got a glimpse, a snippet, of what Leto's performance is all about, so we cannot possibly judge at this point. At least, I'm not going to judge.

(Quick aside - I've got a whole, whole lot to say on the subject of Jared Leto, but in order to do it justice, I am going to write another entry that features my opinions on him and a few other famous people that have garnered some rather notorious reputations.)

But judging The Joker aside ... what a trailer! It starts out chill and slightly eerie, then slowly gets more and more intense and creepy, and then calms down slightly, only to reveal what has been the most talked-about, most anticipated piece of the movie thus far. I mean, I have been pulled in, guys, and I know nothing about any of the other villains in this movie. Really - I do not know who these guys are. If I didn't name them, I've got nothing.

But here's the question - even though the trailer is constructed beautifully, do I want to go see this movie? Did the people in charge of putting this together do their job and rope in someone that isn't already familiar with the comic books on which this movie is based? Am I interested enough in what's going on here to actually shell out money and hire a babysitter and go see this with my wife? Will my wife want to go? It depends, really, on what comes next. There will be more trailers, especially since this movie is still over a year away (yes, you read that correctly - over a year away). I am definitely interested enough to keep an eye out for more trailers and see if those hold up. I'd like to see Will Smith deliver a line that isn't quite as "Will Smith-y" as the lines given here, and I'd love to get a better look at some of these other characters that I don't even know. Will the other trailers do that? I certainly hope so.

Until then, I'll be forced to watch and re-watch this one, and then maybe download the hauntingly beautifully song that accompanies it. Congratulations, movie-makers - you've caught the interest of many people out there. The ball is in your court - can you keep us interested, for a year?

We'll see.

Watching Cartoons As An Adult

Many of us know that a great defense of watching cartoons (children's cartoons, mind you) is simply saying, "My child is watching it, so I watch it with them." I imagine that, in any general social situation, I would use the same defense, not that I believe it is necessary, but because making a solid first impression is one of my core philosophies. Most people, after all, are generally suspect of adults that watch cartoons and then go around talking about them. I happen to find such an opinion silly - there are plenty of mature, responsible people that watch cartoons - but I still find myself only able to truly justify watching cartoons when I am watching them with my nine-year-old foster daughter.

Having said that, before the little lady joined our household, I had worked my way through several cartoons from the 90's and early 00's all on my own using the glorious resource known as Netflix, the place to go to seek out those nostalgic shows we watched back when Saturday morning cartoons still existed. Since I have graduated college, I worked through Spiderman (the 90's version off of which many a McDonald's toy were based) and Batman Beyond. Once I had someone with whom to watch, I started making suggestions, all of which the little lady has agreed to watch with much enthusiasm. We made it through all 3 seasons of Beast Wars: Transformers and have recently started watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Several of these cartoons have a definite theme, if you have noticed. I do enjoy my superhero cartoons, probably because I lack the patience to work my way through the vast library of comic books and graphic novels from which these heroes gained their fame. As I believe I have mentioned in an earlier post, I am not completely enamored of reading comic books - that's my wife's territory. I have made several good-faith attempts to get into them - The Sandman was pretty amazing, and I have enjoyed the more recent Iron Man comics, since the first movie came out - but overall, it's not an artistic medium that resonates with me. The content, however, is something I have always found attractive. A hero fighting off scores of awesome villains, and sometimes teaming up with other awesome heroes? An entire universe full of these heroes and villains to explore? To me, the opportunities have always seemed limitless, causing me to craft my own world of heroes very early on in my life. Even now in adulthood, I have flirted with trying to bring some of these heroes into being through my writing, although my fiction writing leaves quite a bit to be desired.

As a result of this life-long interest in superheroes, I am still very interested in what cartoons are out there. One cannot simply get their superhero fix from the movies - TV shows, particularly cartoons, offer so many differing paths for these heroes to follow, often getting things right that I feel the movies have been unable to handle. Watching these cartoons has given me a great glimpse into just what is possible for these heroes, and how big the universe really is. The Spiderman cartoon, at that time in my life, was the only thing I had ever seen that brought so many different heroes and villains into the picture - I was obsessed with gathering toys of them all and playing with that world myself, expanding it as I saw fit and making it something entirely different.

Anyway, enough nostalgia - what about now? I still find myself appreciating how cartoons are presented, and how they tell their own stories. Due to their targeted audience, cartoons keep it simple, something many movies could benefit from doing (here's to you, Avengers: Age of Ultron). They often represent the mantra of "show, don't tell" incredibly well, again mostly due to their audience. Kids don't tune into shows to listen to people talk all of the time - they want to see things unfold, watch how things happen. Yes, there are clunkers out there, but if we look at the medium in general, it's incredibly easy to find a wide variety of cartoons out there that tell their stories incredibly well.

One of my favorite episodes of Batman Beyond is called "The Eggbaby," one of the goofier episodes that actually works. Terry (the boy who is Batman in this particular iteration of the hero) must care for what is essentially one of those fake, robotic babies anyone that's taken a Home Economics class knows about. Of course, he must also fight crime, as Batman is apt to do. What follows is a wonderfully hilarious sequence of events that culminates in Terry actually getting a good grade on the assignment because he succeeded in getting the egg baby the stimulation it needed. It's an example of a "serious" cartoon that does everything well, relying on the visuals to get us through and entertain us, with special emphasis on the egg baby's face and sounds. I actually made my wife watch this episode with me, even though she generally wants nothing to do with my "silly" cartoons, and even my "too mature for cartoons" wife was entertained.

Cartoons are already well-known for making people laugh, though - what about an instance in which it manages to do something else? I tear up every time I watch the Beast Wars: Transformers episode known as "Code of Hero," in which one of the Maximals (the good guys) known as Dino-Bot makes a last-stand effort to protect the future of humanity. It gets a bit over-the-top at times, with Dino-Bot delivering monologues plagued with clichés, but in the end, watching him sacrifice himself to protect the future is quite powerful, given his on-again, off-again relationship with the Maximals, having started out as a Predacon (the bad guys). Beast Wars is a deeply flawed show - it doesn't handle "goofy" quite as gracefully as Batman Beyond - but it does a great job of giving us very well developed characters and putting those characters in interesting situations.

There is, of course, a nostalgic piece to this. A lot of the cartoons I have named are ones I watched growing up. Avengers is the one exception here - that came out within the last five or six years. Even though I am no longer a child, the show still interests me. The little lady is on board with it too - she keeps asking to watch more and more. She's a future Netflix binge-watcher, she is, but she's a child - we expect her to find these things entertaining. I find the show has great comedic timing and gives the characters personalities that are completely independent of their movie counterparts. The cartoon takes the idea that we can craft original stories from already-existing characters and make it solid entertainment. It has its own agenda, its own ideas, and its own identity.

And maybe that's what makes cartoons so fun in general - it is a reliable place to find originality. Are there other sources of it? Of course, but when it comes to a reliable source of original ideas, cartoons are a great resource. This may be due to the nature of animation - if you can think it, you can make it. Other shows and movies are limited by budgets and materials, but animation? If you get the picture in your head, and you have the talent around you, it can appear on page (or, these days, on a computer screen). There are some wonderfully creative minds in the cartoon business, and with a medium that gives a significant amount of freedom in what it can present and how it can present it, why wouldn't there be a plethora of entertaining, original cartoons out there?

So, if imagination is the only limiting factor for a cartoon, then that might explain why they are so attractive. The superhero universe within Spiderman I obsessed over as a child could only be so expansive and varied because of the medium. Even goofy shows like Spongebob Squarepants and Animaniacs are set within a universe that feels huge, where there seem to be limitless possibilities. If someone has a funny idea, then it can be animated, and placed in the context of a universe that is arguably larger than most TV shows and movies can accommodate comfortably and effectively.

So, if you are one of those people that poo-poos the idea of cartoons, do some research and check some out. In order to be an adult and watch cartoons, you don't need to watch things like Family Guy (for the love of God, don't watch Family Guy - watch something that isn't created by a sexist piece of garbage like Seth MacFarlane, like Bob's Burgers or Futurama). Watch some cartoons with your kids and see if you can find something entertaining, or if you don't have kids, watch some with your friends' kids, or your nieces or nephews, or go volunteer somewhere with kids so you can watch cartoons with them. Odds are in your favor that you will find something you will like - it isn't all superheroes and fart jokes. There's a wealth of creativity in the world of cartoons, so even if you don't find any that you like, don't judge those that do watch them. We, like you, just want to be entertained.