It looks like Jared Leto’s best, most fucked up attempt to give a good performance in Suicide Squad fell short - despite a trailer that got fans excited, the film has been absolutely savaged by critics upon its release date. Leto's The Joker and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn have received the most criticism.
As previously reported, the 30 Seconds To Mars frontman sent anal beads, used condoms and a dead pig to his castmates - including the likes of Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Cara Delevingne - while they were filming, in an effort to get into character.
In a subsequent interview, Viola Davis revealed that he sent her a box of bullets. “You know what, it was a little worrisome,” she told E! News, “It made you a little nervous, and I’m pretty tough. It scared me a little bit.” A subsequent viral tweet pretty much summed up Davis’ feelings towards Leto.
can we just take a moment to appreciate viola's reactions to jared leto pic.twitter.com/eyII4YLhXz
— laura (@bruhcewaynes) July 24, 2016
Now, the reviews are in, and they’re not good. The Telegraph called it “crushingly puerile” and “depressing,” criticising the “eardrum-puncturingly bad dialogue, scowling self-pity, covert pornography and scrappy CGI.” Robbie Collin’s review went on to describe Leto’s Joker as “a kind of Halloween-themed version of Rik Mayall’s Richie, from the Nineties BBC sitcom Bottom.”
Vanity Fair, meanwhile, described the film, which also stars Will Smith, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis and Margot Robbie, as “ugly and boring, a toxic combination that means the film’s highly fetishized violence doesn’t even have the exciting tingle of the wicked or the taboo. It’s simply a dull chore steeped in flaccid machismo, a shapeless, poorly edited trudge that adds some mildly appalling sexism and even a soupçon of racism to its abundant, hideously timed gun worship.”
"Mildly appalling sexism and even a soupçon of racism"
Rolling Stone called the film a “botch job” that “makes Fantastic Four look good,” while Buzzfeed called it “disastrous,” complaining that it had turned Robbie’s Harley Quinn into “its damaged dolly jerk-off material.”
All in all, not good. Perhaps Leto should stick to 30 Seconds To Mars.
