Photo: Screenshot
Despite receiving some of the worst reviews of any film this year, Suicide Squad is a hit with music fans and cinema goers alike.
As previously reported, the film was controversial from the very beginning. Particularly when it was revealed that Jared Leto, the 30 Seconds To Mars frontman who plays The Joker, 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
The film was released earlier this month, and critics absolutely savaged it. 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.”
It’s not all bad news though. The Suicide Squad soundtrack, which includes original songs from the likes of Grimes and Twenty One Pilots, alongside songs by Skrillex, Lil Wayne, Kehlani, Eminem and Panic! At The Disco, is at No.1 in the US for the second week running. That makes it the first soundtrack to spend more than a week at No.1 since Guardians Of The Galaxy two years ago.
The film is doing well at the box office too - with fans ignoring reviews and turning up in their droves to check out the film. This weekend it was No.1 in the box office for the third weekend in a row, and it’s now the fourth biggest film of the summer.
