The Scene That Explains Why Guardians Worked and Suicide Squad Didn’t - SCENE FIGHTS!

recently James Gunn released a one-sheet of all the actors who were going to be in his Suicide Squad sequel and this got me thinking about how Gunn's guardians of the galaxy and the original Suicide Squad are very similar films but guardians is a master class on how to introduce several weird characters while integrating them into a fantastic new environment while Suicide Squad is the oh and you're boring and there's one similar scene in each movie that shows why one is far better than the other this is screen crush hello hi I am Ryan arey first let's talk about the many similarities between these two films what does the galaxy ever done for you why would you want to save it first they both follow lesser tier characters who have been kicking around the comics for decades these characters are outcasts criminals and the generals each movie features at least one scene where law-enforcement officers give exposition about these characters while they're still in prison a bunch of a-holes the worst of the worst the male lead in the film is a talented wisecracker with unresolved family issues the female lead is fresh off an abusive relationship with a domineering male side villain each team has a wisecracking tech genius who provides the gadgets a mostly silent non-human brute and a powerful tattooed character with the dead wife and child the deaths of his family are his primary motivation throughout the entire movie there's also a female villain who's loosely affiliated with each team enchantress starts off as a team member and nebula joins the guardians in a later movie there's even an older mentor figure with their own agenda who the team doesn't fully trust also both movies feature a soundtrack filled with mostly vintage pop music at first these unlikely heroes band together for their mutual benefit to escape a prison then they have a drink at a bar together where some of their more vulnerable character issues are laid bare normals is sitting on the dryer people like us we don't get normal they're forced into action when the powerful MacGuffin falls into the enemy's hands and guardians it's the power stone and in the Suicide Squad it's the heart of The Enchantress or when The Enchantress herself joins the brother if you actually want to stretch this metaphor bit the heroes now recognize that the fate of the world is at stake they joined together with law enforcement to save the planet this desperate final mission is against a villain with overwhelming mystical power the male leads of the movie have formed a personal relationship with a law enforcement officer that helps the police trust the new team but he's not 100% a dick these law enforcement officers primary concern is to protect the people they love in the finale the hero sees a vision of his lost loved one who inspires him to complete the mission and save the world both films end with the heroes being rewarded with Lincoln see from the law and the promise of further adventures to come so those are the similarities but there are differences oh the differences Suicide Squad highlights how hard it is to introduce multiple protagonists in a big-budget superhero film most Avengers movies are great at this because they were preceded by a solo or team-up film that already introduced most of the characters the x-men movies have mostly dealt with this by not dealing with it often focusing on Wolverine or the relationship between Charles and Magneto instead of how the whole team operates together for instance storm and Cyclops never really have a conversation until the last x-men movie Dark Phoenix we need you onion I've got your back but guardians of the galaxy brilliantly introduces characters by balancing exposition and action in other words Gunn knows when to show and when to tell as an example he shows us how good of a fighter Gamora is but he tells us about her relationship with Thanos when Thanos took my homeworld he killed my parents in front of me he tortured me because it would take several flashbacks to really flesh out Gamora the relationship with her father and we don't want to bog down a whole movie with flashbacks so instead we see how this relationship has affected Gamora in the present she's trying to run away from home I wasn't retrieving the orb for Ronan I was betraying him to illustrate how efficient the movie is we're putting the timecode for each action I'm describing on screen so quill is the main character so we get to know a lot about him his past and what kind of a guy he is he steals the Power Stone and his first scene and this action is the catalyst for the movie story ronan sends Gamora to find him while rocket and Groot want the bounty that yondu put on his head every action leads into the next action and along the way we learn about these characters their personalities their skill sets and how they'll interact with one another with smiling ad it's supposed to be a professional this culminates in their arrest and the kiln we get a little more exposition that's not necessary to the story but it's nice because it helps to flesh out the characters pretty high and mighty coming from the lackey of a jetta subtle maniac once they're in jail we meet Drax and one scene we find out that he's feared Drax the destroyer what he wants and that he's hilarious then we check in again with the movies villains before the heroes make a plan to escape together and sell the orb for themselves all of this culminates in the kiln jailbreak which is my favorite sequence in the movie just like a heist film the stakes are carefully laid out at the beginning the heroes have clear individual goals also like any good heist film the plan immediately goes wrong when Groot stills the quantum X battery too soon so right off the bat they're at a disadvantage with the whole prison security bearing down on them they would have been outmatched if Drax hadn't joined the battle and gotten rock at a weapon plus we get to see a talking raccoon firing a machine gun on top of a sentient tree which is the greatest cinematic first since Citizen Kane pioneered deep focused cinematography every character gets a chance to show off their abilities either their fighting skill or in quills case has not for Charming people to part their legs part with their legs these different skills paced the scene perfectly we go from rocket and Groot screaming and firing a machine gun to this sharp edit unique loved what and then right back into a different kind of action gamora's hand-to-hand combat see this keeps the action going without it becoming repetitive if the whole scene was just the heroes firing guns it would have gotten pretty old quick as we'll see in a little bit then because the heroes are all moving toward one goal they meet up in the control center of the cafeteria and pose together for the first of many times no they're not a perfect team and at this point their alliance is temporary but all of the pieces are in place for the rest of the movie and all of this happens at just under 39 minutes now to compare let's look at how inefficient Suicide Squad is and examine the first scene where they come together as a team the movie starts with Deadshot and Harley in jail we learned that he's a and she's insane then Waller describes them too chief hopper there's a dead shot flashback and then hardly flashback and at this point one third of the movie has been flashbacks Waller describes the lesser characters using shorter flashbacks she describes the eventual villain and her boyfriend now we are 20 minutes into the movie then she describes the villain some more now pitching her plan to a generic conference room that has a couple LED TVs with the White House logo on them finally she recruits the team one at a time but not before giving Will Smith sorry I mean Deadshot a chance to look like a badass this entails shooting a bunch of targets this is completely unnecessary since we've already seen a much cooler scene where he ricochets a bullet to kill a snitch then we cut to the movies villains for a while to establish the growing conflict and then around minute 38 when the heroes finally get out of jail oh wait sorry we have to go show the Joker again first now finally at 43 minutes the team is out of jail and the pieces are in PO wait here's katana we have to meet katana now we're off on the mission the helicopter gets shot down then they start walking and they walk a lot the Suicide Squad all it was was a bunch of people walking so at 57 minutes in they finally meet the evil army of the enchantress and we get to see our team fight together for the first time and Guardians this fight happens 20 minutes earlier not counting the little skirmishes where they met each other for the first time but suicide squads team come together fight is really really boring they walk down the street talking having little interactions where you kind of get to know them you know like the building blocks of a team movie why do you need people but as they're walking there isn't any kind of atmosphere it's not scary they're not excited or worried they're just there on an empty street you'd think that since the city was taken over by two evil deities that there would be something scary or suspenseful but nope they just walk even when they see this car that's all melted and fleshy no one reacts it's just a nice prop that they look at for a second they finally come up on these ugly dark shapes that look like lumps of wet no baked cookie then Waller says so this is telling us oh snap these hot asphalt putties are going to be badasses an unstoppable magic army even the military is afraid of them but then the putties attack and our heroes are all alone how can they possibly beat this unstoppable army of the undead oh by shooting them I'm on the head cutting them with a katana throwing them really hard and of course by shooting them there's a little bit of character stuff in this fight like Diablo walking away and Captain Boomerang sneaking off to have a beer which I can totally relate to that would be me in a superhero movie but the fight is just mostly guns and ammo the fighting here doesn't tell a story we don't see the heroes fail because they don't work together as a team we don't really get to see their powers Captain Boomerang doesn't throw a boomerang Killer Croc is just a generic strong guy and everybody else just shoots things now watch captain flag fight this monster he stands straight up in blocks two punches without breaking a sweat and this guy has no powers there are no stakes in this battle you never feel like the huge unstoppable army is either huge or unstoppable they're just dark blobs for the heroes to hack and slash and this is where I got a say video games have a bad influence on movies this scene has more in common with dynasty Warriors in an action scene from a motion picture just look at the end of the fight when Deadshot single-handedly takes down all of the villains I mean was this in Will Smith's contract did he say well if I'm in this I get to be the one who's a badass and kills all the monsters proud of you the action is terrible the scene doesn't forward the story in any way and the villains are useless and disposable so now for the rest of the movie I know that we don't have to worry about this army we know the heroes can beat the breaks off of them so what if instead the squad had to work together to escape an overwhelming force for the rest of the movie we would feel like they were being hunted like the odds were stacked against them and we need them to feel disadvantaged so they'll have something to overcome later in the story as it stands now the fight only changes one thing now they know they're fighting magical creatures and not terrorists what happened terror attack but then why did Waller not tell them the truth from the start if you're sending a strike team in to neutralize a target the first thing you do is tell them about the target sure the Guardians take out the Nova Corps pretty easily - but - no the Corps aren't the villains the movie works better if the Nova Corps useless in a fight so they'll need the Guardians to help them during the movies climax so this fight in Suicide Squad doesn't serve any purpose it's bland and you're boring and the rest of the movie has problems - you could take out the Joker subplot and nobody would notice the evil millennia-old god monster is killed with a bomb and the flashbacks way down any kind of forward momentum the soundtrack is abrasive there are three songs in the first four minutes there's this line lady you are evil and the 2005 year a digital effects of brother and Margot Robbie is the best part of the movie but her character has a no arc she spends the film pining for the Joker and at the end when a Joker shows up she doesn't reject him to stay with their new friends she just goes along with him she's my favorite DCU character and she really deserved better than this movie and it's a shame because there's some other great stuff in here Viola Davis nails Amanda Waller's ruthless efficiency the scene where the Fresh Prince motivates Diablo is also great touching you do so love it and really should have happened during the boring monster fight everything with Deadshot's daughter feels heartfelt even when he teaches her how to kill people at the end you shoot a man down here in the street that's how far the bullet actually goes Plus look at this transformation into The Enchantress it's wicked cool and mostly this scene at the bar where all the characters get to talk about their messed-up lives and the impossible odds that they face and they can't have people knowing the truth we're the patsies we're the bad guys this feels like the movie we could have been watching this entire time instead of an overstuffed Will Smith vanity project with the color palette of a Nickelback video and you're boring what's the best DCE you've come so far let me know in the comments below and if you like please subscribe for screen crush I'm Ryan Arry [Music]

Channel: ScreenCrush

Views: 2,311,834

Rating: 4.9043236 out of 5

Keywords: suicide squad, guardians of the galaxy, james gunn, marvel movies, dc movies, suicide squad guardians of the galaxy comparison, why suicide squad sucked, why guardians of the galaxy sucked, suicide squad video essay, guardians of the galaxy video essay, james gunn video essay, dc extended universe, the suicide squad, marvel cinematic universe

Id: _1CCWjahEgA

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019