 What we have here today is two very different Suicide Squads. One of them by a director who's not even happy with the final product. One could even say it's damaged. With The Suicide Squad, the studio seemed to learn from their mistakes and gave the director carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. Does that mean it's better? That's what we're here today to find out, isn't it? It's Suicide Squad versus The Suicide Squad on Movie Feuds. Now I think one place we can all come together on is that both films feature a wide variety of talent. We've got some good actors and actresses on display. We should also take a moment and really appreciate how great Margot Robbie is as Harley Quinn. So let's all come together, have a collected moment of silence for Margot Robbie right now. It's truly, truly something special. One of the main characters in both films are Bad Parenting. We have Will Smith's dead shot who lies to his daughter, fights Batman in an alleyway and goes to prison for life. In 2021, we get Idris Alba's blood sport, who doesn't want anything to do with his daughter. But to be fair, he's pretty up front about it and he knows his garbage and I guess unwilling to change because he's too far gone. I think Idris pulled off the performance and the character better than Will Smith did. It's very hard for me to get past the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and take him seriously as a villain. Another character in both films is Joel Kineman's Rick Flag. And his last name is Flag because I guess America, I guess dumb comic naming. I don't really have much to say about the character. His accent was a little less pronounced. His country bumpkin voice was not quite as overwhelming in the sequel, but otherwise just a whatever character he's there. Viola Davis has Amanda Waller's in both. She's calculating. She's sinister. She's kind of an idiot in the first film. In the sequel, she's I think a little bit more competent at her job. She's just not a very good boss. And while she doesn't kill her employees and cold blood like she does in the first, she does do enough to make one put a nine iron to her head. Last and certainly least is Captain Boomerang played by Jai Courtney. Why? At first I was thinking why James Gunn did you bring back Captain Boomerang? Why did you have to bring Jai Courtney back into the film? But then after he gets killed off gloriously 10 minutes into the movie, I was like, ah, you get me. You get me, James Gunn. I appreciate it. We have a couple human animal hybrids going on in these films too. In the first Suicide Squad we have Crocodile, Alligator Man. I guess he goes by Killer Croc and I have to say I wasn't too impressed. You know, he kind of had the gold chain bling thing going on. He thought he was a bad ass. But when all was said and done, he didn't do a whole lot of damage in the film. That's not to say King Shark had a huge body count, but he was far more likable to me. He had a little bit of character growth and development. He wasn't just a bro who killed dudes and walked away. We saw how he struggled with the fact that he'll never have a normal life. You know, we saw that he was able to create new friendships and grow as a person, a shark, whatever that thing is. And much like Sylvester Stallone who voices the character, he can sure as hell take a hit. He can take a punch. Suicide Squad also has a disgusting weasel, played by Jared Leto. His version of Joker sucks. I know this stuff is subjective, but I'm willing to say it's a fact at this point that that Joker is just the worst. There is an actual weasel character in The Suicide Squad. I said the naming correctly. So that joke was set up properly. If you watched The Suicide Squad recently and you thought to yourself, man, this is really good, but I could have used a little bit more dancing. It's probably because you're missing the Enchantress. The woman had sick dance skills. Just look at her go. Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't you wish your girl was enchantress like me? Don't ya? In either case, we have a wonderful variety of characters, whether they're shooting fire out of their hands or talking with rats. I feel like there's a little something for everyone. If you have some sort of a fetish where you want to see a giant, roided out dude in tidy whiteies, The Suicide Squad has you covered even there. John Cena is the peacemaker. I thought was hilarious in the film, and I honestly can't wait for his TV series on, I think it's coming to HBO Max. There is no Batfleck in this film though, so if you're really hardcore on Batfleck, I guess maybe you'll think Suicide Squad's better in that regard. But for me, I was very happy with the characters presented. I didn't even cover a good amount of them because they're killed off so quickly. Still, this was a fantastic lineup of characters, and I have no issues giving the round to The Suicide Squad. When you're doing a property such as Suicide Squad, you would assume at the end of the day a fair amount of this team is gonna die. I think that's the first big mistake out of a plethora of them in 2016. Director slash writer David Ayer would be the first to tell you that the cut of the films that you've seen, whether it's the theatrical or the extended edition, are not the cuts that he had in his brain. They're not his Snyder cut, and he's been preaching about it for years. He's been pleading. He's been petitioning to get a new version out. And I have zero issues with him fighting to get the cut out that he wanted, that he envisioned all along. That said, I saw it with the Snyder cut, inevitably ended up being, and it didn't go from an F film up to an A plus, okay? While the film was drastically different in a lot of regards, it presented not only a lot of familiar stuff, but new stuff that wasn't necessarily better. And I have a feeling that's what we would get with the Ayer cut too. What we have to work with as of now though is a very disjointed vision that clearly was mucked with afterwards by the studio. You can hear about 20 different pop songs smashed into this thing 30 minutes into the film. They have no right to be there. And oftentimes the songs are cut up so poorly, they didn't even try with the transitioning. If the Enchantress is twerking in both versions of this film, then that says everything you need to know about the Ayer cut. It's not gonna be different enough. There is a lot of serious stuff in Suicide Squad and it doesn't work. It doesn't land right. It feels off. And this is where I think James Gunn is just far better equipped to handle this type of material. He sees that we're dealing with characters that are very characteristic. They have toilet seats on their heads. They're communicating with rats. They're freaking shark people for crying out loud. So you have to be tongue in cheek with it. You can still have serious elements, which he absolutely does in the Suicide Squad, but he encapsulates it in a package that's very silly. David Ayer goes with the tried and true formula of just montaging the shit out of the first half hour of his film since he's introducing a lot of characters. He doesn't want us to organically get to know them as the situation plays out, which is what James Gunn does. No, instead he jumps from one montage to another, just back to back to back to back. It's also really strange that Amanda Waller out of nowhere starts narrating the beginning and then the end of the film. She's not the main character. She's like a side character. It is just really, really bizarre. The 2016 version is not a total loss, though, of course. Again, we got Margot Robbie from it, so there's gonna be mad respect just based on that. The appreciation I have for the cosplays and Halloween costumes alone is never-ending. I can't praise that aspect enough, that aspect enough. David Ayer probably also wanted to push for an R rating. I don't know, I'm talking out of my ass, but it feels like he's let back. He's pulled back in a lot of these action scenes that just aren't very exciting, whereas James Gunn gets to go all in. And he does. There's limbs getting blown off. There's people exploding internally. There's all sorts of depraved, graphic, disgusting imagery for me to really enjoy. And I thank Gunn for that, and he's gonna, again, get the win here. I didn't think I'd see a Suicide Squad film where the final boss is a giant starfish that they have to take out. And to take that a step further, I didn't think it would be defeated by a group of rats gnawing at its insides because Harley Quinn stabbed a spear through its eye and floated around ceremoniously as these little creatures nod away at vital organs. On paper, that sounds absolutely disgusting, yet watching it play out in real time was a thing of beauty for me. For all 2016's faults, I think it looks very nice as well. Again, little bit inconsistent because you do have that layer of paint kind of splatted on top of things. It has interesting moments, though. I think it was trying to be more grimy and gross and, you know, darker in tone, whereas James Gunn's version gets to gleefully revel in that type of appearance. The music in the first film has M&M pop culture stuff, but then it also has a very generic main score, whereas Gunn, once again, gets to use his real ear for music. Although I don't think it comes even close to the greatness we have in the Guardians of the Galaxy films that those soundtracks are phenomenal. These still work in the situations that were presented. They feel like they should be there, not like they were thrown in last minute by some studio executive. I think the effects in 2021 absolutely dwarf what was going on in 2016 as well. That's not to say 2016's ugly by any means. I think there's some pretty solid imagery here. The black sludge-type zombie creatures are very generic, but they look nice at least. The lame CG beam in the sky though, the bizarre dancing rituals, the giant brother. That stuff looks horrible. I'm sure some people will make that same case for the giant alien Starro, the massive starfish I was talking about. I thought he looked great though. I think he really works in the setting with the drab buildings. Then you just have this comically large, colorful alien creature stomping around. A prime example of James Gunn having a vision ahead of time as opposed to the studio interference with air is cut is that you'll see scenes where there will be a fire and then the camera will follow the smoke up and then the smoke or the fire will spell something out or the crap around a toilet. The cleaning solution will say something. It was pre-planned out is what I'm getting at as opposed to just having stats randomly and quickly shoot up on the side of the screen. There's going to be people turned off by the kill count in this. A lot of the characters in the Suicide Squad in fact die very early on. You don't get a lot of time with them. So in that respect, I guess tread lightly going in and think to yourself, you know what, a movie is called Suicide Squad. I should probably expect characters to die. People will be turned off by the blood and the guts and the hyper violence and maybe they'll lean towards the more squeaky 2016 version. I myself, when a movie is called Suicide Squad and I have a bunch of crazy looking characters, I want to see it in all its glory. That plus the consistent visuals, the better soundtrack, another easy win for the Suicide Squad. I'm sure you knew the outcome of this video before I uttered my first word and I could have been a contrarian and picked the original film for some, you know, like bullshit clicks or views or something but that's not what we're doing here. My job is to present two films, give my unbiased opinion, talk about what I think works in both and what doesn't and then let you decide. So now I'd love to hear from you. Put a comment down below which film is better and why. Like the video if you had a good time and remember, this is more than just reviews, this is Movie Feuds. Thanks again for watching the video. If you haven't already, make sure to hit that subscribe. I'm putting out videos weekly, multiple videos. If you've been subbed for a while and you're thinking, how else can I help Adam besides sharing his videos? Well, you can become a member right here by hitting the join button or you can join me on Patreon at Patreon.com slash Adam Does Movies. 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