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I was lucky enough to speak with David Ayer during a recent press day for Suicide Squad, and we started discussing his take on The Joker, and where the inspirations came from. The Joker in this story is a criminal kingpin, a lunatic with immense power who's unpredictable, and feared. Ayer says that the touches came from the earliest days of the DC character, explaining to me:

I went back to the very first Joker comic. I think it was 1941 or something like that, which is also coincident with the first Batman comics. Batman the detective from the '40s had Joker as this insane gangster. When you look at the '40s and what was going on in the world, this concept of an insane gangster begins to make sense in regards to the time. So by then taking the insane gangster idea, the minimal seed, the core seed of Joker, bringing him into the modern world, what would an insane gangster look like today? That's when you get the tattoos, the car, and the clothes, and the attitude.

And you know, Jared, what courage. I mean, to take on such a character that had been done so well in the past -- the best-known villain in modern fiction. So yeah, it was scary. It was really, really scary. Because I'm a fan. And if you sit there as a fan, you're like, 'Wow, ok, someone is going to reinvent The Joker? WTF?' But I'm really proud of what he did. It is The Joker. His performance as The Joker feels like The Joker. He became The Joker, and brought The Joker to life. So that worked. That really worked.

Just when you think the summer movie season can’t get any worse, along come the “Worst. Heroes. Ever.” And while the film’s official tagline is selling its stars a little bit short (surely last year’s incarnation of The Fantastic Four still holds that dubious distinction), the mundane, milquetoast, and often mind-bogglingly stupid “Suicide Squad” almost makes good on the threat of its marketing campaign.

There’s Deadshot (Will Smith), the world’s deadliest sniper, and the closest thing this movie has to a clear protagonist, though Ayer resists that fact at every turn. His only weakness: He misses his daughter. There’s El Diablo (an unrecognizable Jay Hernandez), a fire-starter who’s recommitted himself to a life of non-violence. His only weakness? He misses his wife. There’s Rick Flag (a lifeless Joel Kinnaman), the righteous do-gooder who’s in charge of the team. He misses his girlfriend (Cara Delevingne), an archaeologist who happens to be inhabited by the spirit of a very unfriendly Aztec goddess referred to as Enchantress. There’s a humanoid crocodile (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who doesn’t contribute much to the team, a dumb Australian guy who contributes even less (Jai Courtney), and some other characters whom Ayer adds to the mix with the strain of a juggler trying to prove that he can.

And then — bringing up the rear in more ways than one — there’s Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Margot Robbie), aka Harley Quinn. Volatile, rambunctious, and sexualized to such an extreme that she feels like she wandered out of the film’s XXX parody (there are more shots of her ass than there are of several of the film’s supporting characters)
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Jared Leto creates a surprisingly sensual Joker, a Joker who likes to cradle people’s faces in his hands while he’s talking to them. Like Tony Montana if Jim Carrey had starred in “Scarface,” Leto is part gangster and part clown, but he’s not really part of this movie.
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If “Suicide Squad” falls off a cliff the moment the uniting stops and the fighting begins, that’s partially because Enchantress — the enemy that draws our task force into Midway City — is an unmitigated disaster. Blessed with absolutely zero emotional stakes and forced to spend most of the movie gyrating against a green screen, the character is a perfect shitstorm of bad decisions.

Among the myriad problems with this is that Rotten Tomatoes does not generate any content, merely aggregate it; its “rotten” and “fresh” ratings are derived from established critics who submit reviews written for other outlets to Rotten Tomatoes to be counted among their aggregated ratings. To say that Rotten Tomatoes itself is actively biased against DC Films is ignoring how the site actually works. It’s also ignoring that Warner Bros. owns a 30% stake in the website and would likely not be too keen on tanking the reception to their own films.

As for bias among critics, the real problem is that many critics underwhelmed by films like Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad simply have no reverence for the characters – at least not on the level of lifelong fans who have champed at the bit for a big screen meeting of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight or for a live-action Harley Quinn since they were kids. Someone for whom seeing a character come to life in that way holds no impact won’t understand what it means to fans, and likewise fans who deeply want to see these characters in film won’t understand why that holds no power over the nuts and bolts of criticism.

Delevingne is not quite in petition-writing mode, but she does suspect there might be some bias at play here. “The critics have been absolutely horrific. They’re really, really horrible. You know, I just don’t think they like superhero movies,” Cara Delevingne told Reuters. “It doesn’t really matter what the critics say at the end of the day, it’s the fans that we made this movie for.”

The “it’s for the fans” response was a popular one during the Batman v Superman publicity tour and, initially, it looked like the fans would turn the movie into a box-office success despite critical backlash. But while that film was far from a flop, it showed a significant and historic drop at the box office during its second week. Even the fans weren’t going for it.

So where does Warner Bros. go from here? How do they restore faith in a franchise that keeps trying and failing to get off the ground? Some hope that the upcoming Wonder Woman film will “save” the franchise. The Comic-Con trailer garnered massive buzz among critics and fans alike but, then again, so did the Suicide Squad trailer back in 2015.

While Suicide Squad is getting lambasted for its treatment of women and minorities, there’s hope that Wonder Woman, with its message of female empowerment, will have appeal beyond DC’s bro base. But critics (and audiences) looking for a shift in tone from director Patty Jenkins may be in for a disappointment. The director took to Twitter to rave about Suicide Squad...

Leisher wrote:This movie needs to make $800 million to be considered a success.

Not being played in the second largest market won't help.

Suicide Squad’s $135.1 million trumps the $94.3 million previous August champ, Guardians of the Galaxy, grossed in 2014. The $175 million David Ayer-directed film, which also stars Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, and Viola Davis, amassed a further $132 million from 57 international territories for a worldwide haul of $267.1 million. IMAX numbers accounted for $18.2 million of Suicide Squad’s receipts, the strongest-ever August showing for the format.

But foot traffic at theaters across the country fell off dramatically throughout Saturday. Revenue ended up being down 41 percent from Friday to Saturday, a huge decline.
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Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool, from Fox and Marvel, are better comps for Suicide Squad, since all three are considered offbeat. Guardians declined 18 percent from Friday to Saturday; Deadpool, a phenomenal 10 percent. Tellingly, both those movies had exceptionally strong legs.
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Marvel Studios' The Avengers earned an A+, followed by an A for Age of Ultron, while all three Captain America movies received a variation of an A. Marvel's first Thor movie received a B+, while the sequel earned an A-. Fox's X-Men: Apocalypse earned an A- earlier this summer and X-Men: Days of Future Past an A.

However, X-Men: First Class, which successfully rebooted the franchise but didn't do mega-business, earned a B+. Other superhero films earning some variation of a B include duds The Green Hornet (B+) and Elektra, Catwoman and Daredevil, all of which earned a B.