Suicide Squad is the most recent of Warner Bros./DC films to be roasted by critics, Man of Steel released in 2013 faced mixed reviews. But Zack Snyder’s second foray Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad both have under 30% on Rotten Tomatoes as of now. Lower than Tommy Wiseau’s The Room and the infamous Green Lantern. Leading some people some people to believe that maybe the industry is bias to Marvel, or overly critical to DC films because they are new or ‘trying something different’. Often comparing these DC films to Marvel’s weakest films like Thor: The Dark World.
UNDERSTANDING ROTTEN TOMATOES
Recently there was a petition making its way around the web to have Rotten Tomatoes taken down for giving Suicide Squad such a low score, suggesting it is biased against Warner Bros. For the record, Warner Bros. are one of the many owners of Rotten Tomatoes. Secondly, Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t actually review any films and they don’t have a single reviewer working for them. Rotten Tomatoes gathers reviews around the world from critics of every medium including YouTube, newspapers etc. then asks them ‘Is the film Rotten? or Fresh?’ They simply reply to one or the other and Rotten Tomatoes aggregates the decisions into a percentage. ‘27% of critics thought the film was good’.
THEY HAVE MORE NEGATIVES THAN POSITIVES, WAY MORE.
Not every Marvel film is a hard hitter that’s for sure, personally, I am not a fan of Thor or Captain America: The First Avenger. But as films they work. And a lot of people like them, rarely do you find you people literally debating the intricacies of a scene and it’s many problems. This is where DC falls down, I had fun watching Suicide Squad, but jenkies! It has a plethora of problems on the level of basic filmmaking and basic film structure. This is the same as BvS, it’s not a terrible film, but it suffers from basic problems like the plot being way too bogged down, as well as shoddy editing and a distinct lack of fun. It’s very easy to compare these films to Marvel too because Marvel has hit it out of the park time and time again for almost a decade now.
Within a couple months, BvS and Captain America: Civil War were both released, and there’s a reason why Civil War is critically acclaimed and the highest grossing film of 2016, while Batman v Superman made less worldwide than Zootopia/Zootroplis, The Jungle Book and Finding Dory…
It’s simply not as good a film as they are.
That’s my elementary opinion, I do like DC but I absolutely do not think that they’re overly criticised. I want their films to be good, I want Wonder Woman to be amazing and I want Aquaman to flood audiences with high-quality entertainment. And while I do adore Man of Steel, not everyone does and quite frankly their films so far are dividing opinion, they may be okay on the surface, but they are perfect examples of lackluster storytelling and poor writing, poor editing and subsequently poor filmmaking. If they want better reviews and more money, they should make better movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9mD7nzqHVI
Words by Levi Eddie Aluede