THE SUICIDE SQUAD, Petting the Rat, and James Gunn's Empathetic Purpose

If there's one thing I adore about James Gunn's movies, it's how much he loves his characters. 

I saw Jungle Cruise in the theater directly before seeing this, and on the topic of characters, the contrast is almost laughable. The notion that the director of Jungle Cruise had any real fondness for his characters is funny because the "characters" in that movie are essentially The Rock and Emily Blunt playing themselves - though they certainly have fictional names, I've just forgotten them. Charlie and Emma, maybe? Frank and Elizabeth? Who can say? They're certainly not treated like people - they're mostly just standard cardboard cutouts, video-game avatars spawned to crack one-liners and drive the plot forward. Can you imagine a character moment with The Rock in Jungle Cruise that feels genuinely intimate, raw, human? Probably not.

By contrast, whenever you watch any of James Gunn's movies, the sheer fondness he has for his protagonists, their pain, their humanity, and their desire to be loved, emanates from the screen at all times. It's the little moments: Nebula and Gamora finally sharing a stiff-but-cathartic sisterly hug, Drax reaching out to pet Rocket as he slowly loses his hostility, the seemingly tough Yondu putting little shiny trinkets on his control panel, Baby Groot falling asleep on Gamora's shoulder, Quill remembering his childhood with his mother and mourning the loss of his prized Walkman...if there was any doubt that Gunn will always put his intimate character moments before any sense of spectacle or plot, Guardians Vol. 2 ends with a shot of a raccoon shedding a single tear as he realizes maybe he can still be loved.

For all its humanity, The Suicide Squad does not have the same breathing room or time for quiet contemplation that Guardians Vol 2. managed to maintain; they're both about the same runtime, but The Suicide Squad is balls-to-the-wall from minute one. And yet despite the sense of urgency and plot, Gunn's knack for character still shines through it all. I don't think I could say this movie is his best, but it certainly proves that his character work is versatile; they're both superhero movies, but The Suicide Squad is still a very different genre than either of the Guardians films. The emphasis on character, however, stays the same.

The social commentary in The Suicide Squad is blatant, so much so that my Czech girlfriend asked me afterward, "if this is an American movie, how was the director allowed to criticize America so much?" Gunn's critique of US foreign policy, prison system, and imperialism is very clear - although that's not really what the movie is about, in a grander scheme. 

The final music cue in The Suicide Squad repeats "I just wanted to be loved by you" as Bloodsport finally works up the courage to pet the rat asleep on his leg. The Suicide Squad is a movie that challenges the audience to learn to pet the rat, and ask "what if the most broken people just want to be loved like the rest of us?" It's a moment that ties into the climax from earlier, where Ratcatcher 2 remembers her father telling her "rats are the lowliest and most despised of all creatures, my love. if they have purpose...so do we all."

The concept of purpose has long been at the core of James Gunn's wrestle throughout his superhero stories; what does it mean to have purpose, and what does true significance look like? In Guardians Vol. 2, Peter Quill's father tells him that he's been bestowed with "divine purpose" that outweighs any loyalty or love he has for his friends or his found family - grand, sweeping, godlike purpose that has no place for people or friendship. In the end, Ego says "if you kill me, you'll be just like everybody else!" and Quill responds "what's so wrong with that?" In the world of Gunn, the villains are always the ones who place purpose over people; in The Suicide Squad, this is embodied by Peacemaker - a "hero" so dead-set on achieving his grand-scale ideological purpose that he'll kill anyone to achieve it. Peacemaker, what a joke. In the world of Gunn, true "purpose" is found within the relationships maintained between broken people who just want to be loved by one another - especially when those broken people join together to help other broken people. In the world of Gunn, people will never be obstacles of purpose - people are purpose. There is no greater purpose than that.

The Suicide Squad features many characters who are subconsciously looking for a way to be loved, from Harley Quinn to King Shark, but they all ultimately find that this love can only be fully realized when they give it to someone else first...and in a grander sense, when they dare to actually care about something. That's the "purpose" of the javelin! 

There are moments in The Suicide Squad that feel a little too edgelord for my taste, reminiscent of Deadpool in their "blood for shock value" showmanship - but the wonderful thing about James Gunn is that it's almost impossible for any of his movies to be merely edgy or violent. The Suicide Squad is the first DC movie in years (maybe even decades) that truly wears its heart on its sleeve, more R-rated than any standard Marvel entry but somehow also more genuine. There are moments of clunky pacing and misplaced humor, but this is a movie that feels hand-crafted by someone who cares, and feels, and wants to express things from the inside out. I don't think I could ask for anything more than that.