Best of the 2010s: 31 - 40

Check out the entire series here.

Not every arc features steady growth that culminates in transcendence. Not every narrative is shaped like a peak. Great works of art strive to push forward forever into newness, though it is important to examine the ways our lives morph in cycles.

Repetition. Iteration. The myth of eternal return. Cycles can be plot contrivances that force us to recognize patterns, cycles can be thematic recurrences that weave a tapestry of grander truth, cycles can be an exploration of the neverending cascade of trauma. They can be the drag of a cigarette or the thrill of an encore. What's important to understand is that no two cycles are the same, for a repeated gesture takes on new meaning every time it manifests.

THE SUICIDE SQUAD: Gunn's Gambit

Director: James Gunn
Writer: James Gunn
Cast: Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, John Cena, Daniela Melchior, David Dastmalchian, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, Alice Braga, Peter Capaldi, Julio Cesar Ruiz, Jai Courtney, Pete Davidson, Nathan Fillion, Jennifer Holland, Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, Flula Borg, Steve Agee, Mayling Ng, Taika Waititi
Runtime: 132 mins.
2021

In 2014 Disney released James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, which reminded everyone that superhero movies are supposed to be fun. The film was a smash hit and the smash caused ripples.

2016 rolls around, and competitors Warner Bros. are sitting on a brand new superhero flick called Suicide Squad. Unfortunately, what should have been designed from the ground up as a Fun Movie was instead given to David Ayer, a director known for his grim tone and hypermasculine sensibilities. This Suicide Squad sprung from the Zack Snyderian tradition of morose, overly self-serious stories of tortured heroism that had been the DC model since 2013's Man of Steel, itself a poor facsimile of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy.

So DC and Warner Bros. had a problem. Their gritty shared universe was crumbling, whereas Guardians just gave Marvel's franchise a shot in the arm. The solution? Marketing, of course. Warner hired trailer editing company Trailer Park to create a Suicide Squad teaser trailer that promised the same team-up fun that audiences loved in Guardians and craved from Batman v. Superman. You may remember the result, a poppy peppy teaser set to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Although early promo images and a disastrous Joker design put audiences off, this trailer piqued quite a bit of interest.

Which presented another problem: the trailer Warner Bros. released bore no resemblance to David Ayer's somber work-in-progress. So WB did something unprecedented. They hired Trailer Park, the trailer editing company, to re-cut the film itself so that it would more closely resemble their teaser. No cut of this film was going to be good, but the version we got focused on meager glimmers of style at the expense of substance.

Suicide Squad got panned hard, but salvaged quite a bit of money from the Hot Topic crowd. Meanwhile, back at Marvel, James Gunn reprised his success with another Guardians of the Galaxy movie, fully expecting to work on part 3 in a few years. Then, in 2018, Disney fired him from his own franchise.