We reached the decadent phase of superhero cinema some time ago, somewhere around the X-Men prequels and the second Thor movie and the failed Spider-Man reboot. (As one friend of mine puts it, Andrew Garfield is now the Timothy Dalton of Spider-Men.) But decadence is supposed to be fun, surely, or at least more fun than the desperate, sludgy, frantic mess of “Suicide Squad.” This assemblage of good-bad characters scraped from the bottom of the DC Comics barrel was constructed to fill the late-summer surprise hit niche established a couple of years ago by Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” 
 
 But that’s not something you can calibrate in advance: “Guardians” actually was a surprise, whereas “Suicide Squad” is mega-budget Hollywood product masquerading as something hip and edgy and anarchic, a crude evasion that partly accounts for the way it’s being savaged by critics. (Sure, it’s terrible. But it’s not even close to the worst movie of the summer or the year.) It has big stars, although their impact is pretty damn small: Will Smith tries to complexify his boring action-movie persona by playing the hit man known as Deadshot, but his entire story arc is about how much he loves his daughter. It has Jared Leto playing the Joker, to which I can only say that I have seen Heath Ledger act this role, sir, and you are no Heath Ledger. It has Viola Davis doing her stern vice-principal act for a big paycheck, and why not? It has Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, a psychiatrist turned psychotic, slutty cheerleader type, and if critics are falling out of their trees over her I suppose the reasons are obvious. 
 
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 “Suicide Squad” reportedly had a $175 million budget, and whatever was left over after they paid Will Smith went toward the CGI effects, which rate about a B-plus in expensive crap-movie terms. Somewhere way down the pay scale was imported prestige director David Ayer, who made the World War II film “Fury” with Brad Pitt and the excellent L.A. cop drama “End of Watch.” You can understand, in vague hypothetical terms, why Ayer seemed like a good fit for this project, and you can find a few faint glimmers of his personality herein, as in the character Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a flame-throwing East L.A. gangbanger who yearns to go straight. But if Joss Whedon has concluded that the second “Avengers” film, a massive worldwide hit, was a career misfire, one can only speculate how Ayer will view “Suicide Squad” in a few years (or how he feels about it right now). 
 
 At any rate, “Suicide Squad” has been built up all year long as the summer’s hottest, hippest popcorn flick, and the terrible reviews will have little impact on its opening weekend. The only thing remotely surprising about this movie is how profoundly second-rate it turned out to be at every level of conception and execution. I liked this kind of pseudo-dark, pseudo-sexy CGI spectacle better when it was called “Underworld: Evolution” and featured Kate Beckinsale kicking ass in a catsuit. 
 
 Maybe the second-rateness is not so surprising either. “Suicide Squad” presents symptoms of two separate but often concurrent Hollywood diseases: Amorphous Antagonist Syndrome and Snakes on a Plane Disorder. As in the deeply forgettable “X-Men: Apocalypse,” which came out earlier this year and already seems never to have existed, the ultimate villain in this movie is some shapeless ancient entity newly released from the tomb, or perhaps from a 2006 PlayStation game. He runs around roaring and shooting tangles of electrical current at Deadshot and Harley and Diablo and Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and the other supervillains-turned-heroes in this so-called story, but we never get a good look at him, perhaps because the design team never made any final decision about what he looks like. 
 
 This feeling that the purported central conflict and the climactic scenes of conflict are no more than afterthoughts has become so pervasive in comic-book action movies that it must be conscious. Have studio marketing teams determined that viewers only care about the characters and the setup — the world-building, in effect — and not about the plot or its resolution? I mean, it’s not an illogical conclusion: Summer tentpole movies almost always begin well, relatively speaking, with some vestiges of wit and narrative ambition, and end in incomprehensible chaos. Furthermore, any possible big action scene, at this point, can only echo or repeat or parody other action scenes we’ve already seen. As Karl Marx observed, history repeats itself, and if the first version is directed by Christopher Nolan, the copies are by Michael Bay. 
 
 Moving from the first above-mentioned disease to the second, “Suicide Squad” presents the tragic and/or pathetic modern spectacle — using “pathos” in its original, Aristotelian sense — of an enormous fan base so hungry that it mistakes the aroma for the meal. “Snakes on a Plane” presented the Ur-example in many ways, because the concept and the title was the all-in-all, and the actual movie was ancillary to the cultural moment. But that was at least an audience-created moment, and to a significant extent fans were in on the joke; many were aware, I suspect, that the movie might not be worth seeing. “Suicide Squad,” on the other hand, has been marketed intensively to the ComicCon audience as something close to a redemptive experience, especially for DC fans who felt — how do we put this? — mixed emotions about “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman,” Zack Snyder’s post-Nolan ventures. 
 
 As I suggested earlier, critics can get overly invested in these Hollywood spectacles too, and “Suicide Squad” is being punished for assembling so much talent with such lackluster results. I haven’t even mentioned the soldier-plus-witch love story subplot featuring Joel Kinnaman and Cara Delevingne. Because it’s so boring! If there are really fans out there who believe that “Suicide Squad” delivers peak awesomeness, or who need to cling to that dogma with Sharknado-like tenacity, then that’s great. We’re talking about a movie meant largely to entertain young people out with their friends on hot August nights, not Donald Trump. It would be asinine to begrudge other people their enjoyment. It’s not one mediocre anti-superhero movie that bothers me. It’s the immense cultural starvation, and the deep-seated willingness to believe that giant entertainment conglomerates hold the only possible remedy. ||||| CLOSE An unlikely team of supervillains must save the day. 
 
 Deadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) discuss the mission in 'Suicide Squad.' (Photo: Clay Enos) 
 
 The fantastic felons of Suicide Squad have got soul and they’re superbad. 
 
 There’s both undeniable sincerity and an over-the-top punk rock vibe to writer/director David Ayer’s completely bonkers ode to supervillains (***½ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters nationwide Friday) tapped to contribute to the greater good. It helps flesh out the comic-book world of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, plus makes a bunch of obscure outsiders just as engaging and fun to watch as that well-known Dark Knight. 
 
 With powerful metahumans and vigilantes inhabiting Earth (Ben Affleck’s Batman turns up more than you’d expect), the government needs a plan to deal with them. Enter the ruthless Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who has taken it upon herself to recruit Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), an archaeologist possessed by an ancient witch, as the first member of Task Force X. Its modus operandi is to send its members on deadly missions. And if they don’t come back? Oh, well. 
 
 With shades of Guardians of the Galaxy and the original Ghostbusters, Suicide Squad takes its ne'er-do-wells — led by the assassin Deadshot (Will Smith) and oddball bad girl Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) — from their Louisiana supermax home to battling a magical enemy. Alliances are formed, bonds are shaken, and the group is constantly on the edge of implosion. 
 
 Because of the size of Ayer’s cast, some of the more interesting characters are shorted, especially samurai warrior Katana (Karen Fukuhara) and Australian hoodlum Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) — though the latter has a quick run-in with a superhero that knowing comics fans will adore. 
 
 Jared Leto stars as a contemporary Joker in 'Suicide Squad.' (Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures) 
 
 Deadshot is the movie's emotional heart, and it’s Smith's best role in years — he gets to showcase some of Concussion's deep emotion but with that old Independence Day swagger. Jay Hernandez similarly impresses as El Diablo, a fiery L.A. gang leader with a horrific backstory. 
 
 Harley, a psychiatrist turned unhinged moll with an undying love for the Joker (Jared Leto), is finally Robbie's star-making turn. And Leto’s weirdo take on the Clown Prince of Crime is a far cry from the late Heath Ledger, though it definitely works. A tattooed Tony Montana type, this Joker is a nightclub owner with a thing for bling and a psychopathic determination to find his main squeeze. His relatively brief screen time leaves you wanting more, and Leto and Robbie make a distinctly dynamic duo in their fleeting scenes together. 
 
 Another relationship that’s intriguing but ultimately overshadowed is that of squad leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Enchantress’ human alter ego. While their romance drives one of the many subplots, Delevingne spends most of the film in freak mode, leaving Kinnaman as the guy keeping the fires burning. No matter the character, though, Ayer has a keen way of making you care for them, even the Joker. 
 
 Like The Dirty Dozen for the Hot Topic generation, the team gets in-your-face introductions and things just grow more mental from there. But compared to its ilk, Suicide Squad is an excellently quirky, proudly raised middle finger to the staid superhero-movie establishment. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2ayhWfM ||||| This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows, from left, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, Karen Fukuhara as Katana, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc and Jay Hernandez as Diablo, in a scene from "Suicide Squad." (Clay Enos/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP) (Photo: Clay Enos / AP) 
 
 Bad guys. Bad movie. 
 
 “Suicide Squad” attempts to flip the superhero script by casting a team of baddies as its leads, and its irreverent attitude is meant to break up the tonal heaviness of the DC Comics Universe and inject some much-needed fun into the mix. 
 
 But it takes more than a lively neon pastel color palate and a jumpy, hyperactive soundtrack stuffed with pop hits (Eminem! Queen! Ozzy!) to create fun on screen, and “Suicide Squad” falls flat despite hopes that it would be the movie to save this summer of blockbuster bummers. 
 
 There are glimmers of what could have been in writer-director David Ayers’ slapdash comic adventure, specifically in Harley Quinn (a merry, cartoonishly maniacal Margot Robbie) and the Joker (Jared Leto), a pair of characters who could use their own standalone film yesterday. 
 
 Instead, “Suicide Squad” marks the latest high profile misfire from DC, whose rivalry with Marvel is beginning to look a bit like the Washington Generals taking on the Harlem Globetrotters. After the flameout of this year’s “Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice” and now “Suicide Squad,” the whole DC universe is in dire need of a reboot. 
 
 In “Suicide Squad,” a team of villains is assembled to take down an even bigger villain, thus making them sort-of good guys. The premise is rife for all sorts of devilish fun, since villains, by and large, make more interesting characters than heroes. 
 
 And “Suicide Squad” practically bashes viewers over the head with reminders that its leads are villains. 
 
 “We’re bad guys, it’s what we do!” says Quinn at one point after smashing a department store window, just because. Quinn is the star of “Suicide Squad,” in that she steals whatever momentum there is to steal. 
 
 Described as “a whole lot of pretty and a whole lot of crazy,” Quinn rocks blonde pigtails dyed red and blue, artfully smeared lipstick, a tattooed face (“rotten” is scrawled across her jawline) and carries herself like a gum-snapping fanboy fantasy come to life (in hot pants and a baseball tee, no less). If Harley Quinn isn’t one of the most popular Halloween costumes this year, something’s wrong. 
 
 But despite Robbie’s best efforts, Quinn — along with the rest of the “Squad” — feel like Halloween costumes at best. 
 
 Leto’s Joker is all costume and makeup; whatever personal touches Leto brings to the role are buried by a script that gives him nothing to do by making him a third-tier player. (It’s like he studied all night for a test, and all he had to do to pass was show up.) 
 
 Which is frustrating, because the Joker — thanks to iconic portrayals by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger — has become the modern era’s most delicious and sought after comic villain role. Audiences are conditioned to treat the Joker like a very big deal, and his sparing use here distracts from the story rather than helping it along. 
 
 Will Smith is given the most to work with as Deadshot, a master assassin who never misses a shot and is humanized by his love for his daughter. But Smith’s sympathetic eyes and heroic body language betray his villain billing, and you simply don’t ever buy him as a bad guy. 
 
 The rest of the “Squad” — which includes Jai Courtney as Aussie baddie Boomerang, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as half-man, half crocodile Killer Croc and Jay Hernandez as human flamethrower El Diablo — are simply bench players, along for the ride. 
 
 “How to Get Away With Murder’s” Viola Davis is the government official who assembles the Squad to take on the threat of metahumans, the technical term for mutants, the idea being that the next Superman could use his powers for evil, not good. 
 
 That’s what happens with Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), a witch who summons some really bad spirits who start creating all sorts of havoc — the kind that involve mysterious clouds that hover above the skyline — in Gotham City. 
 
 The less said about the particulars of Enchantress and the Apocalypse-like enforcer she enlists to help him, the better, but it’s the film’s fatal flaw that in a movie about villains they couldn’t get an interesting villain for the Squad to fight against. (Somewhere, the Joker is raising his hand like, “I was available.”) 
 
 Ayers scored early in his career with a couple of street-level cop thrillers, including “Harsh Times” and “End of Watch,” but the comic book form doesn’t suit his style. A consistent tone is never established, the action is choppy and the climax reaches “Green Lantern” levels of embarrassment. 
 
 Sometimes it’s good to be bad. In “Suicide Squad’s” case, bad is just plain bad. It gives villainy a bad name. 
 
 agraham@detroitnews.com 
 
 (313) 222-2284 
 
 @grahamorama 
 
 ‘Suicide Squad’ 
 
 GRADE: C- 
 
 Rated PG-13: for sequences of violence and action throughout, disturbing behavior, suggestive content and language 
 
 Running time: 130 minutes 
 
 Suicide Squad (PG-13) 
 
 A group of villains assemble to take on an even worse villain in this slapdash comic adventure that marks the latest misfire for the DC Comics universe. (130 minutes) GRADE: C- 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2aD2miL ||||| In the weeks preceding the release of Suicide Squad, things got bad. The Republicans and the Democrats staged their conventions. The RNC played out like free-association improv where the given word was always “terror”; the DNC offered more hope (or at least balloons), but not enough. Zika struck Utah. A rampage hit Dallas. A coup erupted in Turkey. And that was only July. The entire year has been like this, and there’s still so much more of it to go. Surely no one appreciates this more than writer-director David Ayer, who arrived at Comic-Con International wearing a “Make Mexico Great Again” hat clearly meant to mock Donald Trump’s foreign policy and choice of headwear. 
 
 That’s because no movie released this summer feels more of the moment than Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Not The Purge: Election Year with its on-the-nose title; not Jason Bourne with its buzzword-y Edward Snowden talk and inexplicably successful Internet companies. No, it’s Suicide Squad with its slightly upside down (or at least askew) moral compass and messy delivery that feels like the right movie for right now. Does opening up your Facebook feed feel like falling into fatalism? Suicide Squad is here to catch you—for better or worse. 
 
 This in no way is meant to suggest that a bullet-and-cameos orgy from DC’s burgeoning cinematic universe will make a ripple in the national conversation, let alone spark a substantive one. In fact, its obsession with firefights (an Ayer specialty) couldn’t come at a worse time. But if you’re growing bored of Pokémon Go and looking for a new distraction from the fact that 2016 has been simply atrocious, a movie about a group of ex-cons who turn out to be heroes might be what you need—and even if it’s not, it’s what you’re getting. 
 
 Suicide Squad does more than offer a things-could-be-worse diversion. It taps into the predictable 20-years-later nostalgia for the ’90s. With a soundtrack offering something for every generation since the boomers (shouts to K7!), it’s the kind of grotesquely energetic comic book movie that harkens back to, I dunno, Tank Girl maybe? (Before you yell “Deadpool!” in the comments: I know. But while the two share a certain level of not-kids-stuff, Squad has a graveness Deadpool doesn’t.) Remember when MTV played music videos and some movies felt like long videos? Well, here, just in time for MTV’s promise to bring back Daria, is a two-hour music video hosted by ’90s hero Jared Leto, starring as the dude who grew up into the kinda guy Angela’s mom worried he would. (Yes, he has a tattoo on his face, who cares?! God, mooooooom.) 
 
 Actually, let’s talk about the Joker for a second. Leto is now the third Oscar-winner to play the iconic villain, one of whom won his Academy Award for playing the Joker. The role’s been played so often and so well that it’s almost sacrosanct. So does Leto do it (ahem) justice? Yes, actually. He doesn’t eclipse Heath Ledger, who had much more to do in The Dark Knight, but you can sleep well knowing Margot Robbie (the Harley Quinn to his Joker) didn’t have to put up with live-rat delivery for nothing. Leto has the fully unhinged, vaguely pansexual, your-uncle-who-grew-up-on-Adam-West’s-Batman-won’t-get-it goods—even if it feels like a lot of it got cut from the final film. 
 
 Which brings us to Suicide Squad’s other very-now ingredient: women! Holy shit, there are so many women in this movie you’d think it was directed by Paul Feig or from the studio that’s really trying to prove female superheroes can make money next summer. Granted, not all of the women are treated fantastically in this film (Clothes That Actually Look Like Margot Robbie Could Fight in Them for President). But the female “heroes” in the Suicide Squad outnumber the heroines in the first Avengers movie 2-to-1, and at a time when female heroes are just starting to eke out a place in tentpole franchises, that looks like progress. And hey, there’s still a chance we could get a more well-rounded Quinn if that Robbie-produced mostly-female spin-off actually happens. 
 
 If all of this sounds like faint praise, it is. Just because a fun-but-scattershot mess of a movie helmed by an exceptionally charismatic Will Smith feels like the perfect end to a mess of a summer, that doesn’t make it good. And while I’m seemingly in the minority of people who actually liked Suicide Squad, the criticism is valid. It’s not without its flaws (it feels pieced together, mostly because it was), and 10 years from now it’ll be a trivia night answer rather than canon. But in this summer, with its lackluster movies and generally terrible national affairs, it fits right in. And while being better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t a compliment, it is that. Easily. Ayer finds depth in his DC characters that Zack Snyder so far has not. And what it says without saying it is that sometimes good deeds come out of shitty circumstances. 
 
 “In a world of flying monsters,” as Squad mastermind Amanda Waller (giving-it-her-all Viola Davis) notes, “this [squad] is the only way to save our country.” That’s a good motto in a comic book universe where antiheroes with names like Diablo can channel their fiery rage to do good and the cities are rebuilt before the next sequel. Outside the theater, that’s not the case. Bad guys can’t save anything in the real world. But in Suicide Squad, they can maybe kind of distract you from it—it ain’t much, but it’s the most heroic thing they can do. ||||| Suicide Squad 
 
 Intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) decides to assemble a team of dangerous, incarcerated supervillains for a top-secret mission. Figuring it has nothing to lose, the U.S. government supplies weapons to Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Q
– Audiences seem to like Suicide Squad, but critics most certainly do not. One of the most hyped films of the year has just a 27% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to a 74% rating from viewers. Here's what critics are saying: Consider this "the latest letdown for DC Comics fans who've been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind and do this universe justice," Rene Rodriguez writes at the Miami Herald. There's not a "moment of spontaneous fun or humor," and the script is "a giant pile of nonsense." Rodriguez is no fan of Jared Leto's "cartoonish" Joker, while Will Smith is simply "coasting" as assassin Deadshot. The flick actually "gives villainy a bad name," writes Adam Graham at the Detroit News. Among the disappointments: "A consistent tone is never established, the action is choppy, and the climax reaches Green Lantern levels of embarrassment," he writes. But the biggest sin is "that in a movie about villains they couldn't get an interesting villain for the Squad to fight against." Andrew O'Hehir at Salon offers a silver lining: "Sure, it's terrible. But it's not even close to the worst movie of the summer or the year" and "the terrible reviews will have little impact on its opening weekend," he writes. That said, "the only thing remotely surprising about this movie is how profoundly second-rate it turned out to be at every level of conception and execution." Brian Truitt, however, liked it. "Suicide Squad is an excellently quirky, proudly raised middle finger to the staid superhero-movie establishment" with "shades of Guardians of the Galaxy and the original Ghostbusters," he writes at USA Today. Smith finds his "best role in years" and Margot Robbie has her "star-making turn" as Harley Quinn. And though Leto's Joker can't compare to Heath Ledger's version, "it definitely works." (Here's another reviewer who thinks "Suicide Squad kinda sucks.")