I’ve been more than willing to cut DC\/WB a lot of slack lately. Maybe too much. After all, they’re stuck with the Herculean task of trying to reinvent the wheel, figuring out how to emulate Marvel’s revolutionary “shared universe” business plan while making this new DC universe just different enough to stand out from the competition. DC\/WB is also clearly trying its best to put out material at a good rate while also staying nimble enough to keep up with popular feedback, which is next to impossible with something as massive and slow-moving as your typical Hollywood blockbuster franchise.<\/p>\n
Alas,\u00a0Suicide Squad<\/em> was pretty much entirely in the can by the time\u00a0Batman v. Superman<\/em> came out to such dismal reviews.\u00a0The script for the upcoming\u00a0Justice League<\/em> movie was immediately retooled on the fly, and I’d be surprised if\u00a0Wonder Woman<\/em> wasn’t going through some changes in post as we speak. But it was way, way, WAY too late for\u00a0Suicide Squad<\/em>.<\/p>\n This was the kind of concept that could only have seemed like a good idea at the time, but turned out to be utterly boneheaded in retrospect. For what feels like a goddamn eon, fans have been bickering and bitching about Zack Snyder’s dark and brooding take on superheroes. We sent the message to Warner Bros. loud and clear that we don’t want to see our comic book superheroes killing people without consequence. We want our comic book media to be fun and inspiring. DC’s stable of superheroes were always supposed to be emblematic of our better angels, and that had somehow gotten lost in the translation to cinema.<\/p>\n To which WB pretty much replied “Okay, guys. We’ll work on that. In the meantime, how about this supervillain movie from David Ayer?”<\/p>\n Ayer — much like Denis Villeneuve and Roman Polanski — seems to operate on the notion\u00a0that “good” is just another word for “naive”. He tells stories in which evil can only possibly be defeated by bad people who sink to their level, and sometimes not even then. It’s a morality that I find to be deeply flawed (What’s even the point of a “greater good” if it’s not that good at all?) and philosophically abhorrent. Ayer (along with Villeneuve and Polanski, for that matter) may be extraordinarily talented filmmakers, but I nevertheless despise how they use those talents.<\/p>\n Then we have the film’s critical reception. At present, the film has a notoriously low Tomatometer of 31 percent. Just about on par with\u00a0Batman v. Superman<\/em> at 27 percent. Because the film won’t be released until this Friday, it’s still anyone’s guess what impact (if any) this will have on the box office gross.<\/p>\n With all of that said, I was still open to giving this film a shot. I was entirely willing to give this film its day in court and publish my informed opinion. But then a friend of mine — a local actor\/director — said something, and I honestly hate myself for not thinking of it sooner.<\/p>\n “I refuse to see a movie,” he said, “where an actor abused other actors in order to ‘get into the mind of his character’.”<\/p>\n He was of course referring to Jared Leto, whose backstage stunts are already the stuff of legend. While he’s hardly the first actor\u00a0to play the Joker onscreen, I can’t find any evidence that Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger immersed themselves in the character to the unhealthy degree that Leto did. (Indeed, Ledger was reportedly a really sweet guy on the set.) But Leto reportedly stayed completely in character the whole time he was on the set, and he didn’t stop there.<\/p>\n Reportedly, Leto wanted to let his castmates know that even if he wasn’t around them all the time (since Joker isn’t really part of the Squad), “Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys.<\/a>” So to prove his dedication to the cause, Leto sent his castmates…<\/p>\n And those are just the ones we know about. Leto explained<\/a>…<\/p>\n \u201cIt was interesting to do because the Joker loves to play games he loves to manipulate and that was part of the reason to do that and when you do give a gift to someone even in real life you think about, \u2018What do I get them?\u2019 \u2018Who that person is to you?\u2019 \u2018What do they like?\u2019 So that immediately started to be really good homework to me\u2026\u00a0I gave Deadshot a briefcase full of bullets. It was kind of a message, it was kind of a threat, it was kind of a reminder\u2026\u00a0I wrote every character a note \u2013 a poem. What it did was that it started me on a journey into thinking what these people are, and it was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And it didn’t stop with Leto. Allegedly, David Ayer instructed everyone in the cast to seriously punch each other<\/a> during rehearsals. Jai Courtney took some mushrooms and burned himself<\/a>. Cara Delevingne got naked, ran through the forest, and howled at the moon<\/a>, and that was for her audition. And again, that’s just the shit we know about.<\/p>\n To be clear, suffering for one’s art is nothing new. Just last year, it seemed like we were hearing over and over and over again about how much shit Leo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy had to suffer through while making\u00a0The Revenant<\/em>.<\/p>\n (Side note: Funny enough,\u00a0The Revenant<\/em> is precisely why it’s Joel Kinnaman playing Rick Flagg in\u00a0Squad<\/em> instead of Hardy.)<\/p>\n But the difference here is that at least with\u00a0The Revenant<\/em>, the actors\u00a0knew what they signed up for. Consent is kind of a big deal, and that’s the problem with what Leto was doing.<\/p>\n Method acting is all well and good. That’s a choice the actor makes. Leto acting crazy and distant between takes, Courtney inflicting harm on himself, Delevingne acting like a lunatic, those were all choices that they made with little if any impact on anyone else. But when all of these choices put together create such a hostile work environment that somebody had to hire an on-set therapist (another thing that happened, seriously), a line has to be drawn somewhere.<\/p>\n If Leto had just stopped at thinking about what creepy and nasty gifts the Joker might send to someone, that would’ve been fine. But actually sending those creepy and nasty gifts without any warning or consent? Sorry, but I’m pretty sure that sending someone unsolicited condoms and porno mags covered in an unknown substance would qualify as “harassment” anywhere else. In any other workplace, we’d be talking about jail\u00a0time for that kind of behavior.<\/p>\n\n