#i just watched the suicide squad kills jl trailer and i don't really have much hope for it but damn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thevindicativevordan · 3 months

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thoughts on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League?

Watched some of the cutscenes on Youtube out of curiosity and it's exactly what anyone familiar with looter shooters was expecting gameplaywise. I leave analysis of that part to others, and will stick strictly to the story and how it pertains to Superman. Spoilers below.

My biggest complaint from the start was "why isn't there a Superman villain on this lineup? It's set in Metropolis! It advertises a boss fight against him as the big hype moment in trailers!" Guess the reason was because he ends up almost being an afterthought. Despite the game being set in Metropolis, Superman is barely in the game. He shows up about halfway through, kills Wonder Woman and goes back to Brainiac's ship to heal after getting impaled with kryptonite, then comes back so the Squad can kill him. Since none of the Squad has any history with or connection to him, he and they just spout canned one-liners at each other, and when he dies none of them really care.

The deaths of the Leaguers are all underwhelming. Wonder Woman has the best one simply because everyone acknowledges that she was a hero and it sucks she died. Superman comes in second because they don't shit on him or mutilate his corpse, hell it barely even gets acknowledged. GL and Flash get the worst of it. Batman's death scene is a lame ending for the Arkham Batman, something Superman himself lampshades when he confronts the Squad. I'll leave those for others to pick over, mostly because I don't have much to say beyond "they're terrible". The fights themselves and interactions with the Leaguers vary.

Boomerang has a funny feud with Flash that actually builds hype for the fight. Harley and Batman obviously have major history that we've seen unfold on-screen in previous games. Meanwhile Deadshot and King Shark stick out like sore thumbs. Putting aside both the dumbass retcon of this guy being the "real" Deadshot, and how annoying it is that the black sharpshooter villain who pumps Superman full of kryptonite bullets isn't Bloodsport, Deadshot has this feud with GL that is a game creation. The two black supers get paired together because of their race, and it doesn't work at all. There's no comic history there for Rocksteady to lean on to do the heavy lifting for them, and it ends up feeling forced. King Shark is an MCU Drax copy, and while funny, doesn't add anything. Should've been Bizarro or a GL villain in that spot.

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Switching back to Superman, holy fuck is he written terribly here. At first I was pleasantly surprised, in the main game he barely does anything because he resisted Brainiac's reprogramming the longest, which was nice. Sure it's bullshit that he outwilled GL, but fuck it he's been shitted on for so long that I'll take that minor win that he lasted longer than Batman. On-screen we only see him kill WW who will probably get resurrected somehow too, meaning he didn't come off too heinously here unlike his Injustice counterpart. Unfortunately my initial goodwill was shortly soured thereafter when I found out that Superman is the reason everything went to shit.

Reason the JL gets enslaved is because Superman is a fucking idiot who mandates everyone walk into the Skull Ship without planning for betrayal after Brainiac invites them in to negotiate. Sure GL agrees with him, but let's be real Superman is going to get all of the blame and he deserves it based on how he's written here. God, just because Superman is an optimist doesn't mean he's a moron for Christ's sake. This is a guy who can hear all the terrible things happening around the world every time he listens in, there's no way he's naïve. A Superman this goddamn gullible would be killed or enslaved by Lex in their first meeting. Even takes like MAWS where he's a rookie don't have him being this stupid. Rocksteady doesn't get the character at all, and after this game I hope they never touch him again. Why are the video game takes on him this shitty, between Rocksteady and NRS it's like the two of them are competing to see who can dump on him more. Rocksteady originally hired Paul Dini to help them with the script for Asylum and City, and I'm convinced any Superman game appearances needs to hire one of his comic writers because a lot of these adaptions do not get him. They need to hire Waid (he's written for video games before) or PKJ or Williamson to help with the script.

The story here sucks and the kicker is that even when they bring the JL back (don't even pretend you're surprised by that) in later seasons, Rocksteady has still utterly destroyed the Arkhamverse.

I've seen people say maybe Rocksteady can continue the Arkhamverse with a new Batman game, or star one of the other heroes, and HOW THE HELL WOULD YOU DO THAT? Batman and Green Lantern at the very least killed fuckloads of people! Batman is directing Brainiac's forces, killing plenty of people personally, while GL was leading massacres and rounding up metas to be transformed into monsters. In the DCAU, which the Arkhamverse heavily leans on, Batman retires in shame after merely pointing a gun at someone in self-defense. Arkham Batman murdered God knows how many innocents, we even hear him kill a guy talking to Lois over the radio. No fucking way could Bruce live with that and keep being Batman, the shame and guilt he should feel would destroy him. Same goes for all of the other Leaguers, especially Superman.

All of this is on Superman's head, the population of Metropolis essentially has been wiped out. Lois survives (somehow), possibly some of the other Daily Planet people do too, but there's no WAY Clark can return to the Daily Planet and resume his normal routine. His actions here are what happened at the end of Superman: TAS, when Darkseid enslaved him, on steroids. Everyone is going to hate and fear him after this, and frankly I feel like Superman would exile himself to space out of shame and guilt. You cannot do a "traditional" Superman game after this, and a prequel is pointless for the same reason people are angry the Arkham games now lead to Batman being brainwashed and getting shot in the head by Harley. Could do a hell of an Elseworld game where Superman is trying to rebuild the wreckage of his life after the JL is disbanded and Earth 2 Lex Luthor becomes the most beloved man on Earth. Make it so Lois and Jimmy are either dead or want nothing to do with him, and he goes to Warworld on a suicide mission to find redemption in death. But a "traditional" follow up also set in Metropolis? Nuh-uh, I don't buy it. The Justice League has to go the way of the Justice Society after fucking up this bad.

Shame because he and Lois don't have bad designs (Lex and Brainiac on the other hand...). Metropolis itself is gorgeous and there are some fun Easter eggs that I've seen, never would've imagined Bendis' Invisible Mafia getting referenced. But after this shitshow of a game I want nothing more to do with this incarnation of Superman. Give the IP to another studio and let's make a game set in it's own universe like Monolith is doing for WW.

#superman #suicide squad #rocksteady

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