Reviews for The Suicide Squad are starting to trickle in, and the sequel is being lauded as one of the best live-action comic book movies of all time. That's pretty strong praise for a film that nobody really asked for.
Currently, the movie sits on 98% on the popular review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. This is significantly higher than the most recent Marvel movie, Black Window, which only managed to earn an 81% rating. Although the latest movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe did earn itself a “certified fresh” badge, a feat that The Suicide Squad could match in time.
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It’s important to note that currently The Suicide Squad’s score is calculated from 63 reviews. Typically wide-release blockbusters end up getting hundreds of reviews, so the 98% score is far from set in stone. However, rarely does a movie receive such a warm early response only to drop substantially as more reviews are published. Expect the movie to only drop a few percentage points at most.
The latest entry in the DC franchise is a semi-sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad; that film earned an abysmal 22% on Rotten Tomatoes. So it’s fair to say The Suicide Squad is a big step up in quality. In fact, as it stands The Suicide Squad is the highest-rated DC movie of all time, even besting The Dark Knight, which earned 94%.
David Ehrlich of IndieWire called it “The most fun and least depressing superhero movie in a very long time” while Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times said, “I couldn’t imagine liking — and could barely stomach the idea of seeing — another movie called ‘Suicide Squad.’ I’m delighted to be proven wrong.”
Collider’s Matt Goldberg describes the film as “the best [DC Extended Universe] movie yet.” Though in fairness that’s not an especially high bar to clear. Only two movies to date within the interconnected franchise have scored higher than 90%, Shazam and Wonder Woman, and five were branded with a rotten label (which means they scored below 60%).
For the unaware, The Suicide Squad is helmed by James Gunn, the director of Marvel’s two Guardians of the Galaxy films, and the large assemble cast features Margot Robbie, Idris Elba and John Cena. The film follows a group of comic-book villains forced to team up in order to save the world; otherwise, they’ll face execution. It’s due to release simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6. After such a strong critical reception, that wait now feels a little bit longer.
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