Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is 2018 animated film directed by Sam Liu. The film follows Deadshot, voiced by Christian Slater, as he is forced to join Task Force X alongside other villains to retrieve a magical artifact for Amanda Waller.
This film is not about queerness. It’s a film featuring a queer character. In fact, it features two queer characters in a relationship. Although, ‘character’ might be a strong word to describe these two. They’re more like plot devices whose suffering serves to advance the story for the cast of cisgender and heterosexual main characters. Honestly this is nothing new. Not every film needs to be about queerness, but unfortunately suffering is closer to being the status quo for queer characters than the exception.
The issue with this film, aside from representation, is that it’s boring. The writing is boring, the characters are boring, and most painfully of all, the animation is boring. Everything about this film felt like it would have been better executed as a graphic novel. It just never truly takes advantage of its medium.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of watching this film as a queer person is that it had an opportunity to feature a queer character in its main cast. Harley Quinn joins Task Force X at the beginning of the film. For those who don’t know, many modern iterations of the character portray her as bisexual, pairing her with fellow villain, Poison Ivy. This film had the opportunity to do the same. She mentions her past relationship with the Joker in passing and an added line about wanting to shorten her sentence to see Ivy would have added some much-needed depth to a bland character. This film’s true sin is making Harley Quinn boring. Her design is boring featuring simple pigtails, minor makeup, and a plain black and red corset. She’s pushed into the background along with every character in the squad who isn’t Deadshot or Bronze Tiger. Even the terrible 2016 Suicide Squad was able to make Harley more interesting than this.
This film isn’t worth your time. If you’re interested in a better portrayal of Harley Quinn the check out the film Birds of Prey. If you’re looking for some fun animated superhero media featuring a good queer storyline, the check out the series Harley Quinn.
Harley Quinn’s Very Boring Scarf Pattern
A boring pattern to honor a boring portrayal
Materials:
2 Lion Brand Yarn Hometown in South Dakota Black
2 Lion Brand Yarn Hometown in Cincinnati Red
Size 13 needles
Scarf:
Cast on 22 stitches with black yarn.
Row 1: sl 1 purl wise, (k 1, p 1) repeat to last stitch, k 1
Repeat Row 1 until piece measures half your desired length.
Change to red yarn and repeat Row 1 until the second half reaches the length of the first half.
Cast off, weave in ends.
I love the blunt honesty of the article, and the scarf!
Knitwork is always excellent. Get to the review I like how you are able to express your opinion and critique the film by simply using one word, "boring". DC has fallen short when it comes to aminated movies. I feel that sometimes do well like the batman animated one Batman: Bad Blood but they do miss the mark a lot of times.
I love the simplicity of the pattern and feel it absolutely augments the film's vibe.
Very weird they dont show her as Bisexual in this form of media. It seems like just an opposition to the character. Doing this is just pointless because it is part of the character and makes no sense to not have it involved considering they already use it as plot devices for other characters. Just a weird decision. DC just be doing everything wrong. Man I need some good DC movies to come out more often.