Guardians of the Galaxy director lent his talents to Warner Bros. and DC Films for The Suicide Squad, the upcoming redo of 2016’s critically reviled Suicide Squad. The story is basically the same — a group of DC villains are recruited to carry out a dangerous mission in return for reductions in their sentences — and Margot Robbie is back as Harley Quinn, but pretty much everything else is new.
The movie looks good…but I didn’t expect critics to love it this much. As of this writing, The Suicide Squad has a 99% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 68 critics liking and only one bringing the party down. That will probably change a bit as more reviews come in, but regardless, it’s obvious that Warner Bros. and James Gunn have something special on their hands here.
A 99% fresh rating is a spectacular achievement for any movie, although with how well superhero films have been getting received in recent years, perhaps it was only a matter of time before one cracked the ceiling. Right now, The Suicide Squad is not only the highest-rated DC film yet produced, it also beats anything Marvel has put out since it kickstarted the superhero movie craze with Iron Man back in 2008. Paul Tassi of Forbes gathered all the data so you can see how things are shaking out:
- The Suicide Squad — 99%
- Black Panther — 96%
- Avengers: Endgame — 94%
- Iron Man — 94%
- The Dark Knight — 94%
- Superman (1978) — 94%
- Thor: Ragnarok — 93%
- Wonder Woman — 93%
- Spider-Man: Homecoming — 92%
- Guardians of the Galaxy — 92%
- The Avengers — 91%
- Spider-Man: Far From Home — 90%
- Captain America: Civil War — 90%
- Shazam — 90%
And why even bother counting anything below 90%? Get out of here with your 87%, The Dark Knight Rises.
Critics are salivating over The Suicide Squad
Of course, just because critics like a movie doesn’t make it good. Even among that list, I dunno if Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies or Shazam stuck with me as much as Batman Returns or even that Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie, which was a huge hit with fans but which only got a 68% score from critics. Whether or not you like a movie is a subjective thing, but a 99% fresh rating is still impressive no matter how you slice it.
The Suicide Squad comes out in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6.
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