After years of anticipation and buildup, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad has finally arrived. The film, born from the fires of Gunn's dispute with Disney, landed with high praise from both critics and fans alike. Needless to say, it's already off to a better start than 2016's Suicide Squad.
The Suicide Squad is doing so well, in fact, that the movie had at one point beaten the Rotten Tomatoes Score of The Dark Knight. Its premiere even got the attention of immature fans, who resorted to reviewing bombing, as if to try to accomplish something.
While the film did well across many scorning systems, it would seem that they are not all equal. According to CinemaScore, The Suicide Squad is on par with one of the DCEU's lowest-rated films.
THE SUICIDE SQUAD LOSES?
CinemaScore has officially given The Suicide Squad a B+, with the film now being available both in theaters and on HBO Max. Oddly enough, despite the heaping amounts of critical praise that James Gunn's most recent film has had, the project scored the same as 2017's critically panned Justice League film.
All the previous CinemaScore rankings for the DCEU can be found below:
Man of Steel: A-
Batman V Superman: B
Suicide Squad: B+
Wonder Woman: A
Justice League: B+
Aquaman: A-
Shazam!: A
Birds of Prey: B+
Zack Snyder's Justice League: Not Scored
The Suicide Squad: B+
As for how CinemaScore does its scoring, the organization describes its methods as a "direct balloting approach" that involves polling moviegoers immediately after watching a film. These audience members share their personal opinion of the project, scoring it A to F, where CinemaScore then averages the results into that movie's overall "CinemaScore."
JUSTICE LEAGUE TRIUMPHANT?
There are a few reasons why CinemaScore's ratings always seem out of alignment with other sources. For one, movies there tend to score better if they are family-friendly.
Secondly, the polling takes place immediately after the movie, not giving much room for anything more than the audience's gut reaction. Viewers (like any normal human being) can tend to be caught up in the initial rush of the film, something that can fade, leading to some more nuanced thoughts.
At the end of the day, though, the ranking system has its purpose and serves as an anchor point for audiences to determine if any particular movie is worth their time and attention. Hopefully, most that watched James Gunn's bloody mayhem enjoyed it––because there's plenty more where that came from.
HBO Max has already greenlit and filmed a series centering on John Cena's Peacemaker. Warner Bros. has also been in discussions with James Gunn about what their next project together may be. Hopefully, it's the scrapped Superman idea that was revealed; one that could be quite the crowd-pleaser.
