Bad Very Bad

EPISODE 1: The only reason I will give this a 3/5 is based on story progression. [NO SPOILERS] I loved what they wanted to do with the story, but I don't think they ended up doing a good job, or rather, didn't give enough justice to the story. The script writers decided to skip certain parts in progression to keep the story flowing, playing on certain nuances from Captain America The First Avenger and assumptions that we know what kind of character Peggy Carter is. I also assume skipping parts in the story to portray the overall point of the What If..? series, was to keep the episodes at a 30 minutes playtime. This however brought certain downsides, major in my opinion being, the story kept making less and less sense as it went on, because the writers decided it was not beneficial to include story details that would have explained why things were happening in this alternate reality as they were. The motivations of characters were lacking any sense of realness to them. The dialogue was outright cringe worthy at certain points in the episodes, and surprisingly for a Marvel TV series, lacked any personality to the dialogues or even intent behind saying them. I am hoping other episodes would be better in showing us the world that has been created in this new reality, rather than just telling us the general conclusion - "X didn't happen so Y was the result" without giving us additional context as to how "Y" developed and their own journey through this new reality as we know of. Overall however, love the concept, would prefer a better execution. What If...? is not going to be a head-liner series like Loki, WandaVision and Falcon and the Winer Soldier were, but it does add a nice concept to what the MCU wants to go for, for their future endevours in our beloved comic book stories.

If we were to compare The Suicide Squad 2021 with the previous Suicide Squad, there is no doubt about it being MUCH better at not only story-telling, world building, character introduction and interactions between them, beautiful cinematography, realistic CGI but it's overall creativity in general. Its not just hype that James Gunn does bring a personality into his works, and The Suicide Squad is no different. That being said, in short, if we were to look at this without the tinted lens of the mess the previous Suicide Squad was, then its important to note the story seemed to unfold at a rather fast pace and the viewer has to assume a lot of circumstances about not only the characters but the plot itself. We get introduced to new characters and a brief of their backgrounds and even then its only for 2 characters, the others are not even given a story and have just been put in for either comedic effect or to drive the plot forward. An antagonist with a huge potential for future stories was made to be the driving force to finish out a 'superhero movie in style' without giving us a reason to think of it as an antagonist. Towards the end the movie, we do get something about the antagonist's life before this movie, but its literally just a single line of dialogue. And because its again, a superhero movie, killing off good characters is something writers and directors love doing all of a sudden for no apparent reasons at all. On the flip side, reveal that some characters were actually alive and fail to properly kill them off. Of course I understand its The Suicide Squad I mean it's in the name, but killing characters that were literally side-characters in a cinematic genius and gore is one thing, and killing off characters just because the personality of the movie demands so is another. All in all, its obviously a very fun movie to watch. It has humor that would get a good laugh or a chuckle, beautiful art style, great acting and costumes for everyone and a glimmering hope for better projects from DC in the future. The Suicide Squad shows us that DC can do better, and as a DC fan myself I still wait for the day I get to enjoy my favourite characters on screen and get lost into this world that has been created. The Suicide Squad is definitely a step for the better, but it can get much, MUCH better from here on out.