When it comes to comic book movies, Marvel has been light years ahead of DC in almost every way. But DC has a hot idea on their hands that might be a brilliant move in the fight for your theater dollars: Suicide Squad. Let’s take a look at the latest trailer.

Yeah. My nerd boner is waving at yours. They’d high five but that….would be weird. Instead, let's break this down into 5 reasons why Suicide Squad might be a game changer for DC Comics.

They Finally Decided To Do Something DIFFERENT

Marvel built their empire slowly, over several years and several movies. In doing so, they created a money vortex that every exec in Hollywood wanted to tap into. DC was so desperate to jump on the bandwagon that they even rebooted Batman only a few years after his very successful reboot. They figured they could just jump the gun and create a shared movie universe in two measly films and shout from the top of their water tower: “WE WERE TOTALLY GONNA DO THAT TOO.”

That is if Yakko, Wakko and Dot will let them up there

With Suicide Squad they’ve gone down a new path that no one has tread yet. They’re gonna grab a bunch of their bad guys and make themselves an anti-hero movie. While it seems a little counter productive, when you’re building a superhero universe, to cast and staff your stable of bad guys it helps to set up the other element that every good super hero needs: A FUCKING AWESOME BAD GUY! Now we know for a fact that there are other threats in the DC Universe that aren't directly related to Superman and these bad guys are so bad that they've been locked away in a hole deeper and darker than Kim Kardashian’.....ego. I know what you think I was going to say and I applaud your awfulness.

They Get Ahead of Marvel’s Thunderbolts

Marvel also has a team of less than virtuous people that they send out on missions that no one else would accept and they're called the Thunderbolts. While everyone was talking about the possibility of one super team up movie (The Avengers) Marvel went to Netflix and started working on ANOTHER one, The Defenders. But buried in the ranks of both shows and movies are characters that Marvel finally got back that they could use for the Thunderbolts. Elektra and Punisher are making their debut in season two of Daredevil. Red Hulk’s alter ego—General Ross—was already seen in the Incredible Hulk and will be in Civil War. The last spot was originally occupied by Deadpool, but with Marvel regaining the rights to Ghost Rider and Blade they could easily slot them Into that spot. Except, they can't, not any time in the near future and not without fanboys everywhere peeing their pants about Marvel copying DC. 

We tend to pee our pants over a lot of things. It's a serious issue.

I'm peeing a little right now

DC has been riding Marvel’s coattails so hard they've practically made camp there and started selling souvenirs. For the first time in their back and forth battle, DC is the one in front of the pack on an idea and they’re going to rub Marvel’s nose in it. As long as they don't screw it up.

They're Introducing Relevant Villains

Aside from Loki and Thanos, every villain in a Marvel movie has basically been a throwaway villain that our hero can sharpen their punches on. Even the tease of one of Iron Man’s greatest foes turned about to be a swerve and you only find out that the real Mandarin is still out there if you watch a DVD special one-shot. Based on the fact that they are getting their own movie, you can expect that most of the cast of Suicide Squad is going to stick around to bug the shit out of the good guys for a while. You don't cast Jared Leto and Will Smith as one-offs who will get their shit ruined and then never be heard from again.

shoulda listened to Uncle Phil

Lending credence to the idea that these bad guys are going to be around for a while is the fact that there are so many of them. Just boatloads. This is an after work softball team of antagonists. And while DC does have a lot of bad guys to choose from, these are some pretty heavy hitters in the comics. If they killed these guys off they'd be extremely limiting themselves for no good reason. It would be a huge risk on DC’s part to blow their bad guy load so early in the inception of their movie universe. I mean, I hear that's a bad thing.

Moving on.

They're Going Weird Early

All of Marvel's movies were grounded, to a certain extent, in the experimental super-science of their established universe. Iron Man, The Hulk and Captain America are all science-based superhereoes. Thor is out there, but he's a mythological being. It took them a few movies to introduce actual super powers like Scarlett Witch, Quicksilver and Jessica Jones. Both the benefit and the down side is that Marvel has, up until very recently, made it very clear that X-men-esque—maybe she's born with it—powers aren't a thing. This makes it harder to introduce weirder and more out there concepts and forces the Marvel story tellers to try to tie in the mystic and the weird to their very grounded world.  And the weirder it gets the harder it's going to be to explain.

"He just...does this. Great at BBQs...not so much anywhere else."

Not so for DC. After just two movies they will have introduced not only Superman, Aquaman, Cyborg, Wonder Woman and The Flash, but they've also established certain things as fact in their new Universe. Magic, Super Powers, Soul Swords, and maybe, yeah just for the hell of it a man/crocodile hybrid. Establishing all of these things in one movie opens up the possibility of using weirder and stranger heroes later on down the line because these concepts have already been accepted. Martian Manhunter doesn't seem like a too far out there possibility when he exists in the same landscape as The King of the Seas and a man who is mostly made of computer parts.

The Fucking JOKER!

Of all the villains, in all of the comic books, in all of the world, there is no greater, more iconic, more culturally relevant bad guy than The Joker. No matter what, after Heath Ledger's oscar winning (and frankly mesmerizing) performance as The Joker, finding the latest incarnation of Batman's arch-nemesis was going going to be contentious. Everyone HATED the casting of Heath Ledger, right up until they saw him on the screen, and then he became a haunting point of cultural iconography. DC was going to have to recast and reboot The Joker. Jared Leto's take looks to be another vibrant incarnation that is going to line the shelves of Hot Topic and the closets of socially awkward—yet desperately wanting to be terrifying—teens.

Introducing him in Suicide Squad allows DC to show you who their new Joker is without giving away the fight between him and the Batman. It lets them set the stage for a future encounter that could be as cinematically epic as that of Bale and Ledger (but hopefully without the world's most elaborate evil scheme). Jared Leto's joker will put asses in seats, even for those that simply want to see him fuck it up (which I doubt he will).

DC looks like they're finally picking up their game against Marvel. At least in concept. For the first time I'm excited about a DC flick. Well done, gents. Well done.