At the time of writing, James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad boasts a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes from over 90 reviews and counting, which is good enough to make it the highest-rated installment in DCEU history. Wonder Woman set the benchmark four years ago with 93%, followed by Shazam!‘s 91%, but the rest of the franchise’s output hasn’t even managed to crack 80% on the aggregation site.
It’s also just ahead of Gal Gadot’s solo debut as Diana Prince on Metacritic, too, with Task Force X’s 77 one point in front of the Amazon warrior’s 76. Looking at nothing but the metrics, then, it wouldn’t be hyperbolic to call The Suicide Squad not just one of the best DC Comics adaptations we’ve seen in years, but the finest effort the DCEU has ever had to offer.
The success hasn’t been lost on the writer and director of the R-rated romp, with Gunn taking to social media and reacting to the acclaim greeting his latest ensemble-based superhero blockbuster with a ton of emojis thrown in for good measure, even if The Suicide Squad has dropped by one point since he initially posted.
Having been offered the chance to tackle any DC property he wanted when Warner Bros. swooped in with an offer almost as soon as he’d been fired from the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Suicide Squad always felt like the best use of Gunn’s talents when it comes to injecting a roster of misfits and outcasts with a heavy dose of heart, humor, humanity and in this case, lashings of blood and more exploding heads than you could possibly imagine. It’s the filmmaker’s vision through and through, and fully deserves such an enthusiastic response.