As you will almost definitely know by now, the ‘Suicide Squad‘ reviews have not been kind.
A far fall from its well-received ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ trailer, the first reviews of DC‘s villain-stuffed monster have described it as “dead on arrival” (TIME), “a puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is” (The Hollywood Reporter), and “a botched job that makes Fantastic Four look good” (Rolling Stone) that was likely the result of director David Ayer‘s “willingness to go all limp dick and compromise hid hardcore action bona fides for a PG-13 crowdpleaser that would rather ingratiate than cut deep, or even cut at all.” (Rolling Stone again. Man those guys were rough.)
The result? Bottoming reviews across the board.
DC fans are not happy, believing (rightly or wrongly, we simply don’t know at this point) that film critics aren’t understanding the true genius of the DC Extended Universe.
“We need this site to be shut down because its critics always give the DC Extended Universe movies unjust bad reviews – like ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘ and ‘Suicide Squad’ – and that affects people’s opinion even if it’s a really great movies (sic),” writes Abdullah Coldwater, who started the petition.
Now, it’s quite important to note here that Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator review site. It doesn’t employ its own reviewers, it simply figures out what other reviews are saying about each film. And the reviews for Suicide Squad are mostly bad (whether justified or not).
Not long after the petition started gaining steam, Coldwater was forced to clarify. “A petition definitely won’t shut down the site,” he conceded. “The aim of the petition is to deliver a message to the critics that there is a lot of people disagree (sic) with their reviews.”
Again, it’s important to note here that Suicide Squad is not yet out. He might be optimistically hopeful, or he might be referring to the dark (and widely-panned, but still box office-breaking) Batman vs Superman. 
If you would like to add your support to the petition, sign here; if you’d like to watch the (best) trailer again and bloody hope the reviews have got it all wrong, see below.
Suicide Squad opens in Australia today (August 4).
