Suicide Squad director responds to negative reviews

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It's been a tough couple of days for Suicide Squad's David Ayer. While there have been a handful of positive reviews for the film, it currently holds a 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which has led to a silly petition to shut down the review aggregation site). The director took to Twitter to respond, and you can check out what he had to say about the criticism below...

I'm in two minds on this; On the one hand, I love that Ayer is sticking by the film he has made with his first tweet (which translates to "I’d prefer to die standing, than to live always on my knees), but the "made it for the fans" portion of the second tweet - which is, incidentally, a very similar line to the one Batman v Superman stars used - really bothers me. 

I've said this a few times, and I'll say it again; Film critics are the biggest film fans. 

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Ayer's tweet implies that those who have given Suicide Squad negative reviews aren't 'fans', and that is just plain wrong. It's a safe bet that some fans who love the source material won't enjoy the film, just as it's also safe to assume that some critics who gave Suicide Squad a negative review are big fans of the comics. So can we stop using "made it for fans, not critics" as valid reasoning for bad reviews?

Directed by David Ayer and starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, and Joel Kinnaman, Suicide Squad will open in the UK and US on August 5, 2016.

Images: Warner Bros. 

Amon Warmann
Amon Warmann

Amon is a contributing editor and columnist for Empire magazine, but is also a Film and TV writer for GamesRadar+, Total Film, and others. He has also written for NME, Composer Mag, and more, along with being a film critic for TalkSport. He is also the co-host of the Fade to Black Podcast, and a video mashup creator. Can also do a pretty good Bane impersonation.