Suicide Squad: 5 Things Critics Got Right, 5 Things They Got Wrong
3. It's Hurt By The PG-13 Rating
WRONG.
Suicide Squad was always going to be a PG-13 movie. Its budget demands a higher box office return than R-rated films can be counted on to receive. Some critics believe the constraints of a PG-13 rating hurt the movie, but that could not be further from the truth.
Sure, Deadpool was a huge hit and critics loved it. Deadpool fed the antihero appetite that Guardians of the Galaxy reignited within the superhero genre. Suicide Squad may have seemed to many critics like another Deadpool, and it could have been, but it never needed to go R.
All an R rating would have done for Suicide Squad was allow the cast to drop F-bomb while taking part in bloodier action. As it stands, Suicide Squad isn't lacking an edge and doesn't need more profanity. It is sufficiently violent and does not suffer from the lack of blood splatter.
Any improvements an R rating could have allowed would be superficial at best. There's nothing an R rating could do to overcome the more legitimate issues critics have noted.