John Oliver and “Last Week Tonight” were off this week, but that didn’t stop the HBO host from making an impassioned pitch for a new movie series in a web exclusive video.
After Oliver ran down the recent crop of superhero movies — with “Suicide Squad” getting redubbed “The Insane Clown Posse Takes Manhattan”– Oliver pitched a story for his own superhero story, Johnny Strong.
“By day, he is mild-mannered fifth grader John Olivier. No relation,” Oliver said. “But from the time school lets out until dinner, he becomes, let’s say, the unconventionally handsome hero Johnny Strong.”
“Johnny Strong is a kick-ass hero with a bad attitude,” he continued. “He’s seen a boob and he knows what the f-word is. He intrepidly battles villains such as Doc Bedtime, a monster made of blankets who can magically plunge the world into total darkness.”
Another villain from Johnny Strong’s rogues gallery includes the dreaded Mrs. Thomas, a clarinet teacher who tries to convince kids the clarinet is cool.
Oliver then related one of Johnny Strong’s adventures, which involved staying up super late one night to find the mutant that has been messing with his rock collection. The mutant, it turns out, looks and acts very much like the Olivier family cat.
Vulgar, Mean and Sexist: 6 Ways 'Suicide Squad' Is the Donald Trump of Superhero Movies
Much like Donald Trump's inexplicable rise to the top of the Republican presidential ticket, "Suicide Squad" is doing bang-up business in spite of plenty of criticism. At this stage, both Trump and "Squad" have been called every name in the book. Indeed, the two share a litany of dubious traits that we've collected here. Beware, spoilers ensue:
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Flip-Flopping Early in the film, Deadshot says he plans to kill the government agents who have temporarily released him from prison. Mere seconds later he reverses his position, urging the Squad of supervillians to keep operatives Amanda Waller and Rick Flag alive. Did Trump write this script? The Republican nominee has flipped-flopped positions on an array of topics -- from abortion to the Iraq War to nuclear proliferation. At least Deadshot is acting for a logical reason -- he knows he'll be killed if he lets Flag die.
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Insulting Women "You one of them deaf hoes?" Deadshot asks a female operative who fails to immediately respond to him. Trump also has a habit of insulting women by comparing them to animals. And as for the deaf part, Trump also mocked a disabled reporter.
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Objectifying Women As strategically-directed camera angles remind audiences throughout the film, Harley Quinn wears little more than a pair of skimpy bottoms. Trump thinks plenty of other women exploit their looks to succeed. "It's certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on 'The Apprentice' were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal," he wrote in his 2004 book "How to Get Rich."
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Paranoia Enchantress may have suspected someone rigged her earth-destroying spell -- just like Trump has already started arguing that the November election will be rigged. After she employs her dark magic to take over the planet, she sticks around to fight the Squad. But why fight at all? Couldn't she just go to Fiji or somewhere and relax while she waits for her nefarious voodoo to finish its job?
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Needless Cruelty Trump heckled the mother of a crying baby last week. Meanwhile, Suicide Squad mastermind Waller callously kills a roomful of fellow FBI agents because they weren't cleared for her top secret project. OK -- one of those is definitely worse than the other.
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A Money Man As TheWrap pointed out, Donald Trump's chief fundraiser, Steven Mnuchin, is a producer on "Suicide Squad."
Mnuchin raised eyebrows when Trump named him as his lead fundraiser in May: He pocketed money stolen by Bernie Madoff; and Relativity Media, the studio behind "The Fighter," once accused his bank of "violating bankruptcy procedures."
Presidential candidate and comic book film share dubious traits
Much like Donald Trump's inexplicable rise to the top of the Republican presidential ticket, "Suicide Squad" is doing bang-up business in spite of plenty of criticism. At this stage, both Trump and "Squad" have been called every name in the book. Indeed, the two share a litany of dubious traits that we've collected here. Beware, spoilers ensue: