think the moment I realised Suicide Squad had lost me was when it looked as if Batman was about to choke-rape the heroine. In an early sequence, Jared Leto’s Joker and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn speed through Gotham in a purple sports car, and the Caped Crusader – Ben Affleck again, still buried in his Dawn of Justice Bat-huff – swoops down moodily onto the roof.
There’s a brief pursuit before the Jokermobile plunges into the Gotham River, at which point Harley – who along with Will Smith’s ace assassin Deadshot, is the closest thing Suicide Squad has to a main character – slips from the wreckage and pulls out a knife.
Batman responds by immediately punching her in the face, then dragging her unconscious body from the river and dumping it in the boot of his car. He leans over and administers the kind of mouth-to-mouth you can’t imagine passing muster with the Red Cross – let’s just say it looks like tongues are involved – then, when Harley comes around, he pins her to the ground, his black-gloved hand clasped around her throat.