By Megan Bianco

How do you analyze the troubles in the DC cinematic universe? Well, there’re a lot of possible answers and theories to that question, but here are three: fading interest in the superhero genre, lack of daring, and old-fashioned problems with writing and editing.

After nearly a decade of Marvel’s cinematic universe breaking through to mega success, the superhero hype has been dying down the past couple of years. Warner Bros. and DC are finally trying to play catch up, and it’s backfiring terribly. Both “Man of Steel“ and “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice“ were negatively polarizing, and their newest addition, “Suicide Squad,“ suffers from many problems itself.

One is writing. “Suicide Squad“ is supposedly a Dirty Dozen-type supervillain tale, with popular villains like Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman), Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) and Capt. Boomerang (Jai Courtney) recruited by U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to bring down the Joker (Jared Leto) and a dangerous, enigmatic entity. In Waller’s eyes, it’s easier to have expendable villains save the day than independent superheroes.

This would be an easy enough plot for an R-rated action movie, but because Warner Bros. gave filmmaker David Ayer a PG-13 movie to work around, the film is stuck with never being daring enough and coming across as a corny, live-action cartoon instead. Too many times the villains are referred to as “bad guys” by professionals instead of just criminals. The movie is two hours long, and there’s barely any continuity to a fairly thin plot.

A second problem is editing. There’s a moment in the middle of the film where Flagg describes to the rest of the squad what happened to Enchantress, and we see a montage of scenes that occurred earlier in the movie. Why? The audience has already seen what happened to her, so there is no need to show us again. We could have easily skipped over that montage completely with a scene that is new and relevant.

“Suicide Squad“ is rumored to have up to eight ghost editors and it really does feel like it when you view the film. There is no proper introduction to the feature, and the pacing is off for the entire run time. Much like “Man of Steel” felt like a 2-hour trailer, “Squad“ feels like 10 extra-long TV spots.

This is also the first time I can think of good songs combing to make a bad soundtrack. Taking a big cue from “Guardians of the Galaxy” and its retro soundtrack of classic rock, “Squad“ offers the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Eminem’s “Without Me.” These are great songs, but the way the film is edited and directed makes the sound track seem gimmicky rather than organic.

The one saving grace for “Squad” is not the cast, but the chemistry between Smith and Robbie. Here we have one of the most impressive casts of the summer, in terms of talent and diversity, but because the script and direction are a mess, they’re completely wasted and for the most part phoning it in. Particularly cringe-inducing is Leto’s goth interpretation of the Joker, and Delevingne’s amateurish performance. But Smith and Robbie, who have previously worked together on the also underwhelming “Focus“ last year, clearly enjoy working with each other and are naturals together, possibly because of a real friendship off screen.

2016 has turned into one of the most disappointing summers in recent movie history, and the worst examples include “Suicide Squad, ” “Jason Bourne” and the “Ghostbusters” remake. All three movies, ranging from mediocre to terrible, suffer from the same issues: rushed production, bad writing, bad editing and too much studio interference in movies that no one even asked for.

We’re already near the end of summer, and throughout the past eight months the only movies I found to be fully unique, memorable and well-made are “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “Midnight Special,” “The BFG” and “Café Society,” all of which did just OK at the box-office. Same with the original content of “The Nice Guys,” “Popstar” and “Genius.” This is a problem.

I don’t know if it’s a marketing issue or a just a production issue, but we can only hope that Disney and LucasFilm are learning from the pattern of flops this season and deliver with “Star Wars: Rogue One“ during the holidays. The same hope goes for the musical “LaLa Land“ from Damien Chazelle of “Cloverfield Lane.”

As for the DC cinematic universe, good luck to “Wonder Woman“ next year, and smooth sailing wishes to the post-production team.

Megan Bianco is a Southern California-based movie reviewer and content writer with a degree from California State University Northridge.