This evening we watched two previous iterations of the Suicide Squad, in contrast to the movie.
Batman: Assault on Arkham is, despite the title, a Suicide Squad animated movie, with Batman as an active antagonist / NPC. This movie manages to introduce the Bad Guys in 5 minutes (as part of the title sequence), make them the protagonists, make it clear they are bad guys, and still satisfy the emotional requirement that bad guys never prosper (at best, if they are "good" bad guys, they survive another day).
It's clear that the Suicide Squad creative team watched this (several beats and elements are the same), but it's just as clear that the final product is far more muddled and less satisfying.
Justice League Unlimited had an episode titled "Task Force X," in which Rick Flag, Deadshot, Capt. Boomerang, and Plastique infiltrated (with Clock King as remote coordinator) the JL Watchtower satellite to steal a MacGuffin. The episode manages to balance a patriotic Flag, a primary protagonist Deadshot, and all the aspects of a caper film to make something that, in a half-hour episode works remarkably well.
One of my favorite JLUs, as it is largely from the perspective of the Squad.
I really wish the creative team — or, for that matter, the Warner Bros. suits — had done their homework on how to do a "Dirty Dozen" film right.
Which reminds me that, in the movie, Harley is initially armed with her mallet, but for most of the movie is carrying her baseball bat. In the animated feature, Harley starts off with a baseball bat, but eventually finds her mallet and uses it after that.
What's funny about "Task Force X" is that you the viewer just got done with like two and a half seasons of JL/JLU, seeing this huge combined hero team being total and complete badasses, and then you meet the small villain strike team infiltrating their home base. None of these guys are particularly heavy hitters either. At least for me, the reaction was like "these guys are going to get creamed". It definitely added tension.