Let us be honest here. No doubt, Frankenstein was a successful experiment. But it ended up harming its own creator. The experiment was a bold one but it went awry. Real Awry. Suicide Squad is DCEU’s Frankenstein. Warner Bros. tried to do something new, never before done in International cinema – try to show the people the Villain’s take on the comic book world. But it was a not so stellar success. Suicide Squad became the rock bottom of DCEU which defined the universe up until a year ago when Wonder Woman and Justice League were finally released in 2017 and DCEU’s long walk to redemption begun.
But what went wrong? It’s not like the acting was bad. The movie had an ensemble cast. Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Car Delevigne and Viola Davis gave power-packed performances. It’s not like the VFX wasn’t good enough. The story was fairly acceptable. Yet Suicide Squad is literally hissed and frowned upon. Why is that?
The Director of the movie, David Ayer, may have an answer.
The Suicide Squad Director says he regrets choosing the Cara Delevigne’s as the big bad instead of the eponymous Joker. The movie released on the August of 2016 to exceptionally scathing reviews. It did manage to garner 745 Million USD in box office collections but is still seen as the weakest addition and the most brittle link in the DC Extended Universe’ chain of movies.
The movie had two problems to be precise – first, the editing was a fucking disaster and the second, the villain Enchantress failed to impress the audience as the primary antagonist. Both these reasons could be blamed on the studio meddling with the movie development processes and ordering sweeping changes in the post production stage. Never a good call while making a movie, history says tweaking with a movie at such a later stage almost always backfires. WB is one of the oldest production houses on Earth. It’s a wonder why did they not pay heed.
The trailer for Suicide Squad took the internet by storm when it was released. It showed our beloved Will Smith as the fan favorite Deadshot and the sultry Margot Robbie as the even more seductive Harley Quinn. But what turned fan hype into a juggernaut was Jared Leto’s addition to the DCEU as the Suicide Squad’s Joker.
Leto had pulled off critically acclaimed roles in the past. His award-winning acting career could have helped him nab the Joker’s persona and portray him as the manic he is on screen. But editing in post-production made several scenes in which Leto had acted be cut from the final cut of the movie. Leto, and later David Ayer, agreed to the rumors.
The joker could have been the Big Bad. But some dumb-heads at the higher ups decided not to.
David Ayer replied to a fan’s question regarding a behind the scenes shot of Harley Quinn, and the revelations are heart breaking:
“there’s maybe a few minutes shot with Jared. There are not endless Joker scenes under guard somewhere. Sorry.”
The director then decided to get a little chatty and went on to provide more truth regarding the said rumors on Twitter
David Ayer is a gifted director. He gave us Bright for crying out loud. But when he decided to make a rag tag group of B-grade supervillains save the world from Armageddon, a world which already has the Justice League, it just didn’t make sense. Ayer contemplates if he could make a time machine and go back to undo his mistake – make Suicide Squad a bit more grounded and comic accurate. They are villains doing the government’s dirty work. They are the Clean Up crew. They are not here to save the world. They are only here to save their own asses. Treat the Suicide Squad as such. Don’t make them heroes. Anti-heroes are the new cool. If the Suicide Squad would have made them lokk as such, it may not have been as much of a disaster as it turned out to be.
It doesn’t matter if you loved Leto as the Joker or not. The fact still remains – If Leto’s Joker would have had been chosen as the antagonist of the movie instead of the cringe-worthy Enchantress, maybe… just maybe Suicide Squad could have had the applause it rightfully deserved.
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