Studio interference and the poor critical reception of Batman V Superman certainly steered the Suicide Squad ship in a certain direction, and now DC is seemingly trying to correct this with the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max.
David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was certainly a victim of this and the theatrical cut that we got is actually a far cry from the original vision.
Throughout this post, we’re gonna be breaking down the main differences in the movie, how its ending tied into Justice League and most of the major changes that were made to the movie to release it.
Original Suicide Squad Trailer
The first trailer that we got for Suicide Squad was tonally completely different to what we got in the theatrical cut. I can’t play the entire thing because of copyright reasons but if you haven’t seen it then I definitely recommend that you go back and watch it after this video for a sense of the atmosphere that Ayer was going through. It’s haunting, very dim and dark and honestly feels like one of the best comic book movie trailers ever made.
Clearly, the director was going for a much more grounded and gritty tone than what we got in the Theatrical Cut which switched from Eminem’s Without me to Bohemian Rhapsody faster than Ezra Miller when a fan asks him to fight.
It’s completely all over the place whereas the original according to Ayer was meant to be more sombre with the aim being to leave people shell shocked. The movie was not meant to be a comedy but it was transformed to feel more like Deadpool even though the jokes and character moments weren’t really meant for that.
Original Trailer Storyline
The original trailer itself opens with an ethereal version of the song I started A Joke and similar to the music itself the film was meant to be laced with a lot of ironies. These are criminals and prisoners that are being used to fight and die for a country that hates them and instead what we got was a bunch of clowns with a certain set of skills that were more gimmicky than fully fleshed out characters.
This would of course come across to the villain of the piece too aka Enchantress. Though the complex relationship between her and Rick Flagg is hinted at in the movie, we never really get to learn why he loves June and pretty much their entire relationship and her back story is glossed over.
In the original version of the film, we would see archaeologist June discovering the tomb of Enchantress and see the agony that it caused her being possessed by a wicked and evil immortal sorceress. The film would deal with the dichotomy of her character and how Amanda Waller was happy sacrificing her sanity to further her own goals.
Amanda Waller
Waller is another character who too would receive far more development and we would really get the idea that she was an evil entity that manipulated people into doing her bidding. If you walked up to someone on the street who didn’t know anything about the comic books and described a person who puts bombs in people’s necks and gets them to do what she wants them to then they’d probably imagine a villain like Jigsaw or worse.
Waller is meant to be as bad as the criminals that she controls but because of her powers and position in government, she is allowed to operate without any consequences and can kill people without question just because they say no to her. She really is a wicked woman but this entire point of her character feels completely missing from the main movie. Even when she guns down her own staff there’s a joke right after it to alleviate the tension.
This idea of her being basically as bad as everyone else would be hammered home in the Ayer Cut whereas the more sympathetic plea of June would be played up. Here is a woman that is basically ordering a man to go and murder his girlfriend but this is never really discussed in the film. Now because of Flagg’s relationship with June is far more fleshed out, the ending in which he decides to kill her feels that much more impactful and we truly get the idea that he was willing to sacrifice his humanity to do his duty.
Character Design
This darkness was also carried over to the character designs and rather than making each one of the characters look fun and approachable things had a much darker side to them.
This was especially shown in Enchantress who was much more like a Siren or spirit that was haunting to look at. When criticised about the look being overly sexualised Ayer shared some concept art in which we could see a golden goddess with thousands of eyes adorned all over her. These eyes were of course present in her drones and they became much more present in her design making it so that the two were far more similar.
More Character Focus
Now as for side characters, everyone’s favourite Rope Themed character Slipknot got a couple more beats and we actually saw how he was caught and what he was doing at the time. Though neither Ayer nor the actor who played him Adam Beach has elaborated on this we would’ve loved to have seen him HANGING around in the film a lot more.
Katana too received a bigger focus and in the theatrical cut, she was pretty much cut from having any real character development. Karen Fukuhara stated that Katana was much more of a threat to the squad itself and at one point was possessed by the Enchantress who then used her to fight the squad.
More Batman
Batman too had a couple of extra moments that really portrayed how he worked and operated in Gotham.
In an interview with Lady Falcon, Richard Cetrone aka Ben Affleck’s stunt discussed some of the extra things that he was doing.
During the interview, he stated that there were a couple of extra scenes that didn’t make the final edit and that Batman had some cool little moments that die-hard Dark Knight fans would’ve loved.
Because of the behind-the-scenes images, we know that Batman was trying to get into the car by cutting it open with a torch but this too was removed.
Joker & Harley Cut
He was of course after the Joker and I don’t think that it’s news to anyone that Jared Leto had many of his scenes cut completely from the movie. Leto has been very vocal about all the work that he did for the film which didn’t make it through to the edit that was shown in cinemas.
Though teased in the theatrical and extended cut, the film took a much larger focus on the abusive relationship between him and Harley. There were many more nods to Mad Love and we saw how she was a plaything to Joker, more of a weapon that he used as an extension of himself to cause havoc in Gotham.
Harley was supposed to truly see that she didn’t need him and by the end of the film she would gain her independence rather than simply falling back into his arms. In the film, he apparently threw her out of the helicopter because he was jealous of not only her new friends but also her relationship with Deadshot.
The pair have had several romances in the comic books and there was much more of a love triangle between her, the Joker and Deadshot.
Joker’s Games
Now the wickedness of the Joker was seen in almost all aspects of his portrayal and during the conversation with Monster T instead of shooting him, he actually convinced him to take his own life.
The clown prince of crime is a complex character that simply doesn’t go around shooting people instead, he crafts intricate games for them to play and this would be much more harrowing for viewers who would get to see his darker side rather than just some run of the mill gangster.
He played a much bigger role and after the helicopter crashed the character showed up at the climax of the movie with a badly burned face and a hand grenade. Because of his jealousy, he wants to kill the entire squad and even pulls the pin out of the explosive at one point in one of the trailers. In the finale, he made a deal with Enchantress and the pair took Amanda Waller hostage.
In exchange for helping her, The Enchantress agreed that she’d make him the King of Gotham and would give him Harley as his slave. Thus the finale would see Harley having to fight the man she loves, Flagg having to fight the woman that he loves, and because of this, the stakes would be much higher.
Fate Change for El Diablo
Now the ending also changed the fate of one of its key characters and in the finale El Diablo survived the last encounter. Instead of sacrificing himself, he made it through until the end and it was likely planned that he would be in the sequel for the movie.
El Diablo is one of the best characters in the movie in my opinion and his self-sacrifice and calling people that he’s known for five minutes his family is a bit of a weird turn which was of course rectified with this change.
Justice League
Now as we mentioned earlier the movie was meant to tie into Justice League directly and Incubus was replaced by a Parademon. This was sent to Earth by either Steppenwolf or Darkseid to scope out the planet to see whether the invasion could commence for the following film and it obviously left a lot of questions up in the air about the bigger threat that was coming down the line.
This is why Bruce would meet with Waller in the end and then go off to form the Justice League to fight them.
Overall the film sounds like a much better way to display Task Force X on the big screen and it’s a shame that this is what we could’ve got.
Will We Ever See The Original?
Whilst we still don’t know whether the original outline will ever see the light of day the Snyder Cut has shown us that you can have whatever you want you just have to wish for it. If it does ever come out then this will be the third version of Suicide Squad including the theatrical cut, the extended edition and now the Ayer one. New clips are surfacing online constantly and hopefully, the success of Zack Snyder’s Justice League will usher in this to be the next film. As we know Justice League will have a new scene featuring Leto and a lot more so it would be amazing if they could set things up to build the Snyder Verse.
Either way, these are the major differences between the main cut and the one we could’ve got. Obviously, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the information below and whether you wanna see the Snyder Verse restored or not.
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