Originally kept under wraps, Warner Brothers has had a change of heart and has released the full trailer for Suicide Squad shown to fans at San Diego Comic Con last week. The film is slated for an August 2016 release, though timeline-wise, takes place between Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman.
Directed by David Ayer (Fury), Suicide Squad tells the story of Task Force X: a group of supervillains under tight control (usually with bombs implanted in them if they go off-mission) and covertly used by the government to accomplish missions where they don’t particularly mind losing people. It will feature the live-action debut of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the DC Cinematic Universe’s Joker (Jared Leto). It will also have an appearance by Ben Affleck’s Batman.
Honestly….I think this looks awesome. I can kind of see why David Ayer kept a full-time therapist on set. Harley is definitely the star of the trailer, if not the film, and our glimpse of the Joker is brief but allays a lot of the fears I had from Leto’s promotion photos. DC is definitely setting their films on a darker and grittier path than Marvel’s and that’s a good thing. If comic book movies are going to succeed long-term as a genre, they need to be different. You need films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad that are so far removed from Iron Man that it reflects just how many different types of stories are told in comics.
The tattoos are real after all, but this is clearly the Joker through and through. More than Ledger, and possibly even Nicholson. I knew the DCCU was going dark, but if this is not an R it’s perilously close. It was a good idea to bookend this between two lighter (by comparison) films. Not sure whose idea it was to use a slowed-down Bee Gees song for the trailer. But there is such an opportunity here. Nolan’s trilogy is sacred, but now we could have an entire cinematic universe consisting of comic book characters who are actually taken seriously. It never seemed like too much to ask for, but for some reason it’s only happening now.
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Whoa, hoss, sloooow down. Ledger and Nicholson delivered two of the best performances I’ve ever seen period. Leto has delivered three lines and sent Margot Robbie a pet rat. Could he join their ranks? Maybe. The Joker, even more than Batman, is multifaceted. He’s a lie constantly reinventing himself so there are few wrong ways to play him as long as you pick one of those aspects and remain true to it. Leto is doing what he needed to do: something completely different. But can we talk about Robbie, because she’s amazing in this trailer. She’s owning Harley. This whole trailer may be the best trailer of the year. There’s so much right in it and not a thing off except that I still don’t understand why Deadshot is wearing a white helmet. As a professional assassin it seems a bit dense. Nitpick. This looks amazing.
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Let me clarify what I meant about Leto and the Joker. I wasn’t suggesting his performance would outshine Nicholson’s and Ledger’s, because you’re right, two of the great all time performances. I’m taking about fidelity to the figure from the comics. Nicholson’s Joker was too much of a gentleman, and didn’t want to get his hands dirty. Ledger played him like a sociopath who lacked the Joker’s total and complete insanity. In the comics, the Joker will get in there are fight you with his bare hands.
The instant I saw that photo of Leto in the Killing Joke pose, I knew everyone involved had nailed it. This does look amazing. I cannot wait.
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See, though, that’s the thing with the Joker, you can’t say he’s insane or not. I think Ledger’s interpretation is perfect because he was perfectly sane in his own definition of how he saw the world. But you can certainly make the argument that he’s totally insane and that works too. Jack SO GOT HIS HANDS DIRTY! He literally shook hands with people and turned them into ash; his performance I would label more as the Clown Prince of Crime aspect of Joker’s nature. Ledger’s I would say was a sociopathic evangelist of anarchy. That’s just two ways to look at the Joker and you could legitimately come up with two dozen more. The reason they BOTH work is the actors (and Caesar Romero did this too playing his camp angle) found their aspect and drove it home. I think Leto may have done that and it was the only way to follow Ledger, who not only turned in one of the greatest performances of all-time, but died during filming, encasing the whole thing in a shroud of untouchability (not a word, should be). Leto’s got an Oscar too and he’s playing this smart from what I’ve seen. The thing that struck me most from the trailer though is how hard he’s going to have to fight to not have his onscreen girlfriend steal the movie. That shot of Harley in double max lockup playing with her hair was gorgeous.
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You know what I meant about Nicholson’s Joker. You get the impression that he would be too unwilling to put himself in bodily harm if his goons failed him . But I agree, there are many points of attack when an actor wants to play the Joker. Part of the strength of all these famous comic book characters is that they’re so open to interpretation. The popularity of an inspired superhero/supervillain is obvious, and he has a set of traits that make him instantly recognizable. And as long as all the correct notes are hit, the rest can be filled in.
Burgess Meredith, Danny DeVito, and now Robin Lord Taylor are all valid and memorable versions of my favorite Batman villain. I guarantee that all these characters will last as long as our civilization does, and possibly long after. They are our version of the gods and heroes the ancients told stories about, and each storyteller adds his own stamp.
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