How do you go from this.... To This...
Well studio interference and the poor critical reception of Batman V Superman certainly steered
the ship in a certain direction that DC are now seemingly trying to correct 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 video we're gonna be breaking
down the main differences in the movie, how it's ending tied into Justice League and most
of the major changes that were made to the movie in order to release it.
Whether this is your first time at the channel or you're a regular welcome to the heavy spoilers
show, I'm your host Paul aka the Hunka Hunka who don't want no beef like a vegetarian.
Now let's get into the breakdown. Ok so 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 somber 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. The original trailer itself opens with an
etherial 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 irony. 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 archeologist 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 in order to further
her own goals. 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 being 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 in order to do his duty.
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.
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 or the actor who played him Adam Beach have 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. 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.
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 at in the theatrical and extended
cut, the film took a much larger focus on the abusive relationship between him and Harley.
There was many more nods to Mad Love and we saw as how she was a play thing to Joker,
more of a weapon that he used as an extention 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.
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 but instead he crafts intricate games for
them to play and this would be much more harrowing for views 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 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 does and because of this the stakes would be much higher.
Now the ending also changed the fate of one of it's 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. 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 in order
to see whether the invasion could commence for the following film and it obviously left
a lot of questions up in the air to 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 in order to fight them. Overall the films 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. 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 in order 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. Don't forget that on the 30th of January we're
giving away three copies of the The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings 4k box set to our subscribers.
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videos like this early. If you want something else to watch then make
sure you check out our breakdown of the What If Trailer which will be linked on screen
now. We break down the entire thing so it's definitely worth checking out if you wanna
know more. With that out the way thank you for sitting
through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace