There are some out there who question why Warner Bros. would squeeze Ben Affleck's Batman into a movie like Suicide Squad, which centers on DC's stable of government-sanctioned villains. The answer isn't a simple "cash grab" like some might think, especially since Batman hasn't really been promoted that much; but it was due to the pleading by director David Ayer, who had a fresh angle from which to present the Dark Knight. He tells Collider...
“Look, you apply at a job for a DC Comic movie and it’s like, ‘Come on, let me get the toys, please. Let me get the cool stuff.’ I begged for that.That was really, really something I wanted. There’s a lot of information out there, a lot of false information about how these characters play into the A plot. It’s an incredibly complex story with flashbacks and different convergent storylines and things like that.”
He continues with how Batman fits into the plot...
“All the Batman movies have been from Batman’s point of view. He’s the good guy. He’s the hero of his own movie in all the movies we’ve seen. If you look at what Bruce Wayne has done in creating the Batman persona, his idea was to terrorize criminals. It’s sort of psychological warfare against criminals.This wraith that comes in the night and attacks and pulls criminals from society. For the first time, we’re seeing Batman from the point of view of the criminals and he’s freaking scary.”
That's pretty cool, and should offer us a version of Batman we've never seen before, one that has him as the boogeyman tormenting Gotham's bad guy community.
One of those bad guys, one of the baddest actually, is expert marksman and assassin Deadshot, played by Will Smith. It's an atypical choice for Smith who is generally very choosey about what roles he plays. Remember when he turned down Django Unchained? So what made him want to play a character who murders others for profit? He tells EW...
“I had never played a character that legitimately didn’t give a fuck. It’s very freeing not having to carry the moral spine of the movie...I couldn’t find a model to understand what would make someone comfortable killing another person for money,” says Smith. “David walked me through that. He found a book for me (The Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas), and I worked through getting into the mind of serial killers. Once I accepted the [notion the author puts forth] that it feels good, that really exploded the idea in my mind of Deadshot.”
Of course there was more to it than that, and Smith was intrigued by the conflict within Deadshot, a guy who kills mercilessly yet is also a loving, devoted father...
“His Achilles heel is his daughter. He loves this little girl and that creates this bizarre conflicting mindset where he enjoys killing people but that’s something this little girl doesn’t want from him. She wants a daddy.”
Suicide Squad opens August 5th but you can pre-order your tickets this Friday right here, and we encourage you to do so. Below you can check out a brand new synopsis that teases the post-Superman world of the DCU, as well as a fresh trailer and promo.
Suicide Squad takes place in a post-Superman world, following the events of Dawn of Justice, as the government grapples with how to respond the next time an alien visits Earth with less noble intentions than the Man of Steel. The answer, according to ruthless intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), is to recruit society’s most vile criminals, armed with lethal skills and superhuman powers. Her first target is possessed archaeologist June Moone/Enchantress (Cara Delevingne).
Waller’s program doesn’t get a green light, though, until Midway City is threatened by a powerful mystical enemy, and Waller needs to activate the whole squad of prisoners. The baddies get a break. Deadshot (Will Smith) has his Second Amendment rights reinstated, Harley (Margot Robbie) is carefully excised from her birdcage, Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is released from his own fireproof fortress of solitude, Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Slipknot (Adam Beach) strap their weapons back on, and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is popped from his swamp. The one condition for their restricted freedom: Obey orders or die, a rule strictly enforced by squad leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), his samurai Katana (Karen Fukuhara), and the explosive devices inserted into their necks courtesy of Wayne Enterprises. (Thanks, Batman!) Throwing a wrench into all these plans is the tatted Gotham City arch-criminal, the Joker (Jared Leto), and his laser-like plan to reunite with his true love, Harley, mission be damned.
