Fans of the DCEU were left down in the dumps again this week due to the poor critical reception to
Suicide Squad, along with news breaking of the film's
rumoured production troubles. Coupled with
yesterday's news that Jared Leto had a lot of his Joker performance excised from the film, some fans have wondered whether we could see an extended cut of the movie like we did with
Batman v Superman. Unfortunately, it looks like more disappointment is in store, as director David Ayer has now said that no alternate cut exists.
In an interview with Collider, Ayer stood behind his work, despite the critical slamming it received, saying that the flow of the film was more important than the inclusion of certain scenes.
“But this cut of the movie is my cut, there’s no sort of parallel universe version of the movie, the released movie is my cut. And that’s one of the toughest things about writing, shooting, and directing a film, is you end up with these orphans and you [frick]ing love them and you think they’d be amazing scenes and do these amazing things but the film is a dictatorship," Ayer said, laughing.
"[It's] not a democracy, and just because something’s cool and charismatic doesn’t mean it gets to survive in the final cut. The flow of the movie is the highest master.”
Ayer went on to explain the multi-layered editing process, insinuating the some people just don't understand the way it works.
"I think there’s a misunderstanding about filmmaking where you can somehow have this crystal ball and understand exactly how everything is going to work together and assemble together. It’s always a moving target as you try and distill and condense down to the best movie. And this thing was a beast, we had over a million and a half feet of footage, with an ensemble movie, 7 plus major characters that we have to introduce, a very complex story that is not your normal linear story and you’re introducing the audience to a whole new world, plus it just has my sort of sickness as a filmmaker in it, my vibe and attitude. So it just took a lot of work to find the movie, the movie was always there and even in the early cuts we knew we had something, we knew it was going to work, but to get it there…wow."
Do you think there should be an alternate cut of the film? Or would WB be better off sticking to their theatrical cuts? Sound off with your thoughts in the comments!
Suicide Squad is now in theatres.