The Suicide Squad is far from a bleak film (it actually takes a pretty light-hearted approach to the bloody carnage on display), but it does have its share of grim/disturbing moments, and it sounds like James Gunn's original idea for this take on Task Force X was even darker.
During an interview with THR, Gunn was asked if Warner Bros. balked at any of the movie's more off-the-wall concepts like Polka-Dot Man and a "rat whisperer," and the filmmaker revealed that only one thing from his original pitch was changed: A darker ending.
"No, I really felt like they were incredibly excited by all that stuff," he said. "I mean, that was my original pitch to Walt [Hamada] and Toby [Emmerich] over at Warner Bros. I brought in pictures of all those guys because I knew it would be hard to keep track of. So I brought in all these photos from the comics of all the different characters that are on team one, team two, and Starro. And the pitch was almost exactly what the movie was. There’s actually a little bit of a darker ending to the pitch that changed, but besides that, everything was exactly the same."
Though the final act of The Suicide Squad does take us on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster (we lose Rick Flag and Polka-Dot Man), the very end is actually quite uplifting, so we'd be vey interested to learn more about Gunn's original plan for the surviving characters. Maybe Bloodsport decided to leak the Starro files after all and lost his head for his troubles?
Tell us, have you watched The Suicide Squad yet? If so, what did you think? You can check out our 5-star review below.
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.