Suicide Squad was a mess of a movie, and we've since learned that was a result of interference from Warner Bros. Director David Ayer has insisted that he has a superior version of the film that has never seen the light of day, and there were reports at the time that the studio had enlisted a variety of editors to assemble a movie much lighter in tone to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
That would explain all those pop songs and why The Joker was watered down, and while Ayer recently shared his final thoughts on the "Ayer Cut," veteran DC producer Charles Roven has now talked more about what happened during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"When the studio was hoping to replace John [Gilroy], the original editor, we suggested Lee [Smith]. I had worked with Lee on Chris’ movies, The Dark Knight trilogy. He’s one of the truly great editors. He was charged with trying to take a slightly different approach, but not totally change the tone of the movie with his work," he explained. "Clearly, from what David is saying, that was the version that he liked the best of all the versions. There was a tremendous amount of different feelings between what the studio wanted and what David wanted at that time. It was a negotiation, for sure, of what the ultimate cut was going to be."
"The interesting thing was, when we tested the Ayer version — to be honest, I can’t sit here and remember how we got to that edited version, who was editing that edited version — but it wasn’t Lee. It was somebody else that came in. The studio version was also different editors as well. We tested both versions. They tested exactly the same," Roven revealed. "Because they tested exactly the same, David and the studio and ourselves, meaning Rich and I and the heads of DC at that time — Jon Berg and Geoff Johns — we all sat in a room and tried to come up with what would be the best of both versions. Obviously, the movie made a really nice piece of change. Audiences liked it enough for us to want to do a sequel. But it definitely wasn’t the exact vision of David, and it definitely wasn’t the exact vision of the studio."
So, because these competing cuts tested the same, Warner Bros. chose to make a Frankenstein's monster version of Suicide Squad that, based on the reviews, failed to really make anyone happy.
Ultimately, it could be that neither of them was truly a great movie (hence why they tested the same), so regardless of what ended up in theaters, Task Force X's big screen debut would be more miss than hit. It would still be interesting to see what Ayer had planned, of course, but the chances of Warner Bros. deciding to give in and #ReleaseTheAyerCut are extremely slim right now.