Last week, when Warner Bros. announced its entire DC Comics slate through 2020, perhaps the biggest point of intrigue for me was the announcement of Suicide Squad, about a team of incarcerated supervillains taking on high-risk black ops missions for the U.S. government in exchange for reduced prison sentences. In addition to announcing the movie, Warners also mentioned David Ayer would helm the A-Team-esque actioner.
Suicide Squad is a property I know nothing about, save for the quick premise above, but it certainly sounds promising and it seems to fit well within its director’s wheelhouse. Ultimately I think it could turn out pretty well, especially if Ayer is able to make good on what he recently told Empire regarding what audiences can expect for the film: “I can say that it’s a Dirty Dozen with super-villains. Then I can ask the question, ‘Does a movie really need good guys?'”
Further, while some directors might feel a certain weariness or anxiety about whether they are able to tap into exactly what it is comic book fans like about these types of stories, Ayer seems to have a sense of what he is doing.
“I love the passion [comic-book fans] have for these characters and these worlds. I think there’s something incredible about the comic genre and technology has finally caught up with pen and ink to render these fantastic worlds in a way that feels believable and visceral to audiences. It’s a secular religion in that regards. The mythology that these characters represent – the idea of them as fallen gods on Earth – is intriguing to me. I can’t wait to start exploring those corridors.”
There are certainly intriguing ideas to explore within comic book properties, though lately very few films seem interested in actually exploring them, so hopefully Ayer is able to do that and bring us a movie that lives up to the promise of its dark premise.
On the other side of the comic book movie fence, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy director Adam McKay, once rumored to take over for Edgar Wright as the director of Ant-Man before coming in to rewrite the script instead, spoke with Collider about the changes he made to Wright’s script, namely how he and star Paul Rudd collaborated to make it “a little bigger, a little more aggressive, [and] funnier in places.”
“The two of us holed up in hotel rooms on the east and west coast, and I think it was like six to eight weeks we just ground it out and did a giant rewrite of the script. … We added some new action beats. I grew up on Marvel comics so the geek in me was in heaven that I got to add a giant action sequence to the movie; I was so excited. So we did, we added some cool new action. There’s a lot that’s already in there from what Edgar did, there’s a lot of dialogue and character still in there.”
It comes as no surprise new action beats were added to the movie, this is a Marvel film after all and no Marvel film is complete without several huge action set-pieces, but as a fan of McKay’s work I’m looking forward to seeing what these new sequences entail. It’s a shame Edgar Wright is no longer involved in the project, but hopefully McKay’s rewrites are able to build upon Wright’s script and not remove Wright’s stamp too much.
McKay and Wright have similar sensibilities in terms of being good comic minds with the ability to write, block, and shoot tremendous action sequences. While Wright’s films tend to hit higher marks for me, if you’ve seen The Other Guys you know McKay can write action, so hopefully new director Peyton Reed is able to deliver something worth seeing from the latest script.
Oh, and one little bonus before we go, Robert Downey Jr. sat down for an interview with Yahoo Movies about his latest film The Judge and was asked about rumors he would be in Captain America 3 opposite Chris Evans. His response? “It’s gonna be huge.”
Never would have guessed.
