Stars of the new Suicide Squad movie talk about making a ‘rebootquel.”
The Suicide Squad, which opens in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6 features some of the same actors and characters, the same premise (a group of C-list comic book bad guys are brought together by a mysterious government agency) and almost the same name as 2016’s Suicide Squad. So is it a sequel or a remake?. Director James Gunn says, “I just think of it as itself. I think it’s for others to define it however they want. If somebody wants to call it a sequel, cool. A reboot? That’s fine, too. People have also called it a ‘rebootquel.'” Although a box office success, the 2016 movie was savaged by critics. Director David Ayer wanted to make an intense superhero drama like Christopher Nolan’s three Batman movies; the studio wanted a violent action comedy. Actor Joel Kinnaman, who returns as Rick Flag, the solider whose job it is to try to keep the Suicide Squad in line, says, “Sometimes It’s hard to make movies and there were some conflicting visions going into that film, or specifically in the post production and I think we all felt we didn’t quite live up to the promise that the film had.” Plans for a sequel never came together, although Margot Robbie’s breakout performance as the cheerfully unhinged Harley Quinn proved popular enough for her own spin-off movie 2020’s Birds of Prey. Enter writer/director Gunn who made The Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel. A big part of the success of the Guardians franchise is the sense of humor Gunn brought to it. According to Kinnaman, “We really lucked out by getting James Gunn. There were several iterations of the follow-up and when James came in it became this real opportunity.” Robbie says, “I felt confident that whatever James’ take [on Harley Quinn] was gonna be, being a comic book lover, that it was going to be all stemming from the characteristics you see in the comics so I felt good about that, and I felt I was going to be in safe hands based on the other films he’s made. I was pretty confident that he was going to crush this and he did. I read the script and I was like ‘Oh he totally gets the character in the way that I do.'” “Harley doesn’t belong to me,” Robbie continues, “Truthfully Harley belongs to the fans and whatever they love about her.
