David Ayer still out here swearing his Suicide Squad was a million times better than what we got
Ayer compared the studio's edit of his 2016 supervillain movie to "having my heart torn out"
Film News David Ayer
As reviews—almost uniformly positive—for James Gunn’s new supervillain splatterfest The Suicide Squad begin to roll in, the film’s positive reputation is already beginning to cast some understandable (and unflattering) attention back at its 2016 predecessor. David Ayer’s Suicide Squad—if we can even call it that, which, more on that in a second—was received with a sort of tepid shrug when it arrived in between Batman V. Superman and Wonder Woman way back when, with its most eye-drawing feature being Jared Leto’s unpleasantly method approach to embodying the film’s abruptly truncated take on the Joker. Those elements that worked from Suicide Squad have since carefully been scooped out and harvested, most notably with the expansion of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn into her own film, while Gunn’s movie is clearly taking a “build-your-own” approach to the original’s characters and details. Ayer himself was reportedly unhappy with the treatment of his movie, though, and while the Training Day writer’s ire at Warner Bros. was swiftly eclipsed by the subsequent battles between Zack Snyder and the studio over Justice League, calls for “The Ayer Cut” have been a low-key element of the DC film fan revolt for years.
All of which appears to have culminated today, when Ayer posted a long letter on Twitter, apparently in response to seeing negative comparisons between his movie and Gunn’s. (For what it’s worth, he’s careful to not implicate Gunn in his ire, expressing his pride at his fellow director’s work in reviving the franchise. Both Gunn, and Birds Of Prey director Cathy Yan, responded to Ayer’s post with words of support.) Laying out the undeniably heavy details of his life story, including military service, poverty, violence, and worse, Ayer eventually pivots to talking about, well, his movie. By which he pretty clearly doesn’t mean the 2016 cut of Suicide Squad, which, he writes, “Is not my movie. Read that again.” Ayer asserts that his Suicide Squad—also not “the 10-week director’s cut that’s been reported on before”—is an “intricate and and emotional journey with some ‘bad people’ who are shit on and discarded.”
Among other things, Ayer states that his cut, which was edited by Lee Smith from work done by the film’s original editor, John Gilroy, is built entirely around Steven Price’s “brilliant score, with not a single radio song in the whole thing.” That’s an obvious slam on the stuffed soundtrack of the eventual product, an attempt to market the movie as a chaotic and Skrillex-backed good time. Ayer has previously talked about how the success of Deadpool caused execs to try to reshape his movie into a light-hearted, high energy comedy pretty much completely against his will, a transformation that can be easily tracked by going from the film’s original Comic-Con tease (built around a slow, creepy cover of “I Started A Joke”) to the “Bohemian Rhapsody”-tracked first official trailer for the film. (Whether either of these movies actually look like a good time is largely an academic issue at this point.)
Ayer’s film, he asserts, “has traditional character arcs, amazing performances, a solid 3rd act resolution. A handful of people have seen it. If someone says they have seen it, they haven’t.” Ayer made public calls last year, when The Snyder Cut of Justice League was announced, to have his own film get similar treatment by Warner. But all of that is apparently done now: After having “my heart torn out” over the studio edit of the film, Ayer says he will “no longer speak publicly on this matter,” meaning that this letter is presumably his final word, both on the film itself, and on those who inevitably drag it for not living up to its follow-up.
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FWIW, that trailer is still awesome.
Which is why my faith in trailers has been shaken.
Fairy lives don’t matter today.
Grierson’s thread with someone I’ve never heard of is pretty flippant, too, so I admire Ayer coming right over the top rope with this. I’m sure his version would have been better than what came out. I probably wouldn’t have liked it regardless.
This is the guy who tried to make Shia LaBeouf a gangsta, right?
Ayer says he will “no longer speak publicly on this matter,” meaning that this letter is presumably his final word, both on the film itself, and on those who inevitably drag it for not living up to its follow-up.That is until WB once again decides to waste another $10 Million on a making an entirely different movie from scratch and call it the “Ayer Cut”.That said, the movie we did get has a glaring plot hole in the sense that a clown lady with bat who the camera creepily leers at, a guy who trows boomerangs, a generic soldier, a guy with above average strength and a skin condition, a guy who climbs things, a guy who shoots good, a guy with fire powers, and a lady with a sword that’s more important to the plot than she is are somehow supposed to take on Superman-level threats when most of them would probably be a splatter on the pavement when they go up against someone like Darkseid.In the comics, the team makes sense as a highly disposable black ops unit that can be easily disavowed by the US government. And that explanation doesn’t really make sense in the movie’s Suicide Squad because the team is escorted around the city by soldiers who are clearly with the military. So it kind of makes the entire point of the team running clandestine missions for the US Government entirely pointless because anyone with 2 brain cells would be able to figure out they’re part of some sort of government operation.Either scenario makes Waller in Suicide Squad (2016) look like an idiot.
Characters in a movie being stupid or naive aren’t plot holes, they’re stupid or naive characters. Amanda Waller isn’t stupid, but she probably thinks whatever suits were in that room were. She doesn’t want to stop Superman, she wants her own black ops kill squad with superpowers and neck bombs, and she got it.
But why have them being escorted around with soldiers? That invalidates the entire premise of the team being easy to disavow. Because now you have proof that this is a military operation and it could potentially be traced back to Waller. They already have bombs in their skulls and Flagg is their handler. Having soldiers escort them just eliminates any plausible deniability.And the only stated purpose of the team in the 2016 movie is to take down Superman-level threats. They never say it’s for clandestine operations. It’s inferred that’s the actual reason Task Force X exists to take on stuff like Darkseid. Which, again makes no sense that you’d expect a clown lady with a bat to be of any use except as a meat shield.Lastly, I only said that the idea that Task Force X is supposed to take on Superman-level threats was a plot hole as the movie never contradicts that stated purpose. I only said that the comic’s purpose for the team doesn’t make sense in that context. At best it’s an Idiot Plot.
It’s funny how you both argue that one thing can’t be inferred from a movie because it never actually says that, but also infer something else (no one in the movie ever mentioned Darkseid or any n0n-Superman threat).
Besides, that’s setting aside the fact that this STILL isn’t a plot hole (Waller could be sincere but wrong in thinking that this team could fight Superman, but that doesn’t make the movie wrong, it makes Waller wrong). Your plot hole is akin to saying New Hope has a plot hole because Han says the force is a fake hokey old religion and then it turns out not to be.Also also, Incubus and Enchantress would constitute a fairly clear Superman level threat. They kill a shitload of people like it’s nothing, plan to eliminate human life on Earth, and would likely threaten Superman since they’re both magic. And yet they are taken out by the Suicide Squad so.
For your argument (Waller tricks the government into giving her a private, neck-bombed army by lying about it being for Superman-level threats) to contradict the plot hole, it would have to be stated explicitly by the text; otherwise it’s just a headcanon. Laserface is right, the story as presented to the audience has a plot hole. Either Waller wants someone who can fight someone as powerful as Kal-El (in which case this isn’t the team she would use) or she wants a group of disposable scumbags she can disavow (in which case you don’t give them a US army escort).
You’re providing Waller with perfect information(apparently she KNOWS this team can’t take Superman? I don’t know she knows that or how she’d figure it out for sure), when she clearly and evidently does not have perfect information. Not even in that scene, since it’s the first time she taunts Moone with the heart which she isn’t just keeping in a safe room somewhere like a smart person would.
I mean, maybe she doesn’t know 100% that her team can’t take on Superman, but realistically, who are you betting on in a contest between guy who got thrown through half of Metropolis without taking a scratch and can shoot lasers from his eyes, and a guy with gnarly skin? There’s no plausible way to sell the team to anyone as a viable counter to a Kryptonian.
Realistically the decisions Waller makes in the movie are dumb as shit. It’s a dumb as shit movie. It’s not a plot hole though. That’s my sole argument. Waller can be the dumbest fuck on the planet and that won’t make her stating that the team is an anti-Superman team a plot hole. The team could have been all babies and it wouldn’t make that a plot hole.
The thing is either way you slice it the explanation for why the Suicide Squad was formed as presented in the movie does make sense due the fact the majority of the people on the team are, on paper, woefully under-qualified to deal with something a Superman-level threat. And by Superman-level threat, I mean something akin to someone who could reasonably take on Superman, such as Darkseid. In that situation, I don’t think you would want the Government’s ace in the hole to be a guy who throws boomerangs.Now the Squad has tackled Superman-level threats in their time, but that doesn’t really make sense for the main reason the team exists in the first place or you’d have more than Enchantress, whom Waller had barely any control over, who have Superman-level abilities. And, given the movie’s explanation for why the team is created, we are never told why she chose these people for this team unless she deliberately wanted the world to end.
The marketing for the Snyder Cut made it very clear that it was something done by AT&T, not WB. I doubt they are going to commit major money to an Ayer Cut with the merger with Discovery incoming, and who knows if Discovery will give a shit about it.
And if you have a team that you specifically want to be able to disavow, why would you send them against someone who’s trying to end the world? That’s a noble goal. You can actually just call in Superman and say, “Hey, an evil witch is trying to destroy the world, we need your help.” Sure, the Enchantress could tell Supes that Waller hired her in the first place, but Waller can just say she’s lying (believable enough for an evil witch), which is easier to sell if she hasn’t just sent a team of other villains into the field.
Yeah and, even if Supes finds out, there’s not much he’d be able to do except hand her back over since he wouldn’t really any hard evidence that would lead the incident back to Waller.
Exactly. He can suspect all he wants, but he’s a boy scout who won’t start shit with a government agency based on something he can’t prove.
obviously anyone who makes it to the second paragraph of the second page will recognise the supposedly David Ayer writing style as the speaking style of that blowhard dickweed wannabe L.A. cop in a white linen suit with a snubnose .44 Magnum revolver James Ellroy the “Smoking PCP and cruising in my Olds Cutlass” is the lead character in that television series about a vampire who cruises the streets of Los Angeles at night in a black convertible automobile who the fuck did you get to write this drivel what were the instructions quick I want two pages make David Ayer look like a twat insult the Chinese the Russians the North Koreans start World War III if possible and while you’re at it get some woman who lives in Los Angeles who has nothing to do with any of this shot in the head by a fake police officer who calls at her house and found in the trunk of a black convertible classic automobile parked on a street in L.A.
If it only cost $10 million it might actually be worth it!
It sounds like not only does the Ayer cut exist, but he’s got a copy. He should just leak it online and then profess ignorance to the studio as to how it got there.
Honestly, after Ayer leaded a chant of “Fuck Marvel” at the 2016 Comic Con, the fact his production company is called “Trigger Warning Productions”, and the existence of Bright which he heavily re-wrote from the original draft (Which weirdly nobody appears to have written the original draft of Bright.) it’s pretty obvious that the Ayer Cut is probably just as bad if not worse that the theatrical cut.
Max Landis didn’t write the original draft of Bright?
Nah I just refuse to acknowledge the scumbag.
Not acknowledging that this piece of shit did it was a running joke for a while. Saw it in Lindsay Ellis’ analysis of Bright and couple of others.
This question presumes you can call what Max Landis does writing.
We all know it’s gonna be bad, but I’m not inclined to begrudge him his own work.
I’d be willing to believe that Ayer’s cut is more coherent – a three year old mashing his action figure together could make a story that hangs together better than ‘Suicide Squad’ – but I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that it’s anything but more coherent garbage.
Hey, man. Bright was one of the best movies of the late 90s.
Has this guy done anything of note after writing Training Day? I’ve seen Sabotage, End of Watch, and Suicide Squad, and they’re all pretty bad. Like, I’m open to enjoying over-the-top machismo action movies, but these are just shitty movies.
Fury’s opening was such a big display of toxic masculinity that I raged quit watching the film in after about 10 minutes.
Might be hard for him to profess ignorance after saying that the cut has only been seen by a handful of people that he’s shown it to.
The cut is probably not picture graded or sound mixed and likely has vfx missing. It probably wouldn’t cost much to finish it off, but I doubt it’s in a form most people would find watchable. Now whether a completed cut would be particularly watchable is another question. But it’s probably better than the hacked together by execs and a trailer company shite of the released cut.
I have it queued up right after the Topher Grace Star Wars Phantom Edit.
It sounds like not only does the Ayer cut exist, but he’s got a copy.
People said that about Snyder’s, too.
Is it really hard to believe the studio took his movie and hacked it to pieces? I really want to see his original cut. It might still be bad (he went on to make Bright and Tax Collector after all) but I like watching alternate cuts and seeing the impact changes can have on a movie’s tone.
RELEASE THE SOMEBODY CUT!!1!!!!11!!!!
Is that a different version of the Bob Odenkirk film ‘Nobody’?
It’s Nobody ‘til Somebody cuts you
Fuck it, give me the Schumacher cut of Batman Forever. That couldn’t have been any worse than the studio’s kid friendly shit.
i can’t imagine it being much different than snyder’s style. i wouldn’t mind seeing it though all the while gritting my teeth at all of leto’s scenes. he has said that there was so much footage shot that didn’t make it and i’d love to see everything left on the cutting room floor.
Lol nobody cares, David Ayer
Oh not this bullshit again…Like the Snyder Cut, I’ll bet that the Ayers cut is slightly better than the theatrical release. But not nearly good enough to justify the fanboy wailing.
#PleaseForTheLoveOfGodDontReleaseTheAyerCutNothingPersonalIJustCantStandJaredLeto
So… is he implying that his cut has a different bad guy at the end? And that the whole “We need this group of low-power mortals to take out Superman” plot was done in reshoots?Because as long as those plot points are there, the film is going to be mocked and picked apart.
No to The Ayer Cut for several reasons:1. The Snyder Cut of Justice League at least made sense since Zach Snyder had to drop out of the project and Joss Whedon got brought in to finish, leading to this tonal-whiplash of a movie. Doing a new cut of the original director’s vision (and exorcising the one made by a guy who became problematic is quick fashion) was a logical thing to do. 2. The Pandemic made it necessary to do the Snyder Cut since they couldn’t release movies in theaters and needed some content for HBO Max. Now, there’s no need.3. I’ve seen what happens when David Ayer makes the movie he wants to make. It was called Bright, and it sucked. I can’t imagine that his vision for “Suicide Squad” would be much better than what we got.4. Warner Bros. already has a good version of “Suicide Squad”: the movie they hired James Gunn to make. No need for another.5. It sounds like he’s the only one advocating for this. At least The Snyder Cut had Snyder’s fanboys behind it. Don’t force something that no one wants onto everyone.
I 100% believe that the Ayer cut is better than what we got if for no other reason than that it would be internally consistent. What we got was a clash between his way of doing things and what WB wanted (due to the timing I seriously doubt Deadpool was the cause considering the musical trailer in question was released around the time the first Guardians of the Galaxy was proving to be a huge success. If nothing else the lack of a years-long harrassment campaign means I’d like to see this cut releasedBut considering it came out of the Snyderverse and what I’ve seen of the theatrical cut that appears to be consistent with what I’ve heard about the Ayer cut, I’m not overly optimistic about it’s chances to be good. Also the narrative that nobody ever had a movie recut by executives who wanted something different from the film before the DCEU is exceedingly tedious
IDGAF about whatever ‘cut’. But I have zero doubts that the original version of Ayer’s Suicide Squad was superior to the version that made it out into theaters. I just have a real tough time seeing “Ok, make a superhero version of Training Day but then we try and cut that into also being Guardians of the Galaxy” being better than just “The superhero version of Training Day”.
Ayer has made some good movies (I still love Fury) but there is no way that his cut of Suicide Squad is a good movie. Hell, he stole his one original character (El Diablo) from a 2002 video game that was parodying Silver Age Marvel comics and he stole the finale from Ghostbusters. He was completely out of his element and almost every thing about it sucked.
He stole El Diablo? Someone should tell Phil Hester and Ande Parks.
I could have sworn that I read where El Diablo was Ayer’s original character but you’re right. He appeared a few years previous in DC Comics.
That said, what I can find of the original Nitz/Hester/Park El Diablo appears to be a cowboy themed Ghost Rider type as opposed to the “hot blooded Latin made literal” that appeared in Suicide Squad (which apes the El Diablo of Freedom Force, almost a decade before even the Nitz/Hester/Park version)
No one cares Sean….
“After having “my heart torn out””.I think that’s a really insensitive thing to say concerning a movie where one of the characters literally has their heart torn out.
I really really hate David Ayer. He’s the biggest hack in Hollywood today. Suicide Squad is his best movie… he’s that bad, and by all accounts he’s a total nutjob in real life. That said… sure, release the damn thing. I doubt it would cost as much as the Snyder Cut and it would probably be easier to do now than it would several years down the line after constant “what if” stories circulate. I mean, granted, it’s easy for me to say that since I’m not the one who has to pay for it, but whatever.
This isKATANAshe’s got my backI would advisenotgetting killed by herher swordtrapsthe souls ofits victims
So about a quarter as good as James Gunn’s version. Which he managed to get down first go.
A movie that has been meddled with too much by studio suits is its own kind of bad, but they didn’t get their jobs by being oblivious to what a good movie looks like, if they’re meddling, it’s because the director’s version was also bad, and probably worse.A director’s version of bad can at least have a cohesive tone and vision—something that The Synder Cut got credit for—but that doesn’t mean it’s a good vision people will pile into theaters to enjoy.
You make a good point but I also don’t really understand how meddling with a movie so that now it’s both bad and incoherent makes sense.
It makes sense to try and fix something that is clearly flawed and bad–you won’t necessarily succeed, but there isn’t much to lose, because if you do nothing the movie will definitely be bad.
I guess. Maybe everyone won’t agree with this but I thought Snyder’s JL was considerably better than the theatrical cut simply because it told a coherent story and had better developed characters. I still hate his ideas but at least story execution is there.
There was never a world in which they were going to put out a 4 hour version of that movie into theaters.
I don’t think Suicide Squad was a victim of intense reshoots like Justice League was. Comparing the two versions you can see that Whedon basically reshot all the chit-chat stuff and kept the action pieces although judiciously trimmed them and hacked out some stuff that really should have stayed in (Flash’s intro, Cyborg’s origin story, Flash’s big run) to put in his own Joss Whedon precious, precious prose (the Aquaman sits on the lasso of truth bit in Whedon’s version was great, other new additions not so much). Ayer’s version may be different but I highly doubt it’ll be anywhere near as different as Snyder’s JI was from Whedon’s. And that was ultimately only like 50% different, same plot and everything.
I’m not a huge Ayer fan; I remember hearing an interview where he said part of why he wanted to make Suicide Squad was because “I guess I should do one of those superhero movies.” Because that’s a good motivation to make a film.However, I’m inclined to believe this his cut is an improvement on the original, because the original is… really bad. Incoherently bad, at times. Whether his cut is actually good or not is probably debatable. But it can’t be much worse than we got. In that way it actually IS a lot like the Snyder cut. Justice League was terrible, so having a different version of the movie that’s better is not a high bar to clear.
I’ve seen your fucking movies, Ayer. You can’t fool me you’ve made more than one decent flick and I bet you know that. Which is why I believe your cut is just End of Watch with Margot Robbie’s face superimposed over Jake Gyllenhaal’s.
Having now watched the original comic-con clip and the Bohemian Rhapsody trailer the latter looks 10x more fun and interesting than the former. (I say that having seen Suicide Squad and thinking it was an OK-ish movie for a popcorn flick. Not great, but not as terrible as everyone made it out to be at the time.)
I believe him and I want to see it. Bright was off, to say the least, but Fury was great.
RELEASE THE AYER CUT!!! (said no one ever)
Except David Ayer.
Cut the Ayer release!erAyer the release cut!Ummm…The Ayer release ! cutYeah I just can’t get my mind around it…
His tweet encapsulates Ayers perfectly. Paragraphs after paragraphs of his martyr complex he uses to justify his glorification of toxic masculinity, all in order to justify a new edit of a what was a filler super-hero flick.
Those are definitely all words…
I have no doubt that WB hacked and slashed his movie; execs at that company have proven to be reactionary idiots trying to mirror Marvel. Oh shit, Avengers is making a lot of money… make BvS an Avengers movie! Oh shit, Guardians of the Galaxy is making a lot of money… make Suicide Squad a GotG movie! That said, Suicide Squad was pretty shitty and I am not sure any amount of editing was going to save it. Like reality TV, those scenes were filmed one way or another and ended up in the theatrical cut; I have a realllllllly hard time believing that Ayer did not want those scenes, but still went ahead and filmed them anyway for funsies.It’s okay to make a bad movie. I loved Training Day and heard Fury was good; Bright had an interesting premise (sorta Shadowrun in the current era) but was… done pretty poorly. And the Tax Collector is supposed to be pretty shitty. I can appreciate he had a tough life and that influences his work, but that does automatically make all of his stuff instant classics by default. I’ll chalk Suicide Squad up to being a not great movie (probably) that was made worse by a reactionary, visionless studio (definitely).Last note on this, I hate the idea that every poorly received movie was Citizen Kane before the studio got its hands on it and fucked it all up. Yeah, studios can mess things up, but that does not mean that they were working with the best material all the time. It is getting exhausting that every bad movie is “oh, you didnt see the REAL version of this.” Fake news and alternative facts has infected everything.
Congratulations to WB for blowing open this pandora’s box of stupid.
Was that the movie about Margot Robbie’s butt?
wow this Tim Greirson guy probably feels like a cunt!
This is just so sad.