Director David Ayer is still calling Suicide Squad his biggest Hollywood heartbreak
The 2016 theatrical cut of Suicide Squad, which Ayer has loudly maligned in the past, "broke" him, the director said
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Aaron Taylor Johnson can claim that he “didn’t really care for” his past superhero films all he wants—he’ll never steal David Ayer’s Being Really Upset About It crown. It seems like no one has ever been madder about the trajectory of a major franchise film than Ayer, who has only ramped up his anger over the treatment of his 2016 Suicide Squad over the years.
It may be ancient history at this point (especially in light of all that other method acting discourse), but due to Jared Leto’s, er, particular approach to playing The Joker, as well as some studio over-correction—at least in Ayer’s opinion—his original film was majorly chopped and screwed to create the theatrical release we know and feel kinda whatever about today.
Ever since James Gunn’s (better-received) stab at The Suicide Squad in 2021, Ayer has been very vocal about the studio release of his own film, which, according to a long Twitter letter, is not really his film at all. “I will no longer speak publicly on this matter,” he said in conclusion. That promise didn’t last long. Only a few months later, he cosigned a statement from Jared Leto supporting the release of the #AyerCut on streaming, and just this month posted on X saying that Gunn (now the CEO of DC Studios) “told me it would have it’s [sic] time to be shared.”
Now, Ayer is once again speaking out. On a recent episode of Jon Bernthal’s “Real Ones” podcast, the host asked Ayer to share his biggest Hollywood heartbreak. “Hollywood… is like watching someone you love get fucked by someone you hate,” he answered. “The big one is Suicide Squad. That shit broke me. That handed me my ass.”
“I had the town in my hand [after releasing Fury]—could’ve done anything, and I did do anything,” he continued. “And [I] go on this journey with [Suicide Squad]. And the same thing—authentic, truthful, let’s do all the rehearsal, let’s really get in each other’s souls. Let’s create this amazing, collaborative thing, right? And then Deadpool opened… and they never tested Batman v Superman so they were expecting a different result, and then they got hammered by all the critics. Then it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to turn David Ayer’s dark, soulful movie into a fucking comedy now.’”
Per Ayer’s 2021 letter, “if someone says they have seen [#TheAyerCut], they haven’t,” so maybe it really is the “dark, soulful movie” he keeps promising. Or… maybe it’s just a lot more Jared Leto. Either way, it sounds like we may yet know—that is, if Ayer actually had the conversations with DC he claims to have had (which, at least in relation to other studio personnel, is not a guarantee).
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Person answers question.
I don’t think going full ‘dark and brooding’ would have improved the movie at all. It would have removed what little remained watchable and replaced it with grimdark for no apparent other reason than ‘grimdark? GRIM! DARK!”. I get it, it was (and kinda remains for the moment) a thing for DC, and frankly it is the #1 reason I can’t be bothered to even sit through a free TV viewing of BvS:DoJ:TFIT.I’d argue turning so much of the movie over to Leto was one of the largest mistakes made. There are a ton of little things that the issues between director and final edit help to explain (specifically the never-quite-gelled tone), but I can’t see ANY version of the movie that’s going to be improved by Leto going all Leto all over it.
I think if they had no choice but to include Joker in this movie (which has every chance of being an actual WB mandate), it seems pretty clear that you make him the bad guy instead of this random cameo. Obviously the movie is edited into an utter hash, slapped together with on-the-nose pop songs and all this obvious flop-sweaty studio tinkering. A lot of that is probably not Ayer.But Enchantress just writhing lamely in front of a big light beam in the sky for two acts? You don’t get there with just editing. That sounds like he had two weeks to write a script and bashed out the first thing that came to mind.
Agreed. A bad edit can ruin the pacing, remove important lines of dialog, and so on, and I cannot fathom the decision to include Boomerang and Killer Croc as the second-rung characters, which I assume was the studio. But I saw the movie and I saw the shots Ayer put in the can. The only good thing in it is Margot Robbie’s performance, which is the precise f***ing opposite of dark and soulful. Did Ayer want more scenes of El Diablo brooding about how awful life is? Because that was terrible. And a complete waste of Jay Hernandez.
“and replaced it with grimdark for no apparent other reason than ‘grimdark?”
I’m sorry, but a movie about inmates who are sent on *literal* suicide missions with the promise of a shortened sentence if they survive, which they aren’t likely to do, has no apparent reason to be dark?
I absolutely want to see Ayers cut of Suicide Squad just to end the Schrodinger’s Cat situation with this film and finally confirm that yes, David Ayers made a Suicide Squad movie that’s just as mediocre as several of the other films he’s made.
Yeah like Bright is probably the best Shadowrun movie ever but that’s not saying much…
Nothing felt more algorithm driven from Netflix than getting the guy who wrote and directed 7 crooked cop movies in a row to do the crooked Orc cop movie.
You gotta admit, Bright was a pretty good late-90s Urban Fantasy film….AND THEN, SUDDENLY: NINJA ELVES.
It wasn’t studio interference that lead to every Suicide Squad character literally wearing their personality on their sleeves (or forehead).
But he still gladly accepts responsibility for the ridiculous coincidence in the final act of ‘Training Day,’ right?
On one hand, I think Ayer might be sort of right. DC was (maybe still is) so reactionary to Marvel that they saw the success of Deadpool and GotG in particular and careened into “let’s do that!” with Suicide Squad. Something bright and humorous but also with a dark edge, especially in the case of Deadpool (though not as dark). I have no doubt that they watched 5 minutes of Suicide Squad, said “make it GotG” then went off to do a bunch of coke and pray the check for their bonuses cleared.Om the other hand, that movie was crap and I am not sure what could have been done to save it other than largely starting over, possibly with a different production team and some casting changes (lots of solid casting, but Cara Delavigne was… not great in her role). Ayer’s cut, or whatever the fuck it is, is another in a long line of people whining that their less-than-successful movie would have made Citizen Kane look like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen if not for studio interference, or editing, or the winds of change, or whatever.
She was good as creepy J-Horror style Enchantress, but in addition to the entire storyline of her character going generic supervillain, she absolutely could not pull it off and just came across as ridiculous.Overall, I think you’re right that the movie was just doomed from the conception phase because no one seemed to entirely know what kind of movie to make. The core concept of using the disposable black-ops team to do something 100% heroic was never going to work, but no one at WB/DC was interested in a movie of anyone but edgy anti-heroes and underdogs.
“I had the town in my hand [after releasing Fury]—could’ve done anything,…”I did not remember that film at all. In fact, the way I see it, if he wasn’t constantly talking about this big franchise that was such a bad experience for him, I don’t see any reason why we would still be talking about him. At least, Snyder has a following.
Fury is the movie where Brad Pitt fights Nazis.
No… I saw that one. Hitler got mowed down with a machine gun.
No, that’s the one whe he fought NAT-zees.
I can’t seem to star comments anymore, but that post deserved one for sure.
Fury was a perfectly decent WW2 movie. Besides a somewhat silly final battle, it was a fun circa-1970 war flick, with Pitt in the Lee Marvin role.
Nothing about this explains why watching the suicide squad feels like watching a 90 minute long trailer. Things just happen, no explanation for anything, no acting, no direction. Shit just randomly happens and the 6 seconds later everyone moves to the next randomly occurring event. There’s no amount of “but the producers did it!!!!” that can explain why it feels like an hour and a half long commercial
It’s like… I saw the pieces he used to build the movie, and I didn’t like them. There isn’t a way I can envision arranging those pieces into a thing I would like. His tatted up Hot Topic deep voice serious Joker, his hot pants Harley, fuckin Katana, I just don’t care. I don’t care if you think the studio made something bad out of the shitty Lego you were using, it’s still shitty Lego if you make something different.
Devils advocate: I bet I could take all the footage shot for a good movie and edit it to create a bad movie. But yeah it would pretty much have to be intentional and why would they do that? It seems super unlikely that they chose all the bad stuff and left all the good stuff on the cutting room floor.
The stuff on screen in integral to any reshoot of the show. If I think leather trenchcoat Joker with metal teeth and a thousand tattoos looks stupid, I don’t think there’s a scene you could have cut where I’d be like “Oh, I like that awful Hot Topic X Machine Gun Kelly vibe they were angling for now!”
This. Studios take great scripts and make shitty scripts out of them all the time. Making a shit movie out of a great one seems unlikely. Making a mediocre movie out of a slightly less mediocre movie? That I can buy.
Yesterday, Ayer was bitching that he didn’t get a piece of the Fast & Furious franchise he “helped create.” Today it’s Suicide Squad. What’ll it be tomorrow? Denzel ruined Training Day by playing it too light-hearted?
Now throw your hands in the AyerAnd tell him we just don’t cayer
“And [I] go on this journey with [Suicide Squad]. And the same thing—authentic, truthful, let’s do all the rehearsal, let’s really get in each other’s souls. Let’s create this amazing, collaborative thing, right?” […] Then it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to turn David Ayer’s dark, soulful movie into a fucking comedy now.’”Holy fuck, so much pretentious waffle over a fucking Suicide Squad movie.
Hey you don’t know anything about the truth of a Australian criminal who throws boomerangs, man!
just this month posted on Xstop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen
just this month posted on Xstop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen
The Leto Joker was such an unappealing take that it made me lose any interest in the movie… which was made even worse there more I saw.
Eh, make it happen. If Zach Snyder gets a do-over, why not David Ayer? If Morbius gets a re-release, why not Suicide Squad the Zeroth?Just like Snyder’s do-over, I don’t think it will redeem the movie by that much, but it’d be interesting to see what was intended.
“watching someone you love get fucked by someone you hate”
David Ayer sounds super toxic LMAO.
I can’t stand this “RELEASE THE X-CUT” trend, it needs to die. Four morons on twitter cry about how a director just needed a 4 hour long version of the shitty superhero teamup they made, and then we all have to pretend it’s a worthy cause to persue.Ayer may very well be correct that “hollywood” made him make a shitty movie and it’s lame that he wasn’t given complete creative control of his output. (Maybe director’s guide shoulda joined the strike, hmmmm?) This will still only produce a longer version that promises to be “soulful” but is just tiring instead. No one wants to watch more of Leto’s shitty edgy Heath Ledger impression, especially now that we know he “method acted” on the set.
It’s a little hard to know because there’s comparatively not many director’s cuts released, but has there ever been a case of a really great film being turned into a shitty one by studio meddling? I’m hard pressed to think of an example.
Usually the director’s cut is… fine, just like the movie was… fine. I’m genuinely curious if anyone can think of a really major quality swing between director cut and theatrical release.