Ben Affleck’s increased role in the Ayer Cut of ‘Suicide Squad’ would have completely changed the story

Much like the Snyder Cut before it, David Ayer’s original vision for Suicide Squad has entered near-mythical territory, with fans continuing to demand that James Gunn makes it a priority for the filmmaker’s unfiltered imagination to be restored.

The antiheroic blockbuster may have made a killing at the box office, but it still ranks as the lowest-rated installment in DCU history on Rotten Tomatoes. In the nicest way possible, we can only hope that remains the case as the new regime sets to right a superpowered ship that’s always been sailing through choppy waters, but the Ayer Cut campaign would be a nice bonus for those who’ve spent years drumming up support to will it into existence.

We don’t know for certain how much footage would be added in or removed, but the director has made it clear that it wouldn’t cost a lot of money to restore Suicide Squad as the project he envisioned when signing on the dotted line. That being said, it sounds as though the narrative would be overhauled to a drastic extent, especially when Will Rowlands has revealed that Ben Affleck’s Batman not only had a much larger role in the story, but one that would have altered the entire driving force of the plot.

Affleck returned to shoot additional scenes for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but it looks like the opposite would be true for Suicide Squad. That indicates that the studio interference that blighted the film actively sought to reduce the involvement of one of the DCU’s most noteworthy and important characters, which seems like an odd choice in hindsight.

Unfortunately, that’s par for the course when it comes to Warner Bros. and its grubby fingerprints, but unless the Ayer Cut materializes out of then air, fans are never going to get the definitive answers they’ve been seeking since the summer of 2016.