When it came to Will Smith’s take on Deadshot in 2016’s Suicide Squad, it became obvious that director David Ayer wanted to have the character exist in a grey area similar to more recent iterations offered in comics, animation and television. This is understandable because unless Floyd Lawton is to be the villain of the piece, you’re going to need the audience to root for him. In fact, I’ve seen this method applied to a variety of characters headlining their own comics published in recent years, from Deathstroke to even Poison Ivy.
As such, Ayer’s more sympathetic Deadshot drew inspiration from material showing his strained relationship with his daughter. After all, a contract killer can’t be that bad of a guy if he loves his kid, right?
But now that James Gunn has taken the wheel, it appears as though he’s exploring different aspects of Lawton’s literary history. According to Movie Web, Jon Ostrander and Kim Yale’s Deadshot seen in comics published during the 1980’s will serve as the blueprint for whomever fills the seat vacated by Will Smith – and that someone may very well be Idris Elba.
In other words, we may end up seeing a Deadshot who’s more “reckless and suicidal,” as the outlet put it. This was because he accidentally killed his brother as a child in a bizarre assassination plot hatched by their mother. You see, the bullet was meant for his father, and this mistake caused Floyd to swear to himself that he’d never miss another shot in his lifetime.
If indeed this is the basis for Gunn’s take on the marksman, then it’d most assuredly provide a way to separate him from Ayer and Smith’s. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the aspect of him having a daughter factors into The Suicide Squad at all when it arrives in theaters on August 6th, 2021.
