Warner Bros. went all out to secure the services of James Gunn, swooping in just days after the filmmaker was fired by Disney from the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and he was offered his choice of any property he wanted. Having decided to tackle The Suicide Squad, WB reciprocated his enthusiasm by handing Gunn a huge amount of creative freedom.
That’s not the sort of thing the studio bestows upon anyone looking at their track record for getting far too heavily involved in the production of numerous DCEU blockbusters, and Gunn revealed that he’s taken his liberties to heart by killing off almost every single one of the movie’s major characters.
That doesn’t mean he’s just doing it for sh*ts and giggles, though, with the 54 year-old admitting in a new interview that two deaths in particular still bring him to the brink of misty-eyed sadness anytime they cross his mind, even though it was his choice to dispatch them in the first place.
“Some of the characters, especially as you go further into the movie and some of the deaths later in the film still break my heart every time I watch. There’s two characters in particular that when they die, I still get teary-eyed every time I watch the movie, even when I’m watching those scenes edited, when I was going through them. It still really kills me.”
The early reactions to The Suicide Squad have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and it’s got the undoubted potential to be one of the best superhero blockbusters we’ve seen in recent years. Gunn has more than proven his chops at ensemble-based actioners packed with wacky characters and irreverent humor, with the promise of a very hard R-rating set to offer a more visceral, incredibly foul-mouthed and entirely different experience to his Guardians duology.
You never know, fans might share his sentiments and find themselves bawling their eyes out in theaters across the world in just a couple of weeks when two of his favorites are shuffled off to their mortal coil, whoever they end up being.
