When James Gunn was abruptly fired from the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after some unsavory tweets from a decade ago resurfaced, the filmmaker didn’t waste any time moping around feeling sorry for himself. Almost immediately, he scratched his itch to write and direct an ensemble-based comic book adaptation, this time for rivals DC Films.
The Suicide Squad also happens to be R-rated, heavily R-rated, in fact, according to star Joel Kinnaman, while John Cena says the soft reboot is going to make you sh*t your pants. That’s certainly fighting talk, but based on what Gunn brought to the Guardians, imagining him with the shackles taken well and truly off is a massively exciting prospect, especially when he revealed that he’d been handed complete creative freedom.
David Ayer’s opening salvo may have raked in almost $750 million at the box office, but it was blighted by studio interference, and based on what we’ve seen and heard so far, The Suicide Squad is going to be a completely different animal. HBO Max have now released another trailer to tease their huge upcoming slate of 2021 projects, and there are a couple of new glimpses of the titular band of misfits on display, including the requisite ‘team gathered together walking towards the camera’ shot, a brief look at Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in action and some banter between Idris Elba’s Bloodsport and Cena’s Peacemaker, with the latter already in the midst of shooting his own small screen spinoff.
Whoever cut the latest sizzle reel together deserves immense credit for relying on and fully embracing how much people love hearing the name of a movie spoken as part of a sentence, and with The Suicide Squad set for release in August, the countdown to a full-length trailer is surely on.
