Suicide Squad director David Ayer is ready to #ReleaseTheAyerCut as soon as DC Studios is.
During a recent interview with Vulture, Ayer talked openly about everything that was changed on the 2016 DC Extended Universe movie before it was released in theaters. Notably, Ayer mentioned how his version of Suicide Squad was a “war movie” that “didn’t have a single needle drop.”
Here’s what he said about making another war movie right after Fury:
“I was coming off Fury and I could kind of do anything I wanted. And I wanted to make a comic book movie. I wanted to do what the cool kids were doing. I went in and I made what I felt was this really human war movie. My Suicide Squad was a war movie. I had just come off a war movie and I made another war movie.”
Ayer also talked about how there was more character evolution in his cut:
“There was a lot of character evolution. The first act in my film was all the backstory of Rick Flag and June Moone and their relationship and how they met. And the Joker-Harley Quinn backstory was more in keeping with the comic books, where it was this toxic relationship she had to escape from. So much context and setup and storylines were removed. The studio got ambushed by Batman v. Superman, and the release of that wasn’t the outcome they expected.”
The director then explained specifically how his director’s cut of Suicide Squad would not be just some deleted scenes thrown back in, but a tonally different movie, similar to the two Justice League cuts:
“The most frustrating element, the hardest thing for me to explain or to be believed, is how different in its DNA my cut is. Normally, director’s cuts are like, ‘Okay, we put back in the deleted scenes’ or whatever. No, this is an entire re-conception. I didn’t have a single needle drop in the film. Steven Price, who did Fury, wrote this beautiful intricate score. My film was gothic and lyrical and dramatic.
Those who have managed to see Ayer’s cut seem to agree that it’s a much better film than the one released:
“The people that have seen my cut, it’s all been the same reaction: They get mad. ‘This is what we wanted. Why didn’t we get to see this?’ There are flaws in it, but I think I made a really good film. And I definitely got schooled on what these projects really are, as a socio-political engineering consensus machine. I’ve taken so much heat because of the way they broke it. That got thrown back on me. And it’s like, ‘Guys, time out. That’s the exact opposite of what I was trying to do, and what I did.'”
Following the release of Suicide Squad, Ayer signed on to direct a film based on the Gotham City Sirens (a team consisting of Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman). However, it was one of the many DCEU projects to not make it out of development hell. A sequel to Suicide Squad was also announced, initially with Ayer and then Gavin O’Connor attached as director. Ultimately, James Gunn wrote and directed The Suicide Squad, which was released in 2021.
Ayer’s latest movie, A Working Man starring Jason Statham, is currently playing in theaters.
Are you one of the many who want DC to #ReleaseTheAyerCut?
