Leading up to the release of David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad,” there were a number of reports that said Warner Bros. was concerned about the tone of his film because of the negative reviews for Zack Snyder’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” At the time, obviously no one related to the film was going to talk about that being true or not. But now, years later, Ayer is on social media attempting to convince WB to allow him to release his original “Suicide Squad” cut, and he’s willing to admit the issues that led up to the much-maligned cut of the film that was released in theaters.
READ MORE: David Ayer Says His Version Of ‘Suicide Squad’ “Has Never Been Seen”
Ayer’s most recent Twitter discussion about “Suicide Squad” started after he found a trailer that a fan cut for his film that accentuated the more serious elements of the film and didn’t focus on the ultra-neon, fun, silly aspects that seemed to dominate the theatrical release.
Ayer retweeted the trailer and said, “This trailer nailed the tone and intention of the film I made. Methodical. Layered. Complex, beautiful and sad. After the BVS reviews shell shocked the leadership at the time, and the success of Deadpool – My soulful drama was beaten into a ‘comedy.’”
As you can see, Ayer doesn’t just credit the negative response to ‘BvS’ as a driving force behind the changes to “Suicide Squad,” but he also mentions the huge success of “Deadpool,” released the year before, for showing that gritty superhero stories can score big at the box office if there are a ton of adult humor. And we know what we get when you combine Ayer’s vision with a studio scared of ‘BvS’ and hoping for their own “Deadpool.” Basically, a Frankenstein’s Monster of awful.
That being said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on Ayer’s description of his version of “Suicide Squad” as a “soulful drama.” Obviously never seeing that version of the film, I can’t speak to the validity of the description, but it is difficult to imagine a world where a film with Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Jared Leto’s Joker, and all of Joel Kinnaman’s scenes is anything remotely “soulful.” But hey, I’d be completely happy to be proven otherwise because I’m actually a fan of Ayer’s film work and definitely can see how “Suicide Squad” is the outlier on his IMDB page.