Will Smith is a picky actor, so getting him to sign up for a project usually requires a lot of heavy lifting. But it’s rarer still that you’ll get the actor to join an ensemble piece where he isn’t the main attraction. So what got him involved in “Suicide Squad“? Well, he just loved the character of Deadshot so much, he couldn’t say no.
“I had never played a character that legitimately didn’t give a fuck. It’s very freeing not having to carry the moral spine of the movie,” the actor told EW about taking the role of the assassin in the film. “I couldn’t find a model to understand what would make someone comfortable killing another person for money. [Director] David [Ayer] walked me through that. He found a book for me [‘The Anatomy of Motive‘ by John Douglas], and I worked through getting into the mind of serial killers. Once I accepted the [notion the author puts forth] that it feels good, that really exploded the idea in my mind of Deadshot.”
Sounds like Ayer gave Smith the substance he needed to dive into the role, but as for playing characters that don’t give a fuck, how soon we forget “Hancock“…
At any rate, tickets for “Suicide Squad” go on sale Friday and a couple new trailers landed, along with a fresh synopsis:
Suicide Squad takes place in a post-Superman world, following the events of Dawn of Justice, as the government grapples with how to respond the next time an alien visits Earth with less noble intentions than the Man of Steel. The answer, according to ruthless intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), is to recruit society’s most vile criminals, armed with lethal skills and superhuman powers. Her first target is possessed archaeologist June Moone/Enchantress (Cara Delevingne).
Waller’s program doesn’t get a green light, though, until Midway City is threatened by a powerful mystical enemy, and Waller needs to activate the whole squad of prisoners. The baddies get a break. Deadshot (Will Smith) has his Second Amendment rights reinstated, Harley (Margot Robbie) is carefully excised from her birdcage, Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is released from his own fireproof fortress of solitude, Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Slipknot (Adam Beach) strap their weapons back on, and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is popped from his swamp. The one condition for their restricted freedom: Obey orders or die, a rule strictly enforced by squad leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), his samurai Katana (Karen Fukuhara), and the explosive devices inserted into their necks courtesy of Wayne Enterprises. (Thanks, Batman!) Throwing a wrench into all these plans is the tatted Gotham City arch-criminal, the Joker (Jared Leto), and his laser-like plan to reunite with his true love, Harley, mission be damned.
“Suicide Squad” arrives on August 5th.