10 Ways Warner Bros. Should've Made The DCEU

4. Hire Literally Anyone Else To Make Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad Harley Quinn Deadshot
Warner Bros.

If any DC project could be singled out for being the most disappointing, it would be Suicide Squad.

Directed by End of Watch, Fury and Sabotage alum David Ayer, the cinematic adaptation of DC's very own Dirty Dozen should have been a surefire success. Will Smith was in the lead, Margot Robbie was perfectly cast as Harley Quinn and the team as a whole were shaping up to be an interesting cast of characters.

One thing that undoubtedly exacerbated the Squad's eventual disappointment, however, was the film's marketing, which was pretty spectacular. The trailers seemed to promise this irreverent, sinister action film that had a whole array of top talent at its command, and yet when it released, neither of those elements were able to shine through.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that Suicide Squad was plagued by issues right from the very start of production - a tragedy that was made complete by the decision to bring in a trailer-editing group to chop and change the finished product. If Ayer hadn't been involved, and WB had followed through on the idea with a different creative team at the helm (and someone else to change Joker's design), then it could've been a fine reply to Guardians of the Galaxy.

Instead, fans have to settle for a glorified music video for a superhero film. Bummer.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.