10 Wild Ideas For The Perfect Suicide Squad 2

Let’s get this out of the way: David Ayer’s divisive Suicide Squad movie is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a perfect movie - but neither is it the horrendous abyss of movie-making that some of its critics made it out to be.

When James Gunn was reported to have taken on writer/director responsibilities for the Suicide Squad sequel, one of the first rumours we heard was that the film would be titled The Suicide Squad, and would represent a complete reboot of the property.

Now, there are things that Ayer’s movie does well, and then there are things that don’t work at all - but regardless of your opinion of that film, it was a hit, or they wouldn’t be doing a sequel. It simply didn’t make any sense that Warner Bros would alienate everyone who saw the original and enjoyed it.

Fortunately, this proved not to be the case - Gunn’s film appears at this early stage to be a straight sequel, with plenty of the original actors reprising their roles. So what’s the best way forward for him from here? How can he improve on the first film, make a sequel that’s actually better than the original?

As The Suicide Squad revs into through pre-production to shoot in September, here’s the lowdown on the Suicide Squad: as a concept, as an intellectual property, and as a franchise and storytelling engine.

Pay attention, now. This is the instruction manual on how to make the perfect Suicide Squad movie.

Yes, it’s set in the DC universe mainstream continuity, sharing a universe with some of popular culture’s most iconic superheroes - but Suicide Squad is not a superhero property and never has been.

It’s not even a superhero movie that subverts the genre to incorporate tropes from another genre, like Logan did with the western or the upcoming New Mutants supposedly does with horror. It’s the other way around.

The Task Force X conceit revolves around the use of incarcerated supervillains - costumed criminals, some with powers, some without - as black ops agents for the United States government. Superheroes only appear here through association: there are cops in The Usual Suspects, but it’s not a cop movie.

Suicide Squad is an espionage concept: a political spy thriller that riffs on superhero tropes. While John Ostrander’s 1987-1992 run of the comic book occasionally incorporated magic and alien worlds, it was heavily grounded in realpolitik, realistic geopolitical structures and hard-nosed tradecraft.

There were stories detailing disastrous covert missions overseas; the different cultural imperatives that inform how foreign powers would view superpowered agents; the way in which politics at home would affect interagency intelligence work; the dynamics that are called into play when criminals are tasked with taking down terrorists.

If a Suicide Squad movie doesn’t begin with this fundamental premise, it’s not a Suicide Squad movie.