6 Lessons That Warner Bros. Must Learn For Suicide Squad 2

Despite making $747 million at the box office, Suicide Squad was very unpopular with critics. The film had terrible dialogue, repetitive action and lacked drama. The plot was by-the-numbers despite having an interesting premise and audiences expected to see more of Jared Leto’s Joker, and didn’t like his performance at all.

There were rumoured to be six or seven different cuts of the film at Warner Bros. and the deleted scenes released in the Blu-ray extended cut were largely inconsequential (as was almost every Joker scene). Jared Leto maintains that his original Joker footage is good and that the editing stifled his performance.

The marketing campaign focused heavily on the character design (helping the makeup team go on to win an Oscar) and the tone of the film, which had largely been hastily inserted in extensive reshoots and edits after the disastrous Batman V Superman was deemed too dark and serious by Warner Bros.

Looking ahead to the sequel, directed by Gavin O’Connor (director of The Accountant), Warner Bros. need to learn from the mistakes of the original if they want critical success.

Enchantress was one of the most forgettable comic book villains of all time. DC is known for its impressive roster of fun villains, and it felt like a waste to use Enchantress just because she could quickly muster an army of generic CGI monsters. This was very lazy scriptwriting, especially since the writers didn't use the emotional connection between Rick Flag and June Moone (the archaeologist who is enchanted).

Suicide Squad 2 should use the interconnectedness of the DCEU more effectively. For example, Batman could attack the squad unaware of the situation, creating conflict. Joker is the obvious main villain for Suicide Squad 2, creating a dilemma for Harley Quinn.

David Ayer even said on Twitter “I agonize over this. Yes. Joker should have been the bad guy [for the original film].”

Another route is to pitch the squad against a superhero gone rogue e.g. Cyborg. Seeing a character (such as Poison Ivy) develop a team of brainwashed heroes, or the Red Hood’s murderous philosophy aligning with both Deadshot’s and Waller’s, would be an interesting dynamic.

The villain needs to give the film stakes. Audiences have seen world-threatening villains countless times and something with a smaller impact that’s more personal to one of the main characters will hit harder than any CGI laser beam from the sky. Again, the Red Hood’s vendetta against Joker and Harley could work, or if the squad has to take down Joker.

After Justice League’s similarly forgettable villain Steppenwolf, Warner Bros. will hopefully start introducing less generic antagonists (especially since the announcement of the low-budget, character-driven Joker film and the detective noir The Batman film in development).

Using a villain with more complex motivations than “Now [mankind] worship machines [instead of me]. So I will build a machine that will destroy them all” would be a welcome improvement to the franchise.