6 Things We Can Expect From Suicide Squad 2 With Gavin O'Connor As Director
3. A Smaller Scale
Gavin O'Connor is a grounded, small-scale storyteller. As we mentioned in our introduction, he's never helmed a movie that cost over $44 million.
His movies don't necessarily feel epic, or huge, and that's because they're usually focused on one person or a small collection of people - again, they're about the characters, and not the larger, backdrop events.
Hiring a director who consistently embraces this style of storytelling obviously signals that this will also be applied to Suicide Squad 2, and this moves to rectify a problem that many people had with the first film.
Even David Ayer had this problem with his own movie - it wasn't grounded enough. It was a story about a group of B-villains, most of whom lack superhuman abilities or combat experience... sent to defeat an all-powerful, world-destroying witch? It didn't make sense.
The threat they faced was more suited to the super-powered Justice League, rather than a random collection of thugs and assassins. The Joker should have been the main villain, and the story should have been street-level and low-key (think Marvel's Netflix shows). Instead, it was overblown because the producers had a budget to spend, but that's not what Suicide Squad needs.
But O'Connor's small-scale sensibilities are exactly what Suicide Squad needs. He'll be able to craft a more grounded story with a threat that the squad are better equipped to deal with. The world-saving stuff is fine, but save that for the Justice League movies; that's where it belongs.