8 Reasons Why The Suicide Squad Just Bombed At The Box-Office

7. Sequel, Reboot, Remake, Or Spinoff?

The Suicide Squad
Warner Bros.

Online film fans often forget that we're in the minority when it comes to cinema-going. Sure, we all knew that The Suicide Squad was partly a sequel to the 2016 film, and partly a full-on reboot of this property. But you can understand why general audiences might've been confused about what exactly this movie was.

As awesome as the trailers were, they didn't really do a good job of explaining the connection (or lack thereof) between the two movies. Oh look, there's Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn! She was in that other one. But wait, where's Will Smith? Did they recast him with Idris Elba? And do I need to see the first movie before watching this one?

Obviously, this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. But when you learn that the "The" in The Suicide Squad was actually suggested as a joke, it's clear that Gunn and the studio didn't give much thought about how they presented the movie to people other than hardcore fans.

It feels like an in-joke that 99% of moviegoers won't get.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!