SQUAD GOALS
Robbie returns as Harley Quinn while new director adds to team
Margot Robbie is no stranger to big-budget movies. But gazing up at a series of blood-spattered storyboards on the set of The Suicide Squad, the Oscar-nominated star is still amazed at the sheer size and scope of the James Gunn-directed supervillain film.
“This is a huge set,” says the Birds of Prey star. “It's the biggest set I've ever seen. I thought the sets on Tarzan were massive, but these sets are bigger than that.”
Robbie, who was on a break when Postmedia visited the Atlanta set of the comic book adaptation in 2019, continued enthusiastically pointing to an action-packed series of images from the upcoming DC film.
“We filmed this up here and it was so good because of all the pyrotechnics and explosions going off. It's as if we were in Apocalypse Now or Saving Private Ryan or something. (Stuff) was going off everywhere. The beach they built was like actually being on a beach.”
The new film (in theatres Aug. 6) brings back original Squad stars, including Robbie as Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang and Joel Kinnaman as Col. Rick Flag. Viola Davis returns as Amanda Waller, who dispatches a hodgepodge of misfit supervillains on a suicidal mission to destroy a Nazi-era jail located inside the fictional country of Corto Maltese.
“Typically, when you go back to the comic books, they're in prison. Waller puts a bomb in their neck and tells them to go do a mission and they'll get 10 years off their sentence. They'll probably die on the way, but they don't really have a choice. That's kind of how it goes in the comics and that's more or less how it goes in this film, too,” Robbie says in a quick summary of the storyline.
The Squad's new expendable members include the Peacemaker (John Cena), King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), the Thinker (Peter Capaldi) and Bloodsport (Idris Elba), who is imprisoned for shooting Superman with a kryptonite bullet. The creator of the comic book series, John Ostrander, will also have a small role as Dr. Fitzgibbon, with Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi set to appear as the original Ratcatcher.
“There's no sense of continuation from the first movie in this movie,” says producer Peter Safran, referring to 2016's David Ayer-led Suicide Squad. “The question I've been asked a lot is, `Is this a reboot or a sequel?' It's definitely not a sequel, but it's not a traditional reboot either, because it has a couple of continuing characters. So the way we describe it is: This is the Suicide Squad from the mind of James Gunn. It's his vision for the film.”
Safran says Gunn was the perfect choice to reimagine the Squad because of his ability to bring together a disparate group of heroes in the Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy series and layer in a heartfelt story on top of all that comic book action.
“There's a lot of directors who have a specific style and tone and esthetic and rhythm or cadence to their work, and I think when you watch a James Gunn film you know you're watching a James Gunn film,” Robbie says. “I think that's kind of the case here. It is the tone that you've seen in his previous films. It's funny, very funny, and action packed. But it's got a lot of heart, too.”
Gunn says the film's R rating made filming the project instantly more liberating than his work on the Galaxy franchise.
“I feel free on the Guardians films, but I am writing movies for families and I know that,” he says. “This movie is for older kids and adults and because of that I'm writing for a different audience.”
Cena, who has been tapped for his own HBO Max spinoff as Peacemaker, says he was excited to be part of a movie with “enormous potential.
“Fans are going to love it,” Cena says. “When you look at the business the first Suicide Squad movie did, you can say it was a success because people were entertained. But I think when you look at that movie from a critical standpoint, there was potential left on the table. I think this will exceed that. I think everyone is looking for something out of that name — Suicide Squad — and they will be pleasantly rewarded.”
Robbie said she doesn't think it's odd to have a total reset of a film set inside a DC Extended Universe that includes films like Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Shazam! and Zack Snyder's Justice League. “Oftentimes you'll be reading a comic and they leave off at one place and you pick up the next (issue) and they pick up with totally different characters and that person who just died is suddenly there and you just go with it,” she says with a laugh.
Safran echoes these sentiments, acknowledging the first film's troubled production history and polarizing reception among fans.
“On the first film, David Ayer and the studio had different ideas of what it should have been,” he admits. “For (Gunn) to get involved in this one, it was very much about giving him a blank slate and giving him complete freedom to pick and choose the characters he wanted to inhabit this world and the story he wanted to tell in terms of the mission they go on.”
The end result is a movie he describes as “the Dirty Dozen-meets-guardians of the Galaxy.”
“It's heavily distinguished from a Guardians movie by its tone, but also by the nature of the story it is telling,” Safran says. “This is a war-caper film, whereas Guardians is more of a dysfunctional family drama.”
Gunn says the Guardians movies have been a success because at their heart the stories revolve around a family.
“That's really the genre motor that makes those movies work,” Gunn says. “The engine at the centre of The Suicide Squad is that it's a war-caper film like you'd see in the '60s with Kelly's Heroes or The Dirty Dozen or any of those types of movies. But I think it's darker than any of the other DC movies because there's an emotional richness and emotional texture that not all of those other movies have.”