…Yeah. Mustn’t brag, but I feel that there’s some prime clickbait in that title. But it’s ethical clickbait, because that’s what’s happening:
[James] Gunn, who was fired from helming the third installment in his Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, is in negotiations to direct the second Suicide Squad film, the follow-up to the Warner Bros. 2016 hit that featured DC Comics anti-heroes as the leads. …The pic has the title of The Suicide Squad and is not being labeled a direct sequel but as a relaunch.
MPAA’s The Credits expects that Margot Robbie and Will Smith will be back as Harley Quinn and Deadshot, which is I think a reasonable expectation. While I did not hate Suicide Squad, I’m not going to pretend that Captain Boomerang’s and Killer Croc’s characters were quite up to snuff, Katana was more or less ‘whatever,’ and everybody else besides Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller was… all right, I guess*. If they’re going to do a sequel, they might as well cut away all the iffy parts and start over. Because there’s a really good movie down in there, somewhere. Maybe Gunn can find it?
Moe Lane
PS: It seems that DC is trying to just make individual standalone movies now that are kind of related, but have no overarching meta-plot to them? …OK? If they can make that work, more power to them.
PPS: Ah, yes, the Matter of Gunn. I’m not surprised that DC decided to go snap up a director that brought in 1.6 billion worldwide from two superhero films, wretched historical statements on social media or no. Hollywood is a business, James Gunn is an earner, and there is in fact a bottom line in all of these artistic projects. If your value over the long term outweighs the problems you cause in the short term, the industry will eventually bring you back in. If it doesn’t, they do not.
And if you are an artist interested in making living wages in that industry, well. This is the business we’ve chosen. Well, for given values of ‘we.’
*Davis got the Waller character right, though. No foolin’. Absolutely, get her for the new movie.