Harley Quinn has new bandit allies in the trailer for the Suicide Squad red band

Idris Elba and Margot Robbie lead a cast of colorful supervillains recruited to a special military tactical response team in the red belt trailer for Suicide squad (incorporated below). It’s director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) autonomous monitoring of 2016 Suicide squad. In fact, he is very tame when it comes to the red band trailers, playing with jocular camaraderie in the midst of all the explosions, gunshots and blood splatters. Tonnally, Gunn’s film looks like a mix of Guardians of the Galaxy and Dead Pool– in other words, it looks like a lot of fun and it’s definitely something we’re looking forward to seeing when it opens this summer.

(Some spoilers for previous DCEU films below)

The original Suicide squad happened a year after Superman’s death on Zack Snyder’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is allowed to create Task Force X, a tactical response team to combat “metahuman” threats. The group is composed entirely of criminals and supervillains and is led by Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). The government plants nanite bombs around their necks to keep them reasonably in control, promising to shorten their sentences if their missions are successfully completed. The star cast included Will Smith as Gunfighter, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang and Jared Leto as The Joker.

Despite boasting such a talented cast, Suicide squad it opened in August 2016 with abysmal critical reviews; it has a 26% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. (Director David Ayer later claimed the studio stepped in to turn its “moving drama” into a more playful entity following the box office success of Dead Pool.) Critics denounced the film for its thin characters, absurd plot and the fact that it was simply boring, although it won an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyle – the first DCEU film to be so honored. Suicide squad it also performed well at the box office, grossing 746.8 million globally, against a production budget of $ 175 million ($ 325 million with advertising and promotion costs included). Thus, the studio gave the green light to a sequence and several derivative projects, including the one from 2020 Birds of preyfeaturing Robbie’s Harley Quinn.

What followed was an elaborate musical chair development game, while Warner Bros. he did his best to coordinate various versions of a script and the busy schedules of Ayer and his various actors. When Ayer left the project, the studio considered several substitute directors, finally deciding on Gavin O’Connor. But then O’Connor left, supposedly frustrated because the script for Birds of prey told a story very similar to the one he imagined for Suicide Squad 2.

Next, Warner Bros. hired Gunn in October 2018 to write a new script and direct Suicide Squad 2, shortly after Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 3 in light of the public reaction to some old tweets that have reappeared. Disney reconsidered and reinstated Gunn soon after, but the company agreed to let him finish Suicide squad first before resuming work on Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 3.

In his current incarnation, Suicide squad it is more of a relaunch than a direct sequel to the 2016 film; Gunn said he wanted to take the franchise in a new direction and introduce new characters. He was inspired by the original John Ostrander from the 80s Suicide squad comics. (Ostrander has a small role in the final film.) Gunn described his film for minors as a superhero version of the classic 1967 film. The Dirty Dozen, selecting characters he described as “grade B losers, supervillains”. And, apparently, the studio is allowing him to kill certain characters as he sees fit, which must be a suspenseful vision. (We are still betting that Harley Quinn will survive.) According to the official synopsis:

Welcome to hell, also known as Bell Reve, the prison with the highest death rate in the USA from A. Where the worst supervillains are kept and where they’ll do anything to get out – even join the super secret and super-obscure Task Force XThe task of making or dying today? Gather a collection of cons, including Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior]), Savant (Michael Rooker), King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), Javelin (Flula Borg) and everyone’s favorite psychopath, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). Then, arm them tightly and throw them (literally) on the remote island of Corto Maltese, full of enemies.

Smith was unable to repeat his role as Gunman, so Gunn wrote the character Bloodsport with Elba specifically in mind. Kinnaman and Davis are back as Flag and Waller, respectively, with Steve Agee in the role of John Economos, prison director and Waller’s aide. Other new cast members include Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), whose polka-dot suit is actually a collection of gadgets; Weasel (Sean Gunn), an anthropomorphic weasel; Sol Soria (Alice Braga); TDK (Nathan Fillion); Flo Crawley (Tinashe Kajese); Bloodsport’s daughter, Tyla (Storm Reid); and thinker (Peter Capaldi).

The trailer opens with a plan for Flagg and his team to rescue Harley Quinn, which frustrates him by rescuing herself. The squad members get the same deal as before: ten years of suspension from the sentence if they successfully complete their mission, with an injection of nanite that will explode if they disobey orders in any way. There are jokes about Davidson’s black guard trapping things in his shoe and King Shark’s horrible eating habits (“num-num”), and Capaldi brings his expressionless charm to a scene with Thinker being threatened by Flagg and Harley Quinn. Did I mention the “damn kaiju” who invades the party?

Suicide squad opens in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously on August 6, 2021. Expect to see more of this renewed franchise. HBO Max has already requested a Peacemaker direct spinoff for the series, with Cena and Agee reprising their roles. Scheduled for launch in January 2022. What you probably won’t see is the “Ayer cut” of 2016 Suicide squad. HBO Max said it has no plans to launch it.

List image by YouTube / Warner Bros.