Suicide Squad may not have been a huge success with critics, but it still grossed over $465 million so far and broke records including a record-breaking opening night for August, a record-breaking opening weekend in August, the highest-grossing Monday and Tuesday in August, and an August record for Fandango ticket pre-sales. All that after reshoots and rumors of behind-the-scenes drama in the wake of Batman V Superman earning less than Warner expected.
There’s still a lot to speculate about, like what happened to all of Jared Leto’s scenes, that heady stuff that “changed him forever“? Director David Ayer said there were only ten minutes of deleted scenes, which may or may not have included the Joker, while Leto has said cutting down the scenes was “filtering all of the insanity” and Margot Robbie said those scenes just weren’t that important to the story.
To dig deeper into some of these rumors and deleted scenes, Mr. Sunday Movies — who already rounded up Suicide Squad Easter eggs — compiled speculation from several sources and quotes from the director and cast themselves. It touches on many things we’ve been hearing about, like multiple edits of the film resulting in the “dossier” version with the trippy character profiles added to tell the audience who’s who. David Ayer explained that version to Empire:
“There’s a linear version we did where it opens up with June in the cave and tells the story in sequence with the arrests and Batman, and then we go to Belle Reve. Honestly, there may be six or seven different versions of the film. In that version, [test] audiences were left with a lot of questions and a little disoriented as to who to watch and why. So we came up with what we call the ‘dossier’ version which has Amanda presenting the backstories and origins of the various members.”
That’s the same interview wherein Ayer called Suicide Squad an “anarchic punk rock art movie.” Sure.
Anyway, if you wanted to see one of the deleted scenes — the one where Joker slaps Dr. Harleen Quinzel — we spotted that one over a year ago. It’s probably for the best they didn’t keep it. I don’t want to see Margot Robbie getting beat up, but I would like to believe the film was an elaborate practical joke on Jared Leto, making him shave off his eyebrows and stay in character for nothing. Who’s laughing now?
(Via Mr. Sunday Movies and Empire)
