There’s a version of Suicide Squad out there — probably in Jared Leto’s “twisted” mind — that’s much darker than the final PG-13 product. Not that Warner Bros. wants to see it; they’re plenty happy with the record-breaking $135.1 million David Ayer’s film made in its first weekend of release. Plus, “for an R movie, you have to decide to do it right out the gate,” the director said, adding that an R-rated sequel “would be worth lobbying for.”
We can get a sense of what a Suicide Squad not aimed for the Hot Topic demo might have looked like, though, based on this (unconfirmed) list of cut scenes, including (spoilers), “Early cuts reportedly included a passing reference to Slipknot being a serial rapist, likely to further paint him as unsympathetic to the audience ahead of his own death,” and “Joker returns during the final battle in the subway station, face half-burnt from the helicopter crash.”
Speaking of the Joker and his face: a fan film shows him taking his face… off.
Loosely based on DC’s Death of the Family arc, The Laughing Man stars the Joker and Harley Quinn (neither of whom are named, for legal reasons) acting like in-love lunatics. They show affection for each other by torturing an asylum psychotherapist and live-streaming the entire thing, naturally. The hyper-stylized short even gets to the origin of the Joker’s gnarled teeth.
In an interview with No Film School, The Laughing Man‘s co-creator, Diego Hallivis, said he and his brother Julio “wanted to tell a story that centered on the Joker without Batman showing up to save the day. A story that didn’t need to be PG-13 for commercial reasons — where the protagonist isn’t necessarily a hero. We knew we had to push it and do something very gory, something studios won’t do.” Not to mention something where you don’t have to remind everyone that it changed you forever. They succeeded.
