David Ayer Amps Up ‘Suicide Squad’ Fans With Unused Joker Scene

Hop on Twitter right now and you might see #ReleaseTheAyerCut and #OpSKWAD trending pretty high. Fans of Suicide Squad are making a concerted effort to convince Warner Bros. to do the same for David Ayer’s cut of the film that they did for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. In theory, it seems like a logical decision. Not only was Suicide Squad more successful at the box office, but critically it was treated less harshly. So why not?

So what brought all of this on today? Well, David Ayer is fanning the flames by teasing scenes from his cut of Suicide Squad. In a morning tweet, he shows a scene that appears to be taken outside of Harley Quinn’s prison cell. He doesn’t say anything about it, but presumably, this is one of those scenes tinkered with by WB execs, who wanted the movie to be funnier after the box office failure of Batman v Superman and success of Deadpool.

It’s the second that has fans especially amped up. Ayer released what appears to be an unused script page, featuring Jared Leto’s Joker as he holds the team’s lives literally in his hands. Leto’s version of the character was shit on by most people, but we also know his scenes were drastically edited and barely fit into the overall narrative. This might’ve gone a long way to fixing it because the scene as written is pretty cool. Ayer would later admit that he did, in fact, shoot the scene.

Yet another tweet reminds us that Justice League villain Steppenwolf was also meant to be the big-bad of Suicide Squad, but when he got pulled Ayer had to come up with something else on the fly. Let’s just say the Enchantress thing didn’t really work.

So is WB truly listening as they were during the #ReleasetheSnyderCut craze? Only time will tell, and we may need to wait to see how that film does on HBO Max next year before a decision on Suicide Squad is made.

 

 

Travis Hopson
Travis Hopson has been reviewing movies before he even knew there was such a thing. Having grown up on a combination of bad '80s movies, pro wrestling, comic books, and hip-hop, Travis is uniquely positioned to geek out on just about everything under the sun. A vampire who walks during the day and refuses to sleep, Travis is the co-creator and lead writer for Punch Drunk Critics. He is also a contributor to Good Morning Washington, WBAL Morning News, and WETA Around Town. In the five minutes a day he's not working, Travis is also a voice actor, podcaster, and Twitch gamer. Travis is a voting member of the Critics Choice Association (CCA), Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and Late Night programmer for the Lakefront Film Festival.