Director David Ayer talks ‘Suicide Squad’ using the Ostrander series, New 52, Will Smith’s Deadshot
Suicide Squad has fans excited for the DC Extended Universe despite the lukewarm response to Batman v Superman and director David Ayer talked about the film, source material, Will Smith, beginning with the tone.
“Part of what we’re doing, our references are ’70s movies, like Prince of the City, Serpico. We’re using an older series of anamorphic lenses. We’re after an old-school look, which I think … You’re taking a subject matter which is exceptional unto itself, and then photographing in a way that’s very naturalistic and real. I think it has the effect of bringing them into our world.”
There is plenty of DC Comics material and Ayer explain his approach.
“What I did is sort of an amalgamation, because I love the Ostrander series, and there’s some fantastic situations and the concept of it is very solidly there. This idea of this team of bad guys run by Amanda Waller doing dirty work for the government. But in The New ’52, it’s also—I mean there’s the craziness of it in the New ’52, and obviously Diablo’s out of the New ’52 world. There just really hasn’t been too many opportunities for like a Hispanic kind of villain, superhero comic book character, and he plays a pretty important role in this. That’s something that’s important to me so I kind of cherry picked him to pull him into this. Obviously Croc, he doesn’t feature in the original Ostrander series but the situations—I’m not going to tell you which one I pulled the plot out of, but pretty much everything that happens is true to the source material, whether it’s Ostrander’s work in New ’52 or from the Joker comics or other source material.”
During the Collider interview Ayer previews Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and then Will Smith.
“She’s freaking scary. I’m kind of glad she’s in stiletto heels because if she was in anything else she would be even more scary. It’s interesting because when I see Margot out of wardrobe now I literally don’t recognize her. I don’t know who she is. She’s an example of somebody who has totally become the character and transformed herself and embraced this. I think that’s part of the fun. I’m just speaking about Harley Quinn specifically, there’s a sexuality, there’s an attractiveness, there’s a pinch of attractiveness to the character but when you understand how that character thinks, she almost uses that as a weapon to disarm people and kind of as a visual judo to get what she wants. That’s a big part of how Margot is playing the role. I think it’s, there’s an intrinsic sort of wank and awareness that that’s part of her game.”
On Smith’s Deadshot:
“A guy like Will, who typically plays these very positive characters, to put him in a role with a little grey and a little complexity is perfect because he’s so sympathetic and he’s got such a good heart as a person, it comes across the screen. It just made sense.AYER: I think for Will, he wanted to play in this world and this just seemed like a fantastic opportunity. Deadshot’s a great character. What’s great about these characters is that they’re pretty well known. To the fans they’re very well known. But there’s a vast audience that doesn’t know these characters so it’s also an opportunity to sort of visually reinvent them and also to tell these stories of who they are. Deadshot, all these characters in the Suicide Squad world have this complexity about them. My pitch when I went to the studio about this was, they’re villains that don’t know they’re bad guys. They don’t know they’re bad guys. They’re just people who have made some really bad decisions in life and ended up in a bad place and are trying to do everything we want to do which is live, love, be happy.”
Like other reports, Ayer has nothing but praise for Jared Leto and his Joker.
“It’s interesting because Jared is one of the first people I cast in this, and so those conversations and the character development, how to build this character have a lot of history between us. I understand how he’s built the character. I understand what he’s doing. It’s a little bit of like I know the magic trick. I know how the rabbit is hidden in the hat before you pull it out. He’s very professional and we’ve had a lot of discussions about his journey and his mindset in what are the pieces that become this character. As far as our on-set work it’s fantastic because, a little more of this, a little less of that, a little more of this secret ingredient here and a little less of that secret ingredient.”
Check out the full interview at Collider HERE
