When writer-director James Gunn agreed to make “The Suicide Squad,” he did so with the understanding that he wasn’t expected to follow closely, or at all, in the footsteps of the 2016 film debut of the DC Comics team of supervillains.
“Frankly, the weirdness of doing a sequel that’s not a sequel was part of the appeal of it,” Gunn says on a recent video call. “Just because it’s so different.
“I think “Alien” and “Aliens” is a good example,” he says of the first two films in the sci-fi franchise. “They’re both really enjoyable, but ‘Aliens’ was a much, much different movie. And the idea of doing something like that was interesting.”
At first, Gunn says he considered a complete tear-down of the 2016 “Suicide Squad,” which starred Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, and Jared Leto as the Joker alongside other villains sent by Viola Davis’s government agent Amanda Waller on a do-or-die — but probably die — mission to save the world.
“At first I thought I was just going to change everybody out,” Gunn says. “And I’m like, ‘No, you know, there’s got to be an Amanda Waller, and there’s no better Amanda Waller than Viola Davis,’ so how can I change her out.’
“I loved Margot as Harley Quinn, but I also love Margot in ‘I, Tonya,’ ” he says. “She’s really something special.
“So I just kind of told the story that I wanted to while taking the elements that I really liked a lot from the first one.”
Newcomers to “The Suicide Squad,” which opens in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, Aug. 6, include Idris Elba as Bloodsport, John Cena as Peacemaker, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, and Sylvester Stallone as King Shark.
It also brings back Joel Kinnaman as Col. Rick Flag, the military officer in charge of the Suicide Squad, though he’s far from the Flag of the first film, Gunn says.
“I think Joel changes the most from the first to the second movie,” he says. “He’s lighter in some ways. In other ways, he’s sort of heavier. He’s got these things that he’s haunted by, his sort of idealism, his patriotism.
“And he finds out that he’s being taken in.”
A new Flag
Kinnaman, in a separate video call, says he was thrilled to return as Flag in this re-imagined Suicide Squad tale.
“It’s not a sequel, it’s not a straight-up reboot, but it sort of lives in its own universe,” he says. “And you know, there’s a lot of things that I loved about the process of making the first film, but there were some things that I just — I never really got loose myself, I felt a little constrained in that character.”
When he and Gunn talked, Kinnaman says they both agreed that Flag needed a freshening-up.
“One of my first conversations with James was that I really wanted to go with the tone of the character that he had written, and I’m not going to make myself sound in any way like I did in the first film,” Kinnaman says.
“He was all for that. And it just made for a looser, a little warmer, and a little more comedic version of Flag that I had a lot of fun doing.”
This time, Flag is a lighter presence whether it’s the shift of his speaking voice from tersely stoic to a friendly warmth or wardrobe choices that add a bit of humor to the previously stiff-lipped military man.
“I was a little scared going into that because I haven’t really done any comedy,” Kinnaman says. “And I’ve never had to say lines that were that ridiculous before. So it was an adventure to try that sort of new genre.
“I don’t really feel I reprise the character. I feel like I sort of invented a new version of him.”
A brighter palette
The transformation of Rick Flag is mirrored by Gunn’s work as writer and director.
Gone are the dark and dreary hues of previous films in the DC Comics Universe, replaced by sunshine and bright colors. Out went the deadly serious speechmaking of the past, in came a troupe of supervillains who are oddly funny – and sometimes just odd.
Gunn, whose work on the first two installments of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise was similarly filled with brightness and light, oddballs and jokers, says many stylistic choices were dictated by his script.
In the film, the Suicide Squad is dispatched to the fictional Latin American country of Corto Maltese, where secret experiments on an alien starfish-shaped creature called Starro are taking place in a Nazi-era prison and laboratory.
Gunn says the production team looked at scores of photos of Havana, Cuba and São Paulo, Brazil for inspiration for Corto Maltese.
“Then we shot it in Colón, Panama, which is this sort of beautiful but falling-apart city,” he says. “We were able to use all the colors but to keep the grime as part of it.”
Starro, who escapes the lab to terrorize the surrounding city, doesn’t look like any other fearsome creature before, instead, as Gunn describes it, “something that’s the scariest, most horrifying thing in the movie, but that happens to be a giant pink and cerulean blue starfish that looks like something out of a Jeff Koons artwork.”
“When I first did ‘Guardians, adding color to the palette was a big deal,” he says. “We had been through — since ‘Blade Runner’ — 30 years of movie science fiction movies with dark color palettes. And I was like, ‘I want to go back to the colors of ‘Flash Gordon,’ and make this a really colorful movie because it keeps your brain alive.
“So this was sort of a permutation on that.”
His new characters also were chosen with an eye on freshness and fun.
“King Shark is somebody who’s been in a lot of Suicide Squad comics, so he’s kind of a natural,” Gunn says of the massive shark-human hybrid voiced by Stallone. “Polka-Dot Man, I really wanted a character who was pathetic, I guess, so I actually looked up online, ‘Who are the dumbest supervillains of all time?’ and Polka-Dot Man was always near the top.
“There are characters like Weasel, who to me is Bill the Cat from ‘Bloom County’ just kind of turned into a supervillain,” he says. “I’m always doing these anthropomorphic creatures, and I wanted to create one that was not at all cute, just a (bleeping) mess.”
Hero, not super
As Rick Flag, Kinnaman, whose only previous superhero character came in the title role of 2014’s “Robocop,” plays the straight man to all the killer kooks in “The Suicide Squad.”
“Sometimes you just feel like you want to also join the crazy and, like, also be a (bleepin’) lunatic,” he says. “But it’s also just fun to be a part of it, fun to be in the middle of it.
“And for some of these scenes, you are sort of the projection surface of the audience. You just have to be there and take it all in and continue with your mission.”
Not that Kinnaman isn’t interested in going full spandex in the future, having auditioned for the role of Thor that ultimately went to Chris Hemsworth.
“They wouldn’t let me audition for Captain America because I’m just half-American,” he jokes of his Swedish-American parentage.
Near the end of the film, Flag has a pivotal fight scene with Peacemaker, the supervillain played by wrestler-turned-actor John Cena who declares he loves peace so much he doesn’t care how many people he has to kill to get it.
It’s the kind of violent action for which Kinnaman says he gained 25 pounds of muscle before the film, though even then, stunt fighting the muscular Cena wasn’t pretty.
“I didn’t expect John, who has been a professional wrestler for so many years, was going to be that good at fake fighting,” he jokes. “He was so much fun to work with, a real comedian.
“I think it was very wise that it was written in the way that it was, like he really beats the (stuff) out of me,” says Kinnaman. “Because I could fit into one of his biceps.”
