The last time we saw a Suicide Squad trailer, it left me a bit bemused. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, because it was, tonally, quite different from the first trailer. Well, the third trailer, premiered at the MTV Movie Awards, doubles-down on the relatively lighter tone of that second trailer, adding more classic rock songs to the trailer soundtrack, and showing off more humorous moments with the characters. They’re not jokes, precisely, but you definitely catch a more fun, comedic slant to the movie.
Which makes sense, because recent reports state that the film is undergoing extensive reshoots to lighten up the tone and add in more of the fun elements people responded to in that second trailer. It’s a good news/bad news situation. The good news is, Warner Brothers/DC might make a movie people actually like, which they really need. Also, any movie with Harley Quinn ought to be fun, so this bodes well for Harley’s cinematic debut. I want people to love her, and the shot in the new trailer of Harley with her mallet is everything I want from Suicide Squad. Give me more of that, yes please.
But the bad news is that Suicide Squad was already costing a pretty penny, and weeks of reshoots means adding tens of millions of dollars to the production budget. Reshoots happen, but usually not more than a few days, and that money is built into the budget from the get. Suicide Squad is way past that. They’re now hemorrhaging money, and that’s going to put them in the same hole that knee-capped Superhero Face Punch. The more important issue is to get a movie out that people like and embrace, but at some point controlling spending is going to be on the menu. Warners has laid off thousands in an attempt to cut operating costs—f*cking curb your spending and save those jobs.
Anyway, the new trailer looks pretty great. I wish The Joker wasn’t in it simply because the Squad is doing a great job selling it themselves, and shoving in The Joker and Batman feels like they don’t trust us to buy into the movie. I mean they probably don’t because we didn’t buy into the movie with their iconic heroes, but really—the Squad is selling this. I’m here for Harley Quinn.
