DC’s ‘Suicide Squad’: Who Are They And Why Should You Care?
With Marvel fast approaching the end of its second phase of films–and DC not having even finished its second movie yet–DC and Warner Bros. have some serious catching up to do both in getting in front of the eyes of the mainstream audience, and in bringing unique flavors to the cinema that Marvel hasn’t been able to touch yet. With David Ayer’s upcoming Suicide Squad, it is very possible we will be getting that unique flavor. With the recent DC movie schedule from Warner Bros. you may have been hearing left and right about Suicide Squad, as it is a definite standout in the list of standard DC superheroes, but who are they?
Director of the film, David Ayer, recently had a perfect way of describing upcoming DC flick (via Empire).
“I can say that it’s a Dirty Dozen with supervillains.”
It’s a very apt description, but a description that means nothing if you’ve never seen The Dirty Dozen or simply aren’t familiar with its premise. The Dirty Dozen are a group of convicts who take on a mission to kill German officers in World War II. By comparison, The Suicide Squad is a band of lesser known supervillains from the DC Universe (The most recognizable of the bunch is likely Harley Quinn of Batman: The Animated Series fame) who are freed from prison in order to carry out top secret missions for the government. In a sense, they’re expendable assets, but for DC and Warner Bros. they may be anything but.
As comic book movies have matured over the past decade or so (and especially since Iron Man set the world on fire in 2008), the need to diversify the catalogue has become more and more apparent. Marvel proved it possible with the overwhelming success of Guardians Of The Galaxy, and as fans become more and more familiar with the comic book tropes, they will grow hungry for a different type of hero.
Enter DC’s Suicide Squad, perhaps the perfect concoction of edge, obscure and quirkiness to help offset the traditional “good guy” stories DC tends to tell. More than opening the floodgates of the antihero that have been itching to get open for so long, Suicide Squad can double as an alternate team-up film a la Justice League that DC can milk for sequels, spinoffs, and even intertwine into the main Justice League plot. This is something that Sony has been planning to do with their Sinister Six movie, but given the lackluster reception of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, who knows if that will ever get off the ground.
With that in mind, Suicide Squad may be the only anti-hero team-up flick fans will get in the near future, and the first mainstream one ever. It’ll be a true testing ground to see if the superhero genre is big enough for the villains, and will answer David Ayer’s question… “‘Does a movie really need good guys?'”
