Suicide Squad had issues. That's just an objective, verifiable fact, like the sky being blue, the sun being hot, andJared Leto's Joker definitely being super into Korn. Between the shoddy edit job, familiar plot, and inexplicable needle drops, it's impossible to say what, exactly, would have fixed the film. Which is why it's hard to tell what to make of directorDavid Ayer revealing his original concept forSuicide Squad, which involved eventualJustice League villain Steppenwolf controllingCara Delevigne's Enchantress with a Mother Box and taking part in the film's climactic fight scene in place of Incubus (Alain Chanoine).
Responding to a question onTwitter aboutSuicide Squad concept art that showed the Big Bad and his Parademon minions, Ayer confirmed the early plans. The director also noted that the gooey sewer monsters that served as Enchantress' minions throughout the film were first conceived as Parademons.
"This is right," the director wrote. "Enchantress was under the control of a mother box and Steppenwolfe [sic] was prepping an invasion with a boom tube. Had to lose that then the JL story arcs evolved."
Again, it's hard to say how much this would have changed Ayer's finished product consideringSuicide Squad underwentextensive re-edits and re-shoots in the lead-up to release to jazz the film's tone up a bit. But it certainly would have tied the film more firmly into the larger DCEU world-building road that, at one point, seemed certain to lead toward Steppenwolf's nephew Darkseid. (Justice League's end-credits scene, which featuredJesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor and Joe Manganiello's Deathstroke, points more toward a Legion of Doom threat.)
Either way,Margot Robbie's stand-out performance did result in a spin-off for Harley Quinn, Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). Word on the street is thatJames Gunn—who was booted off theGuardians of the Galaxy franchise by Disney after some old Tweets resurfaced—is getting a crack at theSuicide Squad sequel, so all this convoluted DCEU fun is just getting started.
