The film centers on a single mission set on the fictional island nation of Corto Maltese. It’s also violent, perversely comedic, and despite pacing issues, an impressive effects-driven spectacle. And The Suicide Squad is thoroughly focused on notions of expendability. Gunn, for a time, was uniquely aware of how expendable he was. The real-world resonance between the story being told, and the person guiding its telling, adds another layer of potential richness.
This makes Gunn’s interpretation of The Suicide Squad, which he wrote and directed, doubly interesting. For this, the filmmaker is back to making studio tentpoles largely without controversy. In the world of blockbuster Hollywood filmmaking, where almost anything is permissible as long as profits and acclaim follow, James Gunn is a rare case: A high-profile man who, when confronted in bad faith about past indiscretions, still expressed regret about that past, and had a track record that appeared to prove a sincere desire to change.
The best version of a Suicide Squad story is often a meditation on what it means to be completely expendable, and perhaps irredeemable in the eyes of society. Task Force X members are lured into service through blackmail or the promise of a reduced sentence, and kept in line with explosives implanted in their necks. Like the article-less 2016 Suicide Squad film, The Suicide Squad is a movie about imprisoned DC Comics supervillains coerced by the government into joining Task Force X, a secret division that sends its inductees on dangerous black-ops missions that are mostly expected to fail. But in the interim, he began work on what would become The Suicide Squad. Then a year later, after colleagues rallied and clarity settled in, he got the job back. Disney, kowtowing to the bad-faith outrage, severed ties with him. The former shock-horror provocateur, who adapted his lessons from the transgressive Troma Entertainment for mainstream efforts like Slither and Super, became the target of right-wing trolls who surfaced old, offensive jokes, some going back a decade. In July 2018, a year after the success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
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