What Are Suicide Squad's Other Surprises?

Filmmaker David Ayer, directing one of the most-watched and most-leaked films of all time in the form of DC Entertainment's Suicide Squad adaptation, said in a recent interview that fans had nothing to worry about: there are still plenty of surprises on the way.

...like what?

Well, probably a lot. Regardless of how many unsubstantiated rumors have floated around, and how many out-of-context car chases we've seen in the streets of Toronto, that's all still a very small percentage of the actual film. If there's one thing we learned from The Dark Knight Rises, it's that having a huge chunk of the movie "leaked" at some point ahead of time doesn't actually give fans a sense for how the film is going to play out in practice.

That said, there are some fairly obvious directions the movie could go to deliver a big surprise or two.

Fleshing out A.R.G.U.S.

Who actually runs the organization that the Suicide Squad works for? Yeah, we know Amanda Waller plays a role -- she's always there when it comes to Task Force X -- but who else is there, and what competing agendas do the various managers, politicians and factions within A.R.G.U.S. have? These are all areas that can be explored, and provide an entry point for any number of characters ranging from Lex Luthor to Maxwell Lord to Sam Lane and Steve Trevor.

More villains

The team seems pretty diverse, but arguably the most interesting is that both rumors and on-set videos seem to indicate that some characters will be met incidentally rather than becoming a big part of the plot.

This makes sense -- villains are out of jail and on the hunt for another villain, so there are probably plenty of seedy joints they can go to and find other villains who would be willing to work with them for a price, or who they used to run with.

Deaths

The thing about the Suicide Squad is that it's made up of villains. In many cases, the odds aren't good these characters would ever have been in a major role in a feature film unless Suicide Squad came along, and that means they won't be in demand after this movie is over.

It's a long-standing trope of Suicide Squad storytelling that one of the characters will die over the course of the missions to establish that Waller -- and the authors -- are serious about a willingness to put the characters in real danger, and it wouldn't be unexpected for that to happen in the film. With a star-studded production, though, who's going to have the bomb in their head go off? Only time will tell.

The tone

If there's one thing that jumped up and bit everybody about Guardians of the Galaxy, it wasn't the plot, it was the tone of the movie, which was very different than fans expected and a bit different than the average Marvel movie up to that point.

While the world of Man of Steel was fairly dark, the fact that it was in the end a Superman movie should give plenty of room to differentiate between that and the look and feel of a movie headlined by homicidal supervillains.

And, hell, maybe their depravity and lack of morals could play into a more darkly comic tone.

Oracle

It's unlikely we'll see Oracle, at least in the traditional sense. It seems DC and Warner are more interested in the value of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. Still, considering that the concept of a paralyzed Gordon playing an intelligence role as Oracle debuted in Suicide Squad comics and became one of the staples of that series, a guy can hope, can't he?