Suicide Squad Had Six or Seven Different Versions According to Director

Every movie goes through many iterations during the editing process, and Suicide Squad is no [...]

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(Photo: Warner Bros.)

Every movie goes through many iterations during the editing process, and Suicide Squad is no different. According to director and writer David Ayer, "there may be six or seven different versions of the film." That's what he told Empire in their revealing post-release interview with him. Specifically, the intro to the film was almost released very differently - originally, when he had a cut he was testing for friends and family and test audiences, everything happened in direct order.

"There's a linear version we did where it opens up with June [Moon, played by Cara Delevigne] in the cave and tells the story in sequence with the arrests and Batman, and then we go to Belle Reve," Ayer said. In fact, it was originally even more complex. "The first script started in Belle Reve and told the backstories of everybody in these sort of flashback montages. The original conception is that there would be these memory bursts as they sat in their cells recalling their previous lives and also get the audience up to speed about who they are and how they ended up there. The first impulse was always to do a montage in the first act, but you chase different things."

The test audiences were "a little disoriented as to who to watch and why" he said of the linear version. "So we came up with what we call the dossier version, which has Amanda [Waller, played by Viola Davis] presenting the backstories and origins of the various members."

That's the one that made it onto big screens, with Waller telling her government dinner mates about each character, with flashes as to how several, including Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and Captain Boomerang, were apprehended (by future Justice League members, no less).

Suicide Squad is in theaters now.

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