Twenty One Pilots Suicide Squad Music Video ‘Heathens’ Crosses Major Milestone

DC’s Suicide Squad (2016) keeps setting milestones – the latest being one of the songs from the soundtrack. “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots has now crossed the mark of 2 billion views on YouTube. This marks the second Twenty One Pilots video to make it over that mark, following “Stressed Out” in 2015. “Heathens” has won previous awards, including Best Rock Video at the 2016 MTV VMAs. 

Suicide Squad (2016) has earned $746.8 million worldwide on a budget of $175 million; the film also earned an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, a Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Margot Robbie as “Best Actress in an Action Movie,” and three Grammy nominations. 

However, amidst all that success, Suicide Squad remains one of the most divisive comic book movies of modern times. The theatrical film was one of several that angered DC fans on all sides (see also: Batman v Superman, Justice League) as it didn’t offer the quality of a big franchise comic book movie, nor did fully commit to the darker “SnyderVerse” view and tone that director David Ayer set out to create. By now we know that DC/Warner Bros. didn’t have confidence in the film, because James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad was paved over it in 2021. Still, hardcore SnyderVerse fans refuse to give up the fight to get the “Ayer Cut” of Suicide Squad onto the screen – a fight that Ayer himself endorses: 

“This is an extraordinary case of a movie being utterly re-engineered in post. It’s not a couple cut scenes being added,” Ayer admitted on Twitter. “The nature of the film was fundamentally changed. I’m looking you in the eye telling you this. My cut is vastly better… I put my life into Suicide Squad. I made something amazing. My cut is an intricate and emotional journey with some bad people who are shit on and discarded (a theme that resonates in my soul). The studio cut is not my movie. Read that again. And my cut is not the 10-week director’s cut – it’s a fully mature edit by Lee Smith standing on the incredible work by John Gilroy. It’s all Steven Price’s brilliant score, with not a single radio song in the whole thing. It has traditional character arcs, amazing performances, a solid third-act resolution. A handful of people have seen it.”

Suicide Squad (2016) is now streaming on HBO Max.