Suicide Squad: A Detailed Analysis Of The Cast

Tonight saw the first official look at David Ayer's Suicide Squad.

And while it doesn't give us any hints as to whether or not that first image of The Joker was a troll, the look is decidedly grounded, military and rooted in the "real world."

For the most part.

Here's where we do our best to take a look at each character, see what we can observe about them and then open to the floor for our readers, who always see something we miss.

We'll be traveling left to right, rather than trying to do anything in order of "importance," so if you're here for Harley and Deadshot, they're a little more than halfway down.

Also fun to notice: Lots of characters here that have recently or will soon appear in live-action on TV, including Katana and Killer Croc, who are upcoming on Arrow and Gotham, respectively.

Four non-white and three female leads on the team, which is an interesting choice considering that the Marvel movies took a while for anybody but white guys to get any screen time, and it isn't as though Man of Steel did anything much different.

A few opening thoughts

No Joker could suggest that the rumors he's escaped and the Squad is hunting him are true.

Of course, if he's escaped, why doesn't Waller just blow the bomb in his head? Does she not do that for the most dangerous sociopath on the planet, but she does it for the guy (Boomerang) who's a master of weapons nobody ever uses anymore?

Yeah, you could argue that he might not have ever been part of the Squad itself, but it seems odd. That's something that's consistent through every version of the Squad, and Joker would be a prime candidate for you to want to be able to shut  him down on the turn of a dime.

Also, "Welcome to Belle Reve" is likely an image created just for this picture. It would be hard to believe that a maximum security prison had that sense of humor about itself. But for those who have forgotten, Belle Reve is one of the DC Unvierse's most notorious prisons for supervillains. It's either appeared or been referenced numerous times in live action, including in Smallville, Arrow and Gotham.

Adam Beach as Slipknot (?)

Adam Beach's character has technically not yet been revealed, but the most recent rumor is that he would play Slipknot, a minor villain with a couple of different iterations in the DC Universe -- one, a Firestorm villain and the other a Robin villain. 

The "classic" version, who appeared in Firestorm, was a former government chemist who created a way of coating ropes that made them nearly impossible to break and incredibly adhesive, preventing people from being able to slip out of them. With ties to Kobra, he tried and failed repeatedly to kill Firestorm (a poor choice of a target, considering that Firestorm has mastery over elements and could theoretically just change Slipknot's adhesive into butter or something) and ended up in the Suicide Squad. So that's our likely candidate.

In the comics, he's got a fairly odd costume, with his ribs exposed and the rest of his body covered up. He wears a hangman's noose actually on his person, and sleeves come out in a flourish like a ceremonial robe. I'm assuming this has to do with his ties to the Kobra Cult, some of whom have a similar look.

Here, he's fairly generic: The only clue that this might actually be Slipknot is that Beach has a number of different kinds of ropes on his person. You can see one hanging from a hook on him, and others wrapped around him and/or hanging from a spool on his back. Clearly this guy has a specialty weapon. It'll be interesting to see how they use him and whether he gets a lot of screen time with such a niche ability.

Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang

First of all, I like the slightly askew hat. If you're going to keep the winter cap look, that's probably the way to do it, and the hairstylist has made it work on Courtney.

The jacket works, too -- well, the trench coat does.

...Wait. 

Does that say "Captain?"

Is Captain Boomerang wearing an '80s-style satin baseball jacket that says "Captain" on it?

What is it with this movie and everyone putting their names on themselves?!

That said, here's a head start for future cosplayers.

Between that jacket and the chunky jewelery and gold chains, it seems that they'll go for a version of Boomerang inspired by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales' Identity Crisis -- a guy who wants to think himself bigger and more impressive than he really is. Will he have the other villains ready to knock him down a peg, like in Identity Crisis? Seems unlikely; after all, he'll be competing with Slipknot for screen time and attention.

That's for the tone, though. The look is New 52, after a fashion; the knit hat and the trench coat are a fairly new development.

We've recently seen Boomerang on Arrow, though, and frankly this version of the character is slightly truer to the comics (at least the era of the comics that Suicide Squad draws from), but unlikely to be overly praised by fans who generally thought the character was handled well on the small screen. There isn't a ton to say about him, though, other than the observations about his wannabe-player look...which is reinforced by one of his boots being duct-taped together.

Yeah...maybe Slipknot ain't looking so bad now, huh?

Cara Delevingne as Enchantress

This is a major departure from the comics, in that Enchantress in the Suicide Squad comics was basically just a lady in a witch's hat and a yellow blouse.

With so many characters on the team who just look like "guy with a gun," it's interesting that they took someone with no costume to speak of in the comics and made her so unique-looking. Maybe it has to do with her generic name and the desire to make her memorable for new audiences?

We have seen a version of Enchantress with a lot more superhero-like look, which includes a metal headpiece that is evoked here. The little interconnected series of chains on the necklace is something we see in the New 52 version of the Enchantress, which is interesting -- she's got hard ties to Justice League Dark and John Constantine. Could we see her play a role in the planned Dark Universe movie from Guillermo del Toro, assuming it ever happens?

Of course, regardless, the chain motif is way more pronounced here than it was in the comics, where it's barely (and sometimes not) present or at least visible.

Oh, and speaking to the whole names-on-their-clothes thing? Her civliian name is June Moone. And she's wearing a moon on her head.

June, of course, suffers from essentailly a split personality where she's one half and the Enchantress is the other. This here looks a lot like the full-on-crazy version we get of the Enchantress when she's separated from June entirely.

A character whose presence here is surprising, Katana will appear in the film after having made her first in-costume live-action appearance on Arrow...this Wednesday.

That certainly seems to be a thumb to the eye of the "this is why we can't have Deathstroke" argument floating around the Internet.

In any event, Katana here looks a bit more like her pre-New 52 iteration, who would wear superhero-like garb, whereas the current, New 52 version DOES wear that kabuki-style mask but pairs it with more classic samurai-inspired clothing.

Her sword doesn't seem likely to have supernatural properties on Arrow, but...well, she's standing right in front of Enchantress. What are the odds that the two are connected to the supernatural side of the DC Universe? Pretty good, I'd say.

...And that's something kind of big and cool to roll out in a movie like this. Most people expected Squad to be super-grounded, and instead we're getting creepy Enchantress and potentially-haunted Katana before Marvel gets Doctor Strange onscreen. Weird.

Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag

He's...uhh...a guy in a military uniform.

Yup, that's what he is.

Okay, so there isn't much to say here. Like in the comics, Flag dresses like a soldier, plus minus a few percentage points.

Here, we do get Kinnaman looking a little scruffy (because he's Kinnaman), so maybe that will play in, in the sense that he'll be retired or disgraced or something. Or just that he's assigned to Task Force X, which doesn't really require formal dress.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn

We're getting a variation on the current, roller derby-inspired look for Harley Quinn, so hat-tip to Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, for sure.

There's a lot going on here, and Harley is very clearly inspired by the Arkham Asylum game franchise --which in turn influenced the New 52.

The collar is very New 52. Like the images we've seen of the Suicide Squad Joker, she's got a number of tattoos, including one that says "Puddin," what she calls Joker in basically every iteration of her existence.

There's a lot going on there, and she's a very popular character, so we'll likely look at her in some more depth soon.

Will Smith as Deadshot

We get the big panel of body armor, like in the Arkham games or on Arrow. 

What's weird? It looks like the missing eye is on the wrong side in this image; every other Deadshot I can find has the right eye replaced, while Will Smith's for some reason has the laser sight on his left one.

The red actually looks like tights up top, and between that and the mask, he's about as true to the comics as you're going to get in a movie that's about mercenaries rather than superheroes.

More on him later, too, for the same reasons.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc

Here's a character whose look is variable depending on who draws him in the comics, so seeing a live-action take is interesting.

He's also expected to appear on Gotham in Season Two -- or at least some proto-version of him will -- so it's notable that we'll have four characters in this film (five if you count Harley's cameo) who have appeared on DC live-action TV series within a few years of the movie's release.

Anyway, he's got a very humanoid look to him, which will likely work for the "just another guy in prison" plot he's rumored to have, but it distances him somewhat from the way Croc has been depicted in the comics of late. There's a bit more humanity to his look in the Arkham games than in the comics right now, but this goes a step beyond that tooth-covered face and gives us a guy who looks more like the one we had in the '90s comics where he first started to be really featured. Apparently it's a consistent idea that he's evolved to be more croc-like and less human, though; he looked more or less like this in Arkham Origins.

As Kevin Allen notes below, Croc also wears what looks like a crocodile-skin jacket. That might be a pretty interesting conversation piece, and something that could give quick insight into his character if somebody in-story likens it to cannibalism or whatever and we get to see Croc's response to the accusation.

Jay Hernandez as El Diablo

El Diablo was one of the latest names dropped into the mix, and hasn't to our knowledge been officially confirmed by DC Entertainment or Warner Bros. yet...

...but again, we have a guy with his name on his shirt. Seriously, does Task Force X all moonlight at Denny's or something?

He's kind of a mish-mash of the pre- and post-Flashpoint iterations of the character. the final pre-Flashpoint version had a massive, black and white, skull-inspired tattoo over his whole head and face that made him look monstrous. The New 52 iteration is more modestly tattooed, and the design on his chin matches the one we see in the movie version, but he was a lot more conservative with the tattoos than Suicide Squad's.

Somewhere in between, we get this sugar skull-inspired fella right here.