The state of DC films has been in disarray for over half a decade now. 2016 was the year that broke DC, and it hasn’t recovered since. The release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice divided audiences early in the year and caused Warner Bros. to go into a complete panic over their plans for the newly established DCEU. They grew increasingly distrusting of Zack Snyder’s direction for the upcoming Justice League movie and the DCEU, which, combined with a family tragedy, led to Snyder leaving and WB eventually hiring Joss Whedon to complete what ended up being a complete mishmash of a movie in 2017. Before that, though, something similar happened with 2016’s Suicide Squad. Although the film was largely complete by the release of Batman v. Superman, WB ended up conducting a complete re-editing of the villain-oriented film in an attempt to lighten the tone and move away from the approach established by Snyder’s superhero fight night earlier in the year.
The result, similarly to what would happen with Justice League the next year, was immensely disappointing. Suicide Squad was a mess of a movie that never really found its own personality. Just as fans petitioned for and then eventually got the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, there has also been a growing movement of people online who are loudly demanding that WB release Ayer’s original cut of Suicide Squad. With the recent hiring of James Gunn and Peter Safran to head the newly-titled DCU, this demand for the “Ayer Cut” has grown even louder, to the point that Gunn even addressed it on Twitter. However, releasing the alternate director’s cut of Suicide Squad would be a mistake that would start Gunn and Safran’s reign at DC off on a bad foot. Here’s why:
Repeating the Snyder Cut Fiasco
Warner Bros. Pictures
As excellent as Zack Snyder’s Justice League was when it eventually hit HBO Max in March of 2021, it has become increasingly obvious that the release of that cut of the film has done very little to build or reunify the overall DC brand. While a majority of the fans that pushed WB for the release of the film did so with nothing but good intentions, there’s no denying that a very vocal minority of the “Snydercut” online movement has been incredibly toxic and destructive to the DC brand. Instead of embracing Zack Snyder’s Justice League and being happy to have the completed film they’d been so excited about for so many years, some fans continued to push WB and demand that they scrap their entire DC franchise and return to the story Snyder was telling. Obviously, that hasn’t happened.
The result of this has been an immense division of the DC brand. Some fans are sternly in the Snyder camp; some are pushing for a continuation of what DC has been doing, and others are just waiting for the brand to get its ducks in a row and do anything at all. With the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery and CEO David Zaslav, DC is in a transitionary moment right now. Gunn and Safran have been hired to steer the ship of DC in a similar role to that of Kevin Feige over at Marvel. Their chief task right away is to refocus the DC brand and fanbase and move it forward in one clear and distinctive direction. If they were to go back and get caught up in the logistics of releasing Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad, they would risk putting the entire brand back in the same confusing and divisive spot it has been in for the last six years.
It’s also worth noting that while Zack Snyder’s Justice League was generally very well received, the film wasn’t the smash hit that many expected it to be on HBO Max. While it did have a respectable first week that pulled in 2.2 million streams from US households, those aren’t groundbreaking numbers by any means. The Batman still managed to double those numbers in its first week on the service earlier this year, even after its 45-day run in theaters. If the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad were to be released, it would certainly be an HBO Max original. The interest in Ayer’s Suicide Squad is already much smaller than the demand for Snyder’s Justice League was, which makes it easy to see that a release of the director’s cut of Suicide Squad wouldn’t really perform all that well anyway. So while that version of the film might be significantly better than what was put out in 2016, the chances of it actually gaining any traction are way too low for it to be worth adding further confusion to the overall DCU strategy.
Need to Move the Story Forward
As much as some people wish it wasn’t so, the Snyderverse, the continuity of Ayer’s Suicide Squad and that era of DC are dead and should be left in the past. Gunn and Safran need to move the DC brand forward, not get it even further entrenched in the divisive material that derailed it in the first place. Is the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad better than what was put in theaters? Probably. But that was over half a decade ago now. DC needs to move on. There has already been another take on the Suicide Squad brand with 2021’s The Suicide Squad, which was even directed by Gunn and likely contributed to him getting the top job at DC. That film was significantly more well-received than the 2016 rendition, and it has already spawned a very successful spin-off show with John Cena’s Peacemaker. There’s clearly much more potential in moving forward with that version of the Suicide Squad IP than in going back to try and fix what already failed back over six years ago.
The story of DC needs to be pushed forward, both in a creative and a business sense. In terms of creativity, the DC brand has been stuck in an odd situation of not wanting to use Superman, the Justice League, or really any of its core characters for a while now. WB has been producing seemingly random and very disconnected DC movies for years, and while some of them have been great, there’s clearly no direction to what has been happening. Gunn and Safran have been promising one cohesive story for the DCU moving forward. Going back and releasing Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad doesn’t forward that story, so there’s really no point in doing it. Gunn even acknowledged this on Twitter when addressing the volume of “#ReleaseTheAyerCut” Tweets he has received. He said that while he hears and understands fans, “our initial focus is on the story going forward, hammering out the new DCU, & telling the Biggest Story Ever Told.”
DC needs new voices, ideas and stories to grow the brand back into what it once was and what it could still be. If it gets too caught up in where it’s been before by trying to mend the mistakes of its past, then the brand will struggle to get to the place it needs to be. If Gunn and Safran are wanting to re-establish the DCU with one single story to rival that of the MCU, it would be a huge mistake to go back and release the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad. While it’s admirable that fans want to see the original creative vision of the 2016 film, there are higher priorities for DC right now. The brand as a whole needs to get back on track, and there are much larger fish to fry than Ayer’s Suicide Squad. The Suicide Squad branding has already been largely repaired by The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, so going back to fix the Ayer film would likely do more harm than good at this point.
