David Ayer Describes SUICIDE SQUAD as an “Anarchic Punk Rock Art Movie”
There’s a long history between Batman and The Joker, and we really don’t know what that story is yet in these DCEU films. We’ve gotten little glimpses here and there, but nothing is concrete, so the fans are left to speculate on what it all means and how all the pieces fit together.
Well, in an interview with Empire, director David Ayer filled in some of those holes regarding the history of Batman, Robin, and The Joker and confirmed that Joker killed Robin, not Harley Quinn as previously reported:
"This is sort of my personal thing and maybe less about a larger connection. But Joker killed Robin and Batman basically smashes his teeth out and locks him up in Arkham Asylum. It’s in the asylum where Joker would have done the ‘damaged’ tattoo as a message to Batman saying, 'You’ve damaged me. I was so beautiful before and now you’ve destroyed my face.' That’s where the grill comes from."
This is a story that I would love to see on the big screen! I’m not sure why WB and Zack Snyder decided to skip all this stuff, but maybe they will go back to it in flashbacks in later films.
Ayer also talked about how there were “six or seven” different versions of Suicide Squad that he cut and none of them were rated R. He went on to describe his film as an “anarchic punk rock art movie” explaining:
"The film is really the journey of the soul. I know this is going to provoke incredible howls of outrage, but it’s really this anarchic punk rock art movie. June Moone goes into this cave where she becomes possessed by this alter-ego that’s hypersexual and primitive and destructive and vengeful. Everybody who has to take her down experiences their own sort of ‘dark night of the soul’ as Enchantress offers up this fantasy reality where she can provide them with a false nirvana, false happiness. The film, in a lot of ways, is really about the splitting of the personality and addiction, and the dark side of the soul."
I like that explanation of the film. And in case you were wondering how the first version of the film started, the director says:
"The very 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."
I think that original concept might have played better with audiences, but then it wouldn’t have had that anarchic punk rock film that Ayer was going for. Make sure to read the whole interview here as he talks about several different aspects of the film.