BIRDS OF PREY Director Cathy Yan Sympathizes with SUICIDE SQUAD's David Ayer Over Studio Interference
Suicide Squad director David Ayer has been opening up about his Suicide Squad movie explaining that the film that was released in theaters, wasn’t his original vision of the film. Warner Bros. and DC executives made him change a bunch of aspects of the film after Batman v. Superman and Deadpool were released. They wanted the film to be less like Batman v Superman and more like Deadpool, so they told him to liven it up.
Ayer recently explained that the initial trailer released for the film “nailed the tone and intention of the film I made. Methodical. Layered. Complex, beautiful and sad. After the BVS reviews shell shocked the leadership at the time, and the success of Deadpool - My soulful drama was beaten into a ‘comedy’”
The director of Birds of Prey, Cathy Yan, reached out to Ayer on Twitter and sympathized with him. She had to deal with similar issues while making Birds of Prey, telling him that she “knows the pain.”
Yan previously talked about some of the issues she had and how she had to fight to keep the movie’s most disturbing scene in the final cut. That scene included Black Mask having a woman undress and dance in dead silence in his club. It was there to show how evil this guy was. The director previously explained:
“I’ll be honest: We had to fight to keep that scene because it was uncomfortable. It was risky, and we had to fight to keep it at all. There are cuts of the movie without it. I’m really glad that we kept it because I think it’s important. I think that a lot of people have been very impacted by that scene.
“I think it’s a huge turning point for Roman; it’s a huge turning point for Canary, and the way that we shot it was hopefully not about the sexual violence upon the woman. It was more about Roman, what he’s capable of and Canary seeing him for who he really is for the first time. Now, she can fully cut herself off from him, and I thought it was a really important scene. So, we fought for it.”
It’s good to know she was able to win that fight. Even if I didn’t like the film as much as others, I totally support the filmmaker in getting to bring her vision to life to show the audience what is important to her and the story she wanted to tell. It makes me wonder if there are other aspects of the film that didn’t make it into the final cut because of studio executive interference. Who knows, maybe a few years from now, we’ll see a director’s cut of Birds of Prey showing Cathy Yan’s original vision for the film.