James Gunn Explains Why He Chose Starro as the Villain in THE SUICIDE SQUAD Over Superman

In DC’s The Suicide Squad, Task Force X ends up finding themselves facing off with a giant extraterrestrial villain named Starro. But before Starro was the villain, director James Gunn was looking at pitting Task Force X against Superman! Yep, the Man of Steel was almost going to be the villain of the film.

So why didn’t that happen? During an interview with Script Apart, the director explained, "There was a time when I thought The Suicide Squad should fight Superman.” But, at the time there was a lot of uncertainty around Henry Cavill’s Superman and his place in the DCEU:

"At the time, there were a lot of questions like, 'Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?' I just didn't want to deal with it all that much."

The idea would have seen Task Force X having to "catch Superman for some reason... It's gotten out of hand or [he's] being controlled by someone. And then this group of lousy supervillains has to face the most powerful hero in the world."

Gunn went on to talk about Starro and his love of the character, saying:

"I think he's a perfect comic book character because he's absolutely ludicrous but also very scary in his own way. What he does is scary. He used to scare the crap out of me when I was a child, putting those face-huggers on Superman and Batman. So I thought he was one of the major, major DC villains that was probably never going to be put into another movie. And if they did, it'd have been a 'black cloud' version of Starro. Not a giant walking starfish, a kaiju that's bright pink and cerulean blue, this ridiculously big, bright bad guy."

Starro ended up being a fantastic, fun, and completely off-the-wall villain! I loved that Gunn brought him in. While it would have been interesting to see Task Force X face off with Superman, I think I would have preferred Starro the Conqueror. It was just so weird and wild!