James Gunn Talks About the Process of Picking Which Characters to Kill Off in THE SUICIDE SQUAD
Director James Gunn hasn’t been shy about the fact that his expansive cast of The Suicide Squad is not making it out of the film with everyone alive. He has a lot of characters to choose from to pick off in the progression of the story, and fans are warned not to get too attached. As for how Gunn chose to let the story play out, the director spoke a bit about his process at a recent press event (via CB), saying:
"It's fun watching people die on screen sometimes. It was really pretty organic. I mean, I had to choose what characters I was going to use from DC. And I had a huge trove of characters to choose from. Some characters I knew were going to die from the beginning and then other characters I didn't know for sure were going to die. Obviously, I chose some characters that I knew were going to die, see that as the movie plays out. And then some of the characters surprised me. Some of the characters lived that I didn't know were for sure going to live.....In a way it's weird because I love these characters. And in another way, it's weird because I am Amanda Waller. I'm pushing that button on those characters because it serves our purposes as an audience to see them go."
Gunn also spoke about watching some of the deaths himself, and how even though he knew they were coming, it's still hard for him to watch every time:
"Some of the characters, especially as you go further into the movie and some of the deaths later in the film still break my heart every time I watch. There's two characters in particular that when they die, I still get teary-eyed every time I watch the movie, even when I'm watching those scenes edited, when I was going through them. It still really kills me."
So that’s a bummer, but it’s the nature of comic book movies to lose a favorite character every now and then. Soon enough, we will all get to see how it plays out. The Suicide Squad will hit theaters and HBO Max on August 6th. Are you excited?