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Suicide Squad Director Wishes Joker Had Been the Bad Guy

Suicide Squad director David Ayer has come out and said he wants a “time machine” so he could go back and make the Joker the main villain of the film. Cause that’s exactly what the movie needed ... more excuses for Jared Leto to send people dead pigs.

Ayer, responding to a fan on Twitter, acknowledged that the film is “controversial” (spoilers: it’s a total mess), but continued to defend it as his attempts to make something unique. To be fair, he did, but probably not in the way he intended. Instead, Ayer released a movie that breaks a lot of the basic rules of filmmaking for basically no reason. This video by Folding Ideas does a pretty good job of explaining it.

(And before you say “That’s just an editing problem,” Ayer has presented this as his cut of the film, in spite of all the reshoots, trailer fodder, and even the Extended Cut.)

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“I took inspiration from the insanity of the original comics,” Ayer wrote on Twitter. “If you set out to make a mass appeal movie, it’s easy to end up with vanilla. But I went for it. And I know Squad has its flaws. Hell, the world knows it ... Wish I had a time machine. I’d make Joker the main villain and engineer a more grounded story. I have to take the good and bad and learn from it.”

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I will admit, Ayer does make a good point. Suicide Squad needed to be more grounded. The “Skwad” shouldn’t have been fighting an apocalyptic cloud of doom engineered by Enchantress’ hula hooping. It should’ve been a simple black-ops mission that the good guys were afraid to touch. Hell, even I’ll admit the Joker’s involvement would’ve fit better in that type of scenario. In theory, the Joker would’ve made a far superior villain in Suicide Squad. It’s just, guys I can’t, Leto’s performance infuriated me.

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But hell, if you liked the Joker, at least take comfort in knowing Ayer wanted more of him too, even though he says there’s no “secret edit” with a bunch of extra Joker footage (despite evidence to the contrary). Plus, there’s always the possibility he’ll show up in Gotham City Sirens, the Harley-led film Ayer is producing and directing. You can read Ayer’s entire response below.

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