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James Gunn considered using Superman as the villain for The Suicide Squad, but Starro wound up being a much better match for the movie.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Suicide Squad, now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
There’s a throwaway line at the beginning of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad that sums up the threat of a metahuman gone rogue: “What if Superman had decided to fly down, rip off the roof of the White House and grab the President of the United States? Who would have stopped him?” The idea of Superman as a villain is evocative; Zack Snyder spends a good portion of Justice League pondering over what would happen if he ever broke bad. So it’s no surprise James Gunn originally toyed with the idea of giving the antagonist role to the Man of Steel when developing The Suicide Squad, his answer to the critical failure of the 2016 film.
In a recent interview with the Script Apart podcast, Gunn explained how an early draft of the film had the Squad fighting Superman, citing how the larger villain of the film was America — and there’s no better representative of America than its biggest Blue Boy Scout. Superman has become a massive part of American culture over the past century and hews closer to the platonic ideal of a superhero than any other character. Any parody of the superhero genre has its own alternative to the character, with flight, speed, and strength to match. Superman is the end-all-be-all of the modern superhero myth, which is why it’s so fun to twist the character around and present him as a villain.
But The Suicide Squad instead chooses to put its focus on Starro the Conqueror, a skyscraper-sized starfish with the ability to psychically dominate the minds of others. This is a better choice, both for the tone of the film and for the economy of detail in the finished product. Like Gunn’s other big hit, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad is bright, loud, and unapologetic. Its protagonists are imperfect and relatively obscure names from all across DC’s history. The most well-known character in the film is Harley Quinn, and even then, Margot Robbie’s portrayal of the anti-hero places her smoothly as “part of the team,” working alongside her co-stars without stealing the spotlight.
That same kind of deft narrative balance wouldn’t be possible with Superman. He’s simply too big a star. The Suicide Squad would go from a story about a squad of misfit criminals to a story about fighting Superman. Even if he was kept in reserve as a surprise reveal for the film’s third act, keeping Superman’s face off of posters would be a massive snub to the actor hired to play him. A-list Hollywood stars like Henry Cavill are used to a certain amount of publicity, and going with a lesser-known star would risk a lot on a relative unknown’s portrayal of the iconic character, with the only payoff being a flood of articles and press covering their debut in the role.
Gunn cited continuity reasons as his primary motivator for not including Superman, saying, “At the time, there [were] a lot of questions about, ‘Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?,’ and all that stuff that I didn’t really want to deal with that much. I just wanted to tell a good story.” This belies one of the weaknesses of the current incarnation of the DC Extended Universe — even its directors don’t know what’s going on. Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, and Justice League all fall into a relatively straightforward linear timeline. But that’s only a handful of films compared to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s two dozen. The role of Batman has already been handed off to a new actor, and it’s entirely possible The Flash could reboot the entire DCEU timeline.
The Suicide Squad is part of the DCEU, but only barely. Any greater association with the rest of that ecosystem would only taint the movie, and it’s all the better for its isolation. Starro is a much better pick for the film’s antagonist, as colorful and joyous as Gunn’s directorial style. The director also mentioned in his interview that Starro would “probably never be put into another movie, [and not as] a kaiju that is bright pink and cerulean blue.” There’s any number of movies that could use an evil Superman as their villain, but The Suicide Squad is the only one that can use Starro, and that’s what makes the larger-than-life invertebrate a perfect fit.
To see why Superman wouldn’t be a good fit to take on Task Force X, The Suicide Squad is in theaters now and streaming on HBO Max.
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