Man of Steel grossed more than $668 million worldwide in 2013, a number healthy enough to convince Warner Bros. that DC properties could anchor a shared cinematic universe the way Marvel Studios had with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That confidence pushed Warner Bros. to fast-track a slate of interconnected films rather than build the universe gradually, and the strategy showed cracks almost immediately. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice arrived in 2016 to a mixed reception, splitting critics and audiences over its tone and structure. Then, Justice League fared worse behind the scenes, with Zack Snyder stepping away from the production and Joss Whedon brought in to complete the film through extensive reshoots and under strict executive mandates. Across the following decade, the DCEU collected genuine hits alongside costly misses, changing creative direction multiple times as Warner Bros. searched for a formula that could compete with Marvel’s dominance.
Suicide Squad emerged from that chaotic early period as one of the DCEU’s first ensemble efforts, arriving in theaters on August 5, 2016, exactly a decade ago today. Director David Ayer assembled a cast built around Will Smith (Deadshot), Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn), Jared Leto (Joker), Viola Davis (Amanda Waller), and Joel Kinnaman (Rick Flag) to tell the story of a government-assembled team of imprisoned supervillains sent on a suicide mission. Produced on a $175 million budget, the film promised a tonal departure from the grim solemnity of Batman v Superman, leaning instead into the anarchic energy of its trailers. However, critics did not respond well. Suicide Squad landed at a 26% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 40 out of 100, marks that make it the lowest-rated entry in the DCEU’s theatrical run.
The critical consensus around Suicide Squad centered on a handful of recurring complaints. Reviewers described a muddled plot that struggled to justify its own premise, along with thinly written characters who received little development beyond a single defining trait. The villain, Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), drew particular scorn for a generic apocalyptic threat that gave the ensemble little to actually fight against. Much of that incoherence traced back to the editing process itself. Warner Bros. brought in Trailer Park, the company responsible for the film’s celebrated marketing trailers, to recut the entire movie after test audiences responded more enthusiastically to the tonally lighter footage than to Ayer’s original assembly. The result was a theatrical cut stitched together from two competing visions, one grim and one comedic, and critics noticed the seams. As a result, Jared Leto’s Joker, despite heavy promotion, ended up with limited screen time relative to the marketing built around him, leaving one of the film’s most anticipated performances feeling underdeveloped.
Suicide Squad also built a bad reputation around what happened off camera. Leto approached the Joker through an aggressive method-acting process aimed at outdoing the intensity attributed to Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance in the same role. That approach produced disturbing behavior toward his co-stars, including sending unsettling items such as a dead pig, a live rat, and prophylactics to the cast as a way of staying in character throughout production. Davis recalled the unease of receiving one of those deliveries before filming had even begun, and Smith later described Leto as having gone fully into the character both on and off set. Leto and Ayer both later disputed parts of the story, stating some of the items were exaggerated or unused, but the account had already spread widely in the press ahead of the film’s release. That off-screen controversy became inseparable from the finished film’s reception, feeding a broader sense that Suicide Squad‘s troubles extended well past what was shown on screen.
Poor reviews did not stop Suicide Squad from becoming a genuine box office success. The film opened to more than $133 million domestically, setting a record for an August debut, and went on to gross nearly $750 million worldwide against its $175 million budget. Audiences embraced the film’s aesthetic even where critics did not, and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn — with her red-and-blue jacket, pigtails, and baseball bat — turned into one of the most replicated Halloween costumes in the country within months of the film’s release. In fact, the character’s popularity outlasted the movie’s critical reputation, carrying Robbie into two more DC projects.
Fans have consistently placed the blame for Suicide Squad‘s shortcomings on Warner Bros. rather than on Ayer himself, pointing to the studio’s decision to recut the film after Batman v Superman‘s negative reception spooked executives into chasing a lighter tone. Ayer has said for years that his original version of the film plays differently from what reached theaters, and the #ReleaseTheAyerCut movement has followed a similar trajectory to the campaign that eventually delivered Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Ayer has fluctuated between hope and resignation about the cut’s prospects, at one point stepping back from the campaign publicly before returning to advocate for it again, and cast members including Robbie, Smith, and Kinnaman have voiced support for its release. A decade after Suicide Squad‘s theatrical release, the Ayer Cut remains unreleased, and the demand for it has not gone away.
Suicide Squad is currently available to stream on HBO Max, including the extended cut that restores ten additional minutes of footage.
