The following story contains spoilers for David Ayer's Suicide Squad. Stop reading now if you have yet to see the movie, and want to go in unspoiled!
It was Enchantress's last stab. With the members of the newly formed Suicide Squad bearing down on her mysterious weapon, she used her magical powers to infiltrate their evil minds, giving each villain a glimpse at what their happiest life could look like. Deadshot (Will Smith) finally was able to vanquish The Batman (Ben Affleck). Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) was living a normal life with her true love, The Joker (Jared Leto). They even had a child! (What might THAT mean?) Then there was Jai Courtney's unpredictable Captain Boomerang. What was his happy alternate lifestyle?
Well, we never got to see it. And Boomerang missing a happy vision stood out. By this point, there were so few Squad members left in Suicide Squad. Why didn't he get a vision? During a recent press day for Suicide Squad, I was able to ask director David Ayer if they had a vision in mind for Boomerang, and as it turns out, they did! The director told me:
I don't know if we shot one. I know I'd written one at some point, yeah, if I remember correctly, it was basically like some sort of, you know, some kind of desert island fantasy, being fed grapes or something. It was, either that or a bunch of bunny rabbits. I can't remember.
Bunny Rabbits? I thought Boomerang liked pink unicorns.
So much of the conversation surrounding Suicide Squad has been about what has been left out of the final product. Jared Leto keeps telling journalists that there's enough deleted Joker footage to create a separate Joker movie. While David Ayer says the cut in theaters is HIS final cut, there have been lists of potentially deleted scenes that are making the rounds, suggesting that Squad was tinkered with, severely, in the editing room.
But that didn't stop Suicide Squad from getting off to a strong start at the box office over the weekend. The movie opened to roughly $135 million in the States, and had pushed its global cume to $267M. It has a long way to go before it reaches profitability, but this was a solid first step.
Do you wish that Captain Boomerang had this Enchantress scene filmed? I know Jai Courtney does. When I brought up this written scene to the actor in a subsequent interview, he laughed hard and asked me:
Why didn't we go there? It was probably just time and money in the end. But no, we didn't shoot any, we didn't shoot any desert island shit. Maybe next time around. That would have been nice, too. But sometimes, you've got to trim the fat.
Suicide Squad is in theaters as we speak.
