While most eyes among fans of the DC film universe are focused on what might be a real, actual, impeding announcement for the mythical Snyder Cut of Justice League, over the last several weeks we've learned more and more about another DC movie that went through a lot of changes over the course of production, Suicide Squad. The fact that the movie had seen many changes was public knowledge even when the film was hitting theaters, but specifics were quite vague. However, David Ayer has been using social media to reveal many of those details, and the newest one concerns Harley Quinn's love life.
In a recent tweet, David Ayer confirms one piece of information that had been previously reported, that the character of Diablo originally survived the film, but he also includes something that hadn't been as widely reported, that prior to the film's reshoots, Harley Quinn and Deadshot apparently got together.
While Suicide Squad was about an ensemble team of DC villains, the focus of the movie was certainly on two characters, Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn and Will Smith's Deadshot. Perhaps part of the reason for that in the first place was the fact that, in the original vision of the story, the two characters started a relationship. Of course, this would have almost certainly caused problems with Harley's other relationship, with the Joker.
Instead, the traditional relationship between Harley Quinn and Joker becomes the focus of Harley's story in Suicide Squad. If the Harley/Deadshot relationship was only changed during reshoots, it would mean the original plan was filmed during principal photography. And yet, there really doesn't seem to be a scrap of it left in the final cut. Pretty much everybody views Harley as being completely crazy, not exactly relationship material.
The end of this relationship idea likely had a significant influence, intentional or not, on other parts of the film, as David Ayer has previously talked about how much of Jared Leto's performance as Joker we've never seen. If the love triangle aspect of the story was cut, it likely means a lot of changes to Joker's character arc as well.
While most of social media may be focused on releasing the Snyder Cut of Justice League, there is certainly a parallel movement to see the original version of David Ayer's Suicide Squad, even if that movement doesn't have quite the same public profile. There are certainly a lot of reasons to be curious what David Ayer's original concept for the film was. As with the Snyder Cut, the film's subjective quality is perhaps less important that the curiosity of seeing how the film was changed. Ayer himself has never been too critical of the movie that we got, but it does seem like what we got is not the movie he would have made if he had complete creative freedom.
Perhaps, if the Snyder Cut really does become a reality, the people who made it happen can shift their efforts over to another DC movie and make that one just as real.
