It doesn’t matter how much the theatrical cut of Suicide Squad pisses you off – which ranges from not much to a great deal depending on who you ask at what time – you’ll never despise it as much as David Ayer.
The fact the filmmaker has spent almost seven whole years lamenting the way his blockbuster comic book adaptation was ripped away from him and re-edited into the DCU’s worst-reviewed installment of all-time is barely scratching the surface of his issues with the project, to the extent that he’s defending the Ayer Cut to this day.
Whether or not it ever ends up happening, it wouldn’t exactly be a challenge for his unfettered vision to surpass the original in terms of quality, but the writer and director remains keen to remind everyone that he wasn’t responsible for the steaming turd of cinema that made its way to theaters in the summer of 2016.
Things then took a turn for the bizarre when a commenter compared the editing on Suicide Squad as being designed to appeal to the TikTok generation. Ayer definitely agreed, but then he ended up having to open the drawer marked “sarcasm” after he was taken too literally by someone too keen to point out that the social media app was hardly the all-conquering phenomenon it is now back then. In fact, it didn’t even launch until September 2016, by which time Suicide Squad was winding down its theatrical run.
Another day, another unexpected chapter in the Suicide Squad discourse, but it’s something we’re going to have to get used to until the mythical Ayer Cut either does or doesn’t come to fruition.