Fans of the DC shared film universe are rallying for David Ayer’s original cut of 2016’s critically maligned, box office hit Suicide Squad.
Even audiences seemed underwhelmed at the film when it was released, as it boasts a “rotten” rating on both the critical and audience scores of the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes (as of press time). This is quite the opposite from the critically and fan hailed sequel, James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, released last year.
However, Ayer himself claims that if his director’s cut made it to audiences, instead of the studio-meddled mess that made it to theaters, it would play “like an entirely different movie.”
Fans on social media were quick to back the director, with the hashtag #ReleaseTheAyerCut trending on social media Monday.
Another fan pointed out how the changes Ayer listed, such as a totally different first and third act and alternative soundtrack, could have definitely changed the net outcome of the film from negative to positive.
Another fan expressed that while he wasn’t a huge fan of the 2016 film, it would nevertheless be lovely to see Ayer’s “original vision.”
To be fair to the director, his filmography up until Suicide Squad‘s release really made it seem like he was a perfect match for the content. Having penned the 2001 film Training Day, for which Denzel Washington won an Academy Award, and both writing and directing the excellent 2014 war drama Fury, Ayer seemed to specialize in focusing his lens on doing character studies of antiheroes in positions of authority. That is arguably the same theme of the 2016 comic book film, with Suicide Squad centering around supervillains banding together to help save the world. And with the success of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, that has undoubtedly turned many a skeptic into believers, too.