At one stage, Harley Quinn was being positioned as one of the DCEU’s marquee characters after Margot Robbie’s performance was praised as one of the very few redeeming features in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. However, those plans seem to have been put on hold after Birds of Prey bombed at the box office despite the fan favorite taking center stage. Although, the 30 year-old actress does still take top billing in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
If the filmmaker’s work on Guardians of the Galaxy is any indication, the focus is going to be spread among the team rather than one or two major characters, but then again, not everyone is going to make it out of the movie alive. Still, the behind the scenes video that premiered at DC FanDome promises a lighter, breezier and altogether more fun outing than Ayer’s grim and somber first installment, as well as raising the bar when it comes to the set pieces.
In fact, in a recent interview, Robbie admitted that a huge action scene was one of the most taxing things she’d ever been involved in, but promised that it will turn out to be one of The Suicide Squad‘s standout sequences.
“I don’t want to give it away. When you watch the movie, it’s probably about halfway through. There’s an insane sequence that Harley does which was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever shot onscreen. And we shot it in like four days and I remember looking at the schedule and being like, ‘Oh my god, we’re not going to be able to do this. This is gonna be impossible’. And we did it, but it was hard, and I was beat up by the end of it, like really beat up. But James was actually just texting me before and he said that scene looks amazing. That whole sequence apparently looks really cool, so when you see the movie, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.”
David Ayer must be quietly seething that James Gunn has been handed what looks like full creative control on The Suicide Squad, while his effort was plagued and ultimately butchered by studio interference. If that wasn’t enough, the buzz coming out of FanDome has almost completely dampened the talk surrounding the Ayer Cut, as fans are now firmly focused on the fantastic-looking soft reboot at the expense of the heavily compromised original as the DCEU’s resurgence continues.