~Matt Key
GIANT NEWS OUT OF VARIETY
We’ve got a confirmed cast for David Ayers Super villain team up movie, Suicide Squad, currently scheduled to open on August 5th, 2016. The logline for the film, out of Variety, is “the story centers on the team of supervillains who are given a chance at redemption by the government. The catch: Their mission will probably kill them all.” The WB has long viewed this project as “The Ocean’s Eleven” of comic book movies.
Here’s the cast list:
Jared Leto will be playing the Joker.
Which version of the Joker, we’re not sure. Certainly it will not be the Joker from the Silver Age of comics, they’ll most likely stick to a dark, menacing character akin to what Heath Ledger did in The Dark Knight, though, fingers crossed, they don’t use Scott Snyder’s Joker who has his own face expertly cut off to fake his death. (though… if he did that at the end of the movie…hmmmm).
Not sure if he’ll serve on the team or be a villain that they are fighting, but who cares — It’s the Joker!
Joker made his first appearance way back in Batman #1 from 1940.
Tom Hardy will be playing Rick Flag.
Rick Flag is, more or less, a Captain America type character — just without the super soldier serum. He’s an expert soldier, tactician and special ops expert. He can also be a spy, a saboteur, infiltrate a base unseen and wreak havoc. He is, for better or worse, a one man army. Typically, he is the moral compass of the team, just barely over the tipping point to make him a “good” man. It’s unclear if they’ll make him the original Rick Flag, who fought in WWII, or if they’ll use the Jr. incarnation, or if this will even enter into the story at all.
If you mixed MacGyver with the Winter Soldier minus all the brainwashing, you’d have Rick Flag.
Rick Flag made his first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #25, from 1959
Will Smith will be playing Deadshot.
Deadshot is a marksman so proficient, so practiced, so calm and so acclimated to the idea of shooting someone dead, that he never misses a shot, having once shot an apple off of Captain Boomerang’s head with his eyes closed. Deadshot has served on the Suicide Squad more than a few times. He has two wrist-mounted guns, is proficient with every weapon known to man, is an expert in hand-to-hand combat and is, more or less, on the exact opposite side of the moral spectrum from Rick Flag.
Most likely Rick Flag and Deadshot will be at odds with each other for a majority of the film, both of them being the extreme alpha males that they are.
He originally appeared in Batman #59 in 1950 and has continued to be a big time villain for him.
Margot Robbie will be playing Harley Quinn.
Harley Quinn, or Harleen Quinzel, which is her real name, was a psychologist at Arkham Asylum who, after working with The Joker (Mister J, as she comes to call him) fell in love with him, and, who can blame her with Jared Leto playing Joker. She is almost as psychotic as The Joker, but not quite.
Turns out, Ms. Quinzel was not quite as sane as everyone thought as she became the Joker’s girlfriend, running with him on all of his missions and helping out. She is a highly trained gymnast, an expert criminal/burglar, has a genius level intellect and prefers to work with a gigantic mallet. She was originally introduced in Batman: The Animated Series, created by Paul Dini and and Bruce Timm, but she was such a popular character, she was brought in to the DC continuity in 1999’s Batman: Harley Quinn. (Though, for all you collectors, her first actual appearance is Batman Adventures #12)
Jai Courtney will be playing Captain Boomerang.
Captain Boomerang (referred to as just Boomerang in Variety article) is a loner of a character who, you guessed it, is super-duper hyper proficient with boomerangs. They’ll most likely use the first incarnation of Mr. Boomerang, Digger Harkness, though he later had a son, Owen Mercer, who took his place. Much like Green Arrow creates different arrows with different abilities, Harkness makes his own boomerangs: some are explosive, some have super sharp edges, and some are electrified.
Though his power set is often times made fun of and is kinda useless, the character is nonetheless an interesting one. In the comics, he’s a super annoying character who’s personality gets on everyone’s nerves. He’s also typically seen as an undependable and cowardly member of the team, which makes him dangerous, capable of lashing out to protect himself or just to get back at someone for a joke they made at his expense.
He first appeared as a Flash villain, in Flash #117,
Finally, we have Cara Delevingne playing the Enchantress.
Not to be confused with the Thor villain/love interest, Enchantress. (That’ll be confusing if Thor: Ragnarok decides to bring in their Enchantress…)
She is, for the most part, a sorceress, sometimes good, sometimes evil. It’s unclear how they’ll handle her in the film, but in the comics her real name is June Moone and she can, more or less, summon an evil entity that calls itself “The Enchantress” by calling out her name, much like Billy Batson and SHAZAM! She can then channel those magical energies. Sometimes Moone loses control and can no longer command the dark magical force within her, other times she wins out and can wield the power just fine.
This is an interesting choice for a role and character as this could somehow lead in to Justice League Dark, which was written by Guillermo Del Toro just a couple weeks ago. The Enchantress has both been an enemy to and fought along with the more mystical wing of the Justice League.
She originally appeared in Strange Adventures #187 in 1966.
And now you’re asking, what about Amanda Waller?
Well, that is perhaps the most interesting bit of news is who they are looking at for the team’s director, Amanda Waller. Waller is the hardass head of ARGUS who sends Task Force X on all of their missions and is known as being the most ruthless government official of all time. There’s no one that really likes her too much. The shortlist for this is Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and… AND… Oprah Winfrey, who, according to sources, are WB’s first choice! She first appeared in Legends #1 from 1986.
Suicide Squad will begins shooting next April in Toronto, directed by David Ayer.
Follow Matt Key on twitter, here!
Follow Geek Girl Authority on twitter here and Google+ here!
- Who Are the Young Avengers: CASSIE LANG aka STATURE - February 20, 2023
- Who Are the Young Avengers: HULKLING - September 23, 2022
- Who Are the Young Avengers: IRON LAD - August 25, 2022