DC FanDome: Full character list for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad revealed, plus great behind-the-scenes video!

Posted on August 22, 2020

2 min read

2016’s Suicide Squad was, in a word, crap. In a few more words: Crap that could maybe have been better if the suits at Warner Bros didn’t heavily meddle with director/writer David Ayer’s DC Comics supervillain team-up film. We’ll never know though, because unlike the historic turn of events with Justice League, there’ll be no Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad. No, instead Warner Bros is giving the franchise a bit of a soft reboot with an almost all-new cast and fan-favourite filmmaker James Gunn now behind the camera.

Gunn’s hiring is actually deeply ironic, as it was WB’s last-minute desperate efforts to mimic his uber-successful Guardians of the Galaxy movie for Marvel that led to a lot of the annoying tonal inconsistencies of Ayer’s film. When Disney booted Gunn from the Marvel Cinematic Universe over some controversial old social media posts though (he was subsequently re-hired), WB swooped in. Maybe getting the real thing instead of hackneyed ripoff would be a better idea?

That definitely appears to be the case going on the very first look we just got at The Suicide Squad, the totally not-confusingly named sequel that isn’t a sequel to Suicide Squad! Gunn hosted a panel at DC FanDome tonight and shared a fantastic behind-the-scenes clip of the movie.

On top of that video above, Gunn also finally answered one major question: Who the hell are all these people in this movie?!

The Suicide Squad boasts a massive cast featuring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Steve Agee, Idris Elba, John Cena, Storm Reid, Flula Borg, Nathan Fillion, Peter Capaldi, Pete Davidson, Alice Braga, Sean Gunn, Michael Rooker, Taika Waititi, Joaquín Cosío, Mayling Ng, Juan Diego Botto, Tinashe Kajese, Julio Ruiz, and Jennifer Holland. And in a video debuted by Gunn, their characters were finally revealed.

If you’ve never heard of the majority of those characters before, don’t feel bad as most people probably haven’t. Gunn intentionally went out of his way to get the most obscure villains like Polka Dot Man and Ratcatcher in this movie. He got the inspiration for this eclectic cast from John Ostrander’s iconic Dirty Dozen-inspired run on the Suicide Squad comics, which Gunn said was a huge influence on the movie (he even had Ostrander do a set visit). According to Gunn, this movie is a spiritual sequel to Ostrander’s comics, which is very intriguing.

Another really interesting tidbit is that The Suicide Squad reportedly contains more VFX shots than most recent Marvel movies combined. And they know this because the guy in charge of the VFX on this movie did most of the recent Marvel movies as well.

We’ll be able to see just what requires all that VFX when The Suicide Squad releases on 6 August 2021.