The First SUICIDE SQUAD Trailer is Out and it’s GREAT!

First off: holy shit.

At the Warner Bros. presentation at Comic-Con over the weekend, the DC segment was kicked off by the entire cast of Suicide Squad taking the stage and showing off the first trailer for the movie. As is common nowadays with exclusive SDCC footage it leaked almost instantly, racking up millions of views. In a statement to Deadline they seemed pretty adamant that the footage would definitely not be released to all of us.

“We have no plans currently to release the Suicide Squad footage that leaked from Hall H on Saturday. It’s unfortunate and ultimately damaging that one individual broke a long-standing trust we have enjoyed with our fans at the convention by posting early material, which, at this point, was not intended for a wider audience. We are still in production on Suicide Squad, and will have a big campaign launch in the future. Our presentation yesterday was designed to be experienced in that room, on those big screens!”

Sounds pretty serious to me.

However, less than an hour ago the director, David Ayer, tweeted this:

And then the trailer landed!

It’s clear that the release is a reaction to the leak rather than as something which was planned, which is in some ways a shame. It’s not fair on the fans who waited in line for hours to see that footage, and it’s not fair on Ayer who didn’t intend for us all to see it this early. That’s why I understand the argument for not releasing footage online – why bother waiting in line otherwise? However, I would argue that the experience itself is worth it, and after viewing this trailer twice already I would say their wait was worth it too.

It’s dark, visceral and really does feel like a team movie. I think the DC of old would have focused heavily on Will Smith as he is the biggest star in the cast, but in this his Deadshot gets the same amount of screen time as Harley Quinn and Amanda Waller. It’s great to see. What’s also awesome is that this gives me faith DC can actually build a universe. Sure, you can stuff a ton into Batman v Superman to world-build (and I’m praying to God it works) but this is a mostly-unrelated property that illustrates how this cinematic universe isn’t all new-and-shiny. This stuff has been going on for a long time (even if Superman was the first real hero).

My only complaint is that it’s very miserable. While I’ve never read any Suicide Squad comics, my impression of the movie was that it would be like an R-rated Guardians of the Galaxy, however this is much more sombre than that movie. Perhaps it’s just the choice of song. The movie is still thirteen months away, so we should have more of an idea of what it’ll be like nearer the time!

Anyway – enough of my rambling. Check out the trailer below!