Suicide Squad

As this mediocre summer movie season nears an end, there’s a little bit of pressure on Suicide Squad to deliver the goods. The trailers are great, the cast looks fantastic, and we’re even excited about Jared Leto’s Joker — despite that jarring Hot Topic street thug aesthetic. David Ayer’s DC super-villain flick hits theaters next week, and just in case you need a couple of extra reasons to get out and see it, WB has released a new featurette that puts the focus on the film’s practical stunts.

A new fan theory has emerged in recent months suggesting that Jared Leto’s version of The Joker in Suicide Squad is actually Jason Todd — a hypothesis that gained a little traction when it was revealed that the Robin suit featured in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice belonged to Todd. If you subscribe to this particular theory, then David Ayer has some disappointing news for you.

Here’s one small sneak peek into our madness: everyone has heard at least in passing about the method approach that Jared Leto brought to his role as the Joker, but the dynamic onset was apparently a little more complex than the soundbites might suggest. According to Suicide Squad star Viola Davis, the dedication that Jared Leto brought to the role had two effects: one, it made everyone — including his friend and costar Scott Eastwood — afraid to interact with him, and two, it made each of them want to be at the top of their game. In one case, Leto mailed a live rat to Harley Quinn actress Margot Robbie, eliciting the scream that he wanted… but Robbie also had the last laugh by adopting the rat as her new pet.

With Suicide Squad only a few weeks away, Warner Bros. and DC Films knew they didn’t need to go big at Comic-Con International this year, only nudge us just a little bit more in the right direction. To that end, their big reveals weren’t new so much as improved: a new trailer cut to emphasize the film’s soundtrack and a new batch of publicity photos showing off the film’s key characters.

Watch the most exciting trailers out of San Diego Comic Con 2016, from 'Kong: Skull Island' to 'Justice League' to 'Suicide Squad.'

Aside from a few brief glimpses in the trailers, we haven’t seen much of Cara Delevingne’s Enchantress in Suicide Squad. The mystical and mysterious villain is the subject of one of two new promos for David Ayer’s upcoming DC super-villain film, while the other…well, he doesn’t really need an introduction.

From the moment we got our first look at Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad, it was obvious that her take on Harley Quinn would easily be the best thing about the film. A new extended promo for David Ayer’s super-villain team-up further makes that point clear, as The Joker’s (former?) partner-in-crime takes the spotlight and proves that she’s not at all what she seems.

The trailers for Suicide Squad have done a fairly good job of letting each member of Task Force X shine, though they have leaned a bit more heavily on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Jared Leto’s Joker — at least they know their target audience. But these new clips help us get to know some of the other major characters from David Ayer’s DC super-villain ensemble, like Will Smith’s Deadshot and Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller.

Kudos to the Warner Bros. marketing department for keeping the main villain of Suicide Squad secret for so long, and although that may change in the next month as David Ayer’s film begins screening for critics, for now it remains an intriguing mystery. That mystery deepens in a new interview with a couple of the film’s producers, who reveal that the enigmatic “adversary” isn’t the only foe the Squad will have to contend with next month.

As you’ve seen in the trailers, Ben Affleck’s Batman makes an appearance in Suicide Squad, which makes sense given that A. It’s a DC Comics movie and B. It features The Joker — you can’t exactly have a movie starring Batman’s arch-nemesis without including Batman himself. But exactly how does the Dark Knight fit into David Ayer’s super-villain team-up?

Trailer-crafting can prove every much an art as filmmaking itself, and whether or not Suicide Squad manages to right the course of DC movies, the David Ayer villain thriller will have given us several great promos. So great, in fact, that even your aversion to mash-up trailers wouldn’t dare extend to this pretty spectacular pairing with Game of Thrones.

Yesterday, Entertainment Weekly revealed four new covers featuring the cast of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, which has taken over the latest edition of the magazine. As you probably assumed, that was just the tip of the iceberg, as even more new photos have arrived showing off the full rogues gallery (along with Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller) from the highly-anticipated anti-hero team-up.