James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad keeps up a certain trend for actor Michael Rooker, specifically in how he keeps dying onscreen. Rooker’s latest role is his fifth collaboration with James Gunn, The Suicide Squad, which follows a group of criminals chosen to go on a daring mission for the U.S. government. Rooker plays a minor role in the new DCEU movie as Savant, a criminal who is recruited to be on the diversion team during the film’s opening Corto Maltese mission.
Rooker’s acting career has spanned over 35 years, beginning with the lead role in the controversial thriller Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Since then, Rooker has gone on to have a successful string of roles in films like Eight Men Out, Mallrats, and Days of Thunder. Rooker has also gained notoriety for his collaborations with Gunn, having had roles in every Gunn-directed movie so far. While the actor's career is alive and well, the same can't be said for many of his characters, since in recent years they have had a habit of meeting sticky ends.
Rooker’s recent death trend began in earnest with The Walking Dead season 3, where his character Merle Dixon is murdered by the Governor when trying to save his brother Daryl. The actor then had a significant role in Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel as Yondu Udonta, who dies in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 when sacrificing himself to save surrogate son Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). Rooker was then killed in Fantasy Island when, once again, his character sacrifices his life to save his associates. In his role as Savant in The Suicide Squad, he was never able to redeem himself and is killed attempting to escape the mission's carnage - only for Amanda Waller to blow his head off. The underlying connection between his characters often being killed is that his screen persona is best used for tragedy, redeeming his unlikable qualities in death to save the protagonist.
If one thing can be said about Michael Rooker, it's that he’s great at playing people who are supposed to be hateful, but who the other characters - and the audience - can’t help but like anyway. For example, Merle is a villain in The Walking Dead season 1, nearly costing the other survivors their lives for his recklessness. When he comes back in season 3, he redeems himself for The Walking Dead's characters and his little brother Daryl, who is a TWD fan-favorite. Similarly, for Guardians of the Galaxy, Yondu is an intergalactic thief who isn’t very well-liked among those who encounter him, but who holds a special place in Quill’s heart that gives him some redeemable qualities.
While Michael Rooker only appears in the opening of The Suicide Squad, his character and ensuing death still leave their mark on the film. Savant opens the film, where he kills a bird in his cell with a ball, but then he is shown as one of the only villains with a conscience. When nobody else will risk it, he swims back to save the drowning Weasel Suicide Squad member. Gunn gave enough indication of an antihero arc for Savant in the first ten minutes of The Suicide Squad it looks like he'll get a redemptive arc, like Yondu - only for Gunn to subvert expectations in a darkly comic way. No doubt the next time Gunn and Michael Rooker work together, the director will give him another inventively gruesome demise.
