Even The Suicide Squad director, James Gunn, is afraid of Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. Task Force X’s leader was first introduced to the DCEU in 2016’s Suicide Squad, portrayed by the aforementioned Oscar-winning actress. In the film, Waller acts as the government official who assembles the team of Belle Reve detainees and divvies out their marching orders in exchange for shortened prison sentences. While David Ayer’s film was highly divisive due to its underdeveloped characters, muddled plot, and Jared Leto’s performance as The Joker, Davis’ performance as the ruthless government agent was a bright spot.
Davis will now return for James Gunn’s Suicide Squad to lead Task Force X into an entirely new deadly mission. While its predecessor found Waller assembling her team of incarcerated supervillains to eliminate Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), Gunn’s version will follow Task Force X’s foray into the fictional South American country, Corto Maltese. Initially, their directive is destroying a Nazi-era prison lab called Jotunheim, which will be upended by the arrival of Starro, a kaiju-sized starfish with powers of mind control.
Like the Suicide Squad themselves, Waller is known to show shades of villainy on top of an intimidatingly tough persona. In an interview with the The New York Times, Gunn was asked about bringing back Davis ,the only returning character outside of Task Force X, for The Suicide Squad. Gunn revealed that even he, the director of the film, is sometimes scared of her. Read Gunn's comment below:
She has no qualms about doing that whatsoever. She’s just the sweetest person in the world and Waller is scary. When she’s on set and that turn happens, I am literally afraid to come in and give her a note because of the look in her eyes. It is incredibly intimidating. She comes up to here [holds hand at height of his neck] on me. But it is. She’s amazing.
Davis’ performance in 2016’s Suicide Squad was a standout, but she was let down by many other aspects of the film. Now that she is reprising the role, it will be interesting to see what Gunn does with the character, but every indication so far is that she will return with the same ruthlessness. In the previous film, Waller controlled the Squad with nanite bombs implanted within their necks, which could be detonated remotely. Based on trailers for The Suicide Squad, it appears Waller will be back to her old ways.
After Davis’ second portrayal of the character, the DCEU would be wise to utilize Amanda Waller in the same vein as the MCU’s Nick Fury. Davis is a phenomenal talent, nominated for multiple Academy Awards for her roles in Doubt, The Help, and last year’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, though she won for Fences in 2016. Just as Gunn discussed above, Davis is able to achieve an unparalleled level of ruthlessness on screen, but it’s unclear if the DCEU has any plans for the character past The Suicide Squad.
Source: The New York Times
