Here's why The Suicide Squad will set James Gunn's team of terrible villains loose against the DCEU's new villainous threat, Starro, rather than the Justice League being called upon. The alien invader, who uses star-shaped spore drones to body-snatch his victims is a threat unlike any faced in the DCEU to date in terms of the threat he presents to an entire planet. While Enchantress had similar body-snatching powers in David Ayer's Suicide Squad, they seemed to be a side effect of her plan rather than its major focus, which was, instead, another ominous sky beam.
The first footage for James Gunn's soft reboot of the Suicide Squad franchise was shown as DC's FanDome event, confirming who each of the cast - including Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, Nathan Fillion, John Cena and Jai Courtney - are all playing and also the scale and scope of the film. The teaser footage was accompanied by the promise that The Suicide Squad will be like a 1970s war movie, and accidentally seemed to confirm that Starro is the main villain.
The alien invader will seemingly come to Earth and initially attack the home country of Joaquin Cosio's General Mateo Suarez, whose call for aid leads to Amanda Waller and the US government sending Task Force X to deal with the threat. But the real question here is why an alien threat would be dealt with by a team of no-hopers and reprobates rather than the collected might of the Justice League. The answer is probably that the Justice League's powers are exactly why they can't fight Starro.
Why Starro Is Such A Threat To Suicide Squad 2
As in the comics, Starro's powers are formidable on their own, but the giant alien creature requires a drone army to do his bidding. The solution to that requirement comes in the form of Starro's asexually created spores that enact Starro's will like ships responding to a mothership. The spores are parasites, which attach themselves to the faces of their enemies, hijack their nervous system, and take control of them. In short, Starro is capable of creating an exponentially vast army of servants with only access to host bodies required and that's exactly what his role as The Suicide Squad's villain will probably entail. Naturally, with Earth filled with mostly vulnerable human bodies, ripe for hijacking, it makes sense that the alien has set his one giant eye on an invasion.
Starro's Powers Make The Justice League Too Valuable An Asset
This, of course, isn't the first alien threat that has come to the DCEU. Zod came in Man Of Steel, Doomsday followed in Batman v Superman and then Steppenwolf led the theatrical cut of Justice League (with Darkseid replacing part of his backstory in the Snyder Cut). Even Suicide Squad's Enchantress was a sort of inter-dimensional alien spirit that came to Earth thousands of years ago. But in three of those four cases, actual superheroes were sent to protect the planet, because they were obviously the best people for the task. Both Doomsday and Steppenwolf were so formidable that they took not just superheroes but the combined and consciously focused team-work of the heroes to overcome them.
The problem with Starro, though, is that if the Justice League were sent to deal with his invasion, they would be presenting themselves not as an obstacle but an opportunity. Each member of the Justice League represents a potentially formidable addition to Starro's army, with only a body-snatching spore standing between their devoted heroism and them turning their powers against the Earth. In short, the Justice League can't afford to fight Starro, because the Earth cannot afford to have to fight the Justice League.
The Suicide Squad Are Purposefully Terrible (And Barely Any Have Useful Powers)
On the other hand, the new Suicide Squad are nothing like the Justice League. They're poorly skilled, in comparative terms, they were all stupid enough to have been captured at one point and their powers are far below the level of a near-godly alien, an Amazon, an Atlantan, a time-traveling speedster or even the rich guy with an incredible toy chest. Even compared to the version of Task Force X in Suicide Squad, this team is embarrassingly short on big-name players and the general quality of their superpowers is either low or comes with a caveat like Harley Quinn's psychological issues or King Shark's reportedly contradictory demeanor for a monster. They have boomerangs and javelins, one is a weasel, one controls rats... they're not A-list DC villains by design.
In short, The Suicide Squad's Task Force X has nobody who would be missed, but even more importantly, none of the crew would significantly boost the power of Starro's army if they ended up being taken by a spore. The caveat that they're probably no good in a fight is obviously a trade-off Amanda Waller is willing to accept, particularly as James Gunn has said there's something beautiful about the idea of a group of villains who aren't even good at being bad. They're here because they're absolutely not supervillains.
Suicide Squad's Expendables Really Live Up To Their Dirty Dozen Parallel
The big problem with David Ayer's Suicide Squad - well, one of the bigger ones, at least - was the failure to live up to the title's billing. There was precisely no reason why any second-tier hero couldn't have been sent in to deal with Enchantress (particularly since the need to keep Amanda Waller's project secret didn't even last to the end of the movie). Task Force X wasn't a real Suicide Squad, they were just the puppets of an over-zealous, dehumanizing boss. It didn't quite ring true. But The Suicide Squad has an opportunity to take back that mistake by having Task Force X sent out on an actual suicide mission, where the chances are so slim that their paymasters fully expect them to fail and, frankly, to die.
James Gunn has already spoken about The Suicide Squad as referencing The Dirty Dozen - a reference that even the new movie logo leans into - and the earliest marketing for his reboot suggested fans should not get attached to the new cast of characters. All of the indicators are there that The Suicide Squad will have a high death toll and using the introduction of Starro to the DCEU as the catalyst perfectly sells how much of a threat he is. And having the Justice League purposefully avoiding the situation sells that billing even more. In a franchise that has so far struggled with creating really compelling villains, that's going to go a long way to making The Suicide Squad truly great.
