2021’s The Suicide Squad needs to steal the best joke from Deadpool 2. In the interest of being shocking, living up to the title, and setting the right tone, the hotly anticipated sort-of reboot from James Gunn should turn to the funniest — and darkest — joke from Ryan Reynolds’ superhero sequel. Story details on The Suicide Squad are minimal so far, but some plot hints were recently revealed to fans at DC FanDome, with the ominous warning not to get too attached.
The Suicide Squad sequel will see returning star Margot Robbie reprise her role as Harley Quinn once again, with Jai Courtney back as Captain Boomerang, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. The movie is also filled with famous new faces such as Idris Elba, Peter Davidson, John Cena, and frequent Gunn collaborator Nathan Fillion among a huge cast. The reboot will see a new version of Task Force X brought together to take on an as-yet-unnamed villain, with Gunn promising a riff on 1970s war movies.
James Gunn's starry list of talent could be a bit too full for the sequel to succeed onscreen, which is why the director needs to repeat the best joke from Deadpool 2 and kill lots of them quickly. The movie features one standout comic moment that The Suicide Squad could learn a lot from, both in terms of comedic effectiveness and establishing an appropriately dark, funny tone for the film. Even without an R rating, The Suicide Squad could match Deadpool’s blackly comic impact by revisiting this great gag (and could show Disney how to make a PG-13 Deadpool along the way).
Deadpool's Best Gag Killed The X-Force
2018’s Deadpool 2 was a triumphant example of a superhero sequel done right, an anarchic and ultraviolent slice of self-referential action-comedy that saw Ryan Reynolds suit up as the titular antihero. The film’s funniest moment came in the form of the infamous X-Force sequence. In this scene, our hero assembles a crack team of heroes named the X-Force to free the young Firefist from captivity with several big-name actors in the heroic roles (including an unseen Brad Pitt). However, in the ensuing - very brief - moments of inspired carnage, the entire team is killed off immediately after being introduced. It's a joke which still lands in the PG-13 version of the film, proving that Deadpool's dark humor can be PG-13. The gag epitomizes the appeal of the source material's dark, subversive sense of humor.
Why The Suicide Squad Should Copy Deadpool 2's X-Force Gag
But what does The Suicide Squad, a second big-screen outing for the titular team, have to do with Wade Wilson’s wisecracking? Well, 2021’s The Suicide Squad has already introduced a slew of new characters for the standalone sequel. Many critics and fans noted that the 2016 original was bogged down by having too many characters to follow. At one point, Suicide Squad almost acknowledged the criticism by killing off Slipknot who dies only one scene after he is introduced.
Fans are excited to see a DC film from the reboot’s director James Gunn, and he along with the film’s marketing campaign has already warned viewers to not "get too attached" to the new arrivals on the team. Furthermore, many of the new characters are played by semi-recognizable faces such as Nathan Fillion as TDK, comedian Steve Agee as King Shark, comedy YouTuber Flula Borg as the Javelin, and Gunn’s own brother Sean Gunn as Weasel. As such, killing off an entire team of semi-known faces in one fell swoop could serve to establish the serious threat of this film’s new villain (or villains). The moment would also obviously be guaranteed to get a grim belly laugh from audiences. But most importantly, the potential sequence could make it clear that anyone can die for the remainder of the film’s action, thus intensifying tension in The Suicide Squad and really living up to that name.
