A new fan trailer has surfaced on YouTube reimagining last summer's Suicide Squad with Jared Leto's Joker as the main antagonist for the team of super villains.
A lot of the critics of DC's super villain blockbuster focused on (ironically) the film's lack of interesting villains. Many felt that Cara Delevingne's Enchantress and her army of faceless minions were a weak and uninteresting threat to the squad, and that the limited screen time for Leto's portrayal of the Joker left the character unnecessary to the final film.
This newest fan edit of Suicide Squad's trailer from YouTuber Taj Holmes takes all traces of the Enchantress and her army out of the mix, instead wondering what the film would have been like if the Joker had been the main antagonist for the film. The trailer makes the chaos breaking out in Midway City a direct result of the Joker's madness, forcing Amanda Waller to assemble the team of mostly-non super powered villains to face a severely powerful and deranged psychopath gangster. First of all, this re-edit reimagines Suicide Squad as a more intense and less jokey final feature than the real film. Gone are the self-aware music cues like "Ballroom Blitz" and "Bohemian Rhapsody", replaced with a slowly building and ominous score intercut with the dark images of the film. The perspective change makes it look like a lot of the dialogue from the film is talking about the Joker. In just the span of two minutes, reasonable character arcs in this re-edited version of the film are established for the main stars of the film.
Margo Robbie's Harley Quinn is the most obvious adjustment, as her romantic subplot that is not all that relevant to the main conflict of the real Suicide Squad is shoved to the forefront here. Her love for the Joker would become a central emotional conflict to the team's attempts to stop the clown, providing a legitimate wildcard element that the original film attempted to feature through the romance between Joel Kinnaman's Rick Flagg and Delevigne's June Moone. The dialogue for Will Smith's Deadshot is repurposed to make it sound like he has a personal vendetta with the Joker, and it feels like Bruce Wayne/Batman makes more appearances in this trailer than he does in the original cut.
The Joker's extended involvement and the removal of the Enchantress seems like it would help Suicide Squad become a more streamlined and focused film. Some had problems with Leto's over-the-top performance as the character, but more screen time than just 15 minutes might have helped the Oscar-winning actor flesh out his performance more, which would've led to a better film on the whole.
Suicide Squad is now available on digital and Blu-ray.
NEXT: Suicide Squad 2 May Start Filming In 2018
Source: Taj Holmes (YouTube)
