An official trailer for The Suicide Squad was released a few days ago, and it looks promising. As the trailer will make abundantly clear, the sequel (possibly reboot) to Suicide Squad (2016) is directed by James Gunn, who has directed The Guardians of the Galaxy series. This is smart on the part of Warner Brothers. They need to gain back some of the trust they lost with the original Suicide Squad by making a reputable director the face of their marketing. Even just by looking at the trailer, there are a few things that are already better than the disaster that was the original film.
First, there is the matter of color. Many of the DC films of the past decade are colorized in such a way that it always feels like I’m watching a movie with sunglasses on. Of course, I am referring to Zack Snyder’s work, but this problem turned out to be worse in Suicide Squad, which was directed by David Ayer. The movie was so dark that, in a scene where a character is lighting an entire office space with fire, it still was difficult to make out what was going on. The brighter colors in the new trailer is a refreshing look and also one of the good indicators that this film will not be taking itself too seriously.
There’s also the writing. Of course, we only have the bits and pieces of dialogue in the trailer to refer to, but I sincerely think it was better than any dialogue that happened in the entire Suicide Squad movie. When I watched the trailer for the original Suicide Squad I didn’t think much about the writing because it was doing what most trailers seem to do: show the dumb, quippy jokes and withhold the actual good lines. You can imagine everyone’s disappointment then, when the entire movie was full of dumb jokes and uncomfortable dialogue. Seeing just a few of the exchanges in the trailer, I can already tell these characters will act more like people, and if James Gunn gets these wacky characters right, really interesting people. Some of those lines felt a bit forced, but we can’t judge until the film comes out.
This is a step in the right direction for DC in general. It’s about time they admit that the Marvel take on things is what sells for superhero movies if they truly want to be as big. Like I’ve said before, Marvel came first, and they set the stage for what people expect from a superhero film. Zack Snyder’s DC films are like the stubborn, edgy teenagers who refuse to admit that mother Marvel is right. Let’s hope that by stealing a Marvel movie director and actually showing some vivid colors on screen, people can unanimously enjoy a DC movie for once.