I’m seeing a lot of people upset over the news that scenes from Suicide Squad are currently being reshot to make the film more funny and “light”, and while on the surface this sounds like a terrible and unnecessary idea it may actually be vitally important to the film’s success and critical reception. Remember how the trailer contained several comedic moments set to the tune of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody? According to the website that originally broke the Suicide Squad reshoot news, those were the ONLY funny scenes in the movie.
A couple of weeks ago I spoke with an excellent source who told me something surprising: the trailer for ‘Suicide Squad’, the one with the Queen song, did not represent the film as it then existed. “Every joke in the movie is in that trailer,” this source told me. The enormous positive response to the trailer led to Warner Bros requesting reshoots that would alter the tone of the film, bringing in some more of the lightness to which audiences responded.
Supposedly the purpose of the reshoots are to avoid unfavorable feedback from viewers who go into Suicide Squad expecting to see a comedic action flick and instead are met with a film that is considerably less humorous than its (apparently misleading) trailer implies–and after all the overwhelmingly negative reviews Batman vs. Superman has received, the absolute last thing DC needs right now is another film to be panned by critics.
Basically what I’m trying to say is don’t dismiss the reshoots just yet, because they may just end up being exactly what Suicide Squad needs in order to be successful among both fans and critics alike.