Suicide Squad is the gift that keeps on giving. The first few weeks of filming were all over the internet with set pictures featuring the whole cast, including Jared Leto as the Joker, and potentially spoiling one of the big cameos. Now, we have members of the cast speaking up about some odd behind-the-scenes antics and criticizing the superhero genre.
We”l begin with an interview with E!, Adam Beach, who plays Slipknot in the film, who spoke about some recent items co-star Jared Leto, who plays The Joker, has been sending members of the cast. Since Leto wasn’t around during the early pre-production of the film, he decided to send “gifts” to some of the cast.
Beach said, “He sent [Margot Robbie] a nice love letter with a black box with a rat in it–a live rat. It was beautiful. Then he sent bullets to Will [Smith] with a letter.” Another gift that was sent was a “dead hog” accompanied by a video of Leto, in character, as the Joker.
“Basically, what he said was, ‘Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys,'” Beach said. “The video he showed is in character. It blew our minds away. Then we realized that day, this is real.”
Beach also revealed director David Ayer hired an onset therapist for the cast. “David Ayer is about realism. So if your character is tormented, he wants you to torment yourself,” Beach said. “He wants the real thing. We kind of have like a therapist on board if you fall off the wagon and really are villainous. There’s a friend of [Ayer’s] that’s very unique in making sure we have our ground.”
My first reaction is to laugh at how absurd it is to think this movie is so dark it needs a therapist on set for the actors. I would hope none of these actors are teetering so close to the edge that all it takes for them is to play someone like Captain Boomerang or Killer Croc to make them snap. But who am I to say?
One of the characters that has thus far remained a mystery is Enchantress. The character played by model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne (Paper Towns), who spoke out about sexism in the superhero genre in a recent interview with Empire magazine (via THR).
“Generally though, superhero movies are totally sexist.” ~ Cara Delevingne
Delevingne said, “There are only three girls in [Suicide Squad] but in my opinion they have the best roles. Generally though, superhero movies are totally sexist. Female superheroes are normally naked or in bikinis. No one would be able to fight like that. Wonder Woman, how the hell does she fight? She would be dead in a minute.”
There’s no denying sexism exists in the superhero genre. Even with recent strides in the comics (Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Batgirl to name a few), and hopefully soon in film, there’s a long history of women being portrayed as sex objects and fighting crime almost nude. However, let’s not applaud Delevingne just yet. As many online have pointed out, her costume for Suicide Squad seems to go against everything she says by having her in what amounts to little more than a bikini.
Of course, it’s still too early to judge the film and its depiction of female characters, but it’s also a bit hypocritical for Delevingne to say these things while posing for a cast photo where all the guys look uber-masculine and she’s in a skimpy outfit, along with Margot Robbie in less-than-concealing shorts. This isn’t to dismiss her comments, only a bit of added perspective.
Considering we’re still over a year away from seeing Suicide Squad, we can’t really judge anything to this point, but if the last couple months are any indicator, it looks like we’ll be getting plenty of interesting tidbits to discuss.
Suicide Squad will be released August 5, 2016.
