Yahoo Movies David Ayer says Suicide Squad edits 'really distorted' Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn
The director of the 2016 movie has been campaigning for his Ayer Cut to follow in the footsteps of Zack Snyder's Justice League.
Watch: David Ayer reveals the Suicide Squad scene he's gutted that we'll never see
Suicide Squad director David Ayer says changes made to his 2016 DC movie "really distorted" Harley Quinn, which led to him receiving a lot of criticism, for which he was not to blame.
Ayer took the helm of DC's answer to The Dirty Dozen – or The Expendables for the younger crowd – in 2016 and the finished film took a critical hammering. It gave us perhaps the DCEU's best bit of casting in Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, but also delivered Jared Leto as the Joker. Yikes.
In the years since, Ayer has made it clear that he wants the chance to release a new version of the movie as he originally intended, just as Zack Snyder did with his four-hour cut of Justice League in 2021, but he recently confessed that he's "done pushing a rock uphill" and has resigned himself to the fact that it won't ever happen.
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When asked which Suicide Squad scene he wishes we all could've seen, Ayer — whose new film The Beekeeper is in cinemas now — tells Yahoo UK: “The ending. The whole third act was re-engineered.”
He adds: “It was really Harley's movie and seeing her make the decision to choose healthy friendship and support over an unhealthy relationship, and make the decision to leave that relationship. To have that removed from the film really distorted her character and brought an immense amount of slings and arrows upon my head. And no one has ever apologised for it.”
Ayer is currently promoting his newest action movie, The Beekeeper, starring Jason Statham as a former secret service “ghost” dragged out of retirement for a bloody and very personal revenge mission. Liam Neeson is presumably ringing up his agent in disgust as we speak.
But during this latest promotional tour, Ayer has appeared to say goodbye to Suicide Squad for good, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “I can take the hint. It’s been radio silent, and I’m done pushing a rock uphill.”
Ayer says he's moving onwards and upwards now, starting with The Beekeeper. It begins as a one-man army adventure for Statham's ruthless Adam Clay, only for the stakes to ratchet up to frankly ludicrous – and ludicrously entertaining – levels.
For the director, it was a chance to move away from his mixed experience as a director of Hollywood blockbusters – he also worked on Netflix's widely derided sci-fi Bright – and go back to his roots.
“I think it's about me getting confidence as a filmmaker and just having amazing partners I can work with who trust me to make movies and really bring my strengths to the table,” he says.
Read more: How The Beekeeper sets up sequel
The Beekeeper is quite the calling card for Ayer's next chapter, mixing the crunchy violence of his earlier work in films like End of Watch and Fury with the lighter, more tongue-in-cheek tone of his blockbuster era.
And with the stage set for more Beekeeper adventures, there's certainly plenty of buzz around what Ayer might do next. Sorry, we'll get our coat.
The Beekeeper is in UK cinemas from Friday, 12 January. Watch a trailer below.
