Watch the Joker-ific ‘Suicide Squad’ Teaser That Blew Away Comic-Con
Two days after stunning Comic-Con with the first official footage of Suicide Squad, director David Ayer has unleashed the Joker, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and crew onto the world.
Ayer tweeted out the teaser, which was also posted on Warner Bros. YouTube channel, and which goes through a roll call of the “worst of the worst.”
Related: Watch the Entire ‘Suicide Squad’ Panel
The clip begins with Viola Davis’s sketchy Amanda Waller, flanked by two fellow government muckety-mucks, laying out the plot of the movie while tucking into a juicy steak.
“I want to assemble a task force of the most dangerous people on the planet, who I think can do some good.” These supervillains have been stashed away in Belle Reve, an off-the-grid, ultra-max prison. As Waller describes it: “I put them in a hole and threw away the hole.”
Related: Batman, Superman, Suicide Squad: What We Learned at Warner Bros. Comic-Con Panel
“I’ve seen things…” Waller says. “Maybe Superman was some kind of beacon to make them creep back from the shadows.” (The casual reference is meant to establish this film in the same DC movie universe as Man of Steel and the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.)
“If anything goes wrong we blame them. We have plausible deniability.”
Cue a haunting rendition of the Bee Gees’ 1968 hit “I Started a Joke” as we meet the malefactors: Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) performing Cirque du Soleil moves in a glorified bird cage; El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) blowing out a match; Deadshot (Will Smith) pummeling a punching bag; Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje ) being wheeled out Hannibal Lecter-style; Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) sobbing in a pool under a pentagram.
Then quick cuts of scenes that had leaked online weeks ago: Smith’s Deadshot going over the side a building and the Squaddies — which also include Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Katana (Karen Fukuhara), Slipknot (Adam Beach), and field commander Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) — walking in slo-mo down a street and into a building.
“So that’s it, huh? We’re the patsies,” says Smith, resigned to their fate. “We’re some kind of suicide squad. OK, let’s go save the world.”
There’s a gunfight involving somebody in a Panda costume and another person wearing a Batman mask.
And a brief glimpse of the real-deal Batman (Ben Affleck) holding on to the top of Joker’s car, as the tagline flashes by: “Justice Has a Bad Side.”
Related: Behind the Scenes of ‘Suicide Squad’
And the big finish: There’s a cackle off screen, and then, emerging from the shadows, Jared Leto’s twisted, tatted, metal-toothed Clown Prince of Crime appears, ready to administer some electro-shock therapy. “I’m not gonna kill you,” he says, in a delivery reminiscent of previous Joker Jack Nicholson in The Shining. “I’m just gonna hurt you really, really bad.”
At Comic-Con on Saturday, Ayer gave a little more detail on the concept behind the film.
“All this good vs. evil s— is played out right now,” he told the fans, who embraced his amped-up tough-guy shtick. “It’s time for bad vs. evil, right? It’s time for a movie about bad guys, and who has the greatest bad guys? DC Comics has the best villains ever. I’m not trying to start, you know, an East Coast–West Coast feud [with Marvel], but someone’s got to say the truth.”
Added Smith: “We are banging out something that is absolutely fantastic and stunning… We’ll see you all next year!”
Suicide Squad opens Aug. 5, 2016.