James Gunn gets ready to unleash The Suicide Squad

‘The Suicide Squad’ from the horribly beautiful mind of director James Gunn, features a collection of the most degenerate delinquents in the DC comics line-up including Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), King Shark (Sylvester Stallone) & everyone’s favourite psycho, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). 

We were lucky enough to attend a recent press conference with almost the entire Squad in attendance and it turned out to be as wild & zany as the movie – even with a cast that big the attention focused closely on one cast member… John Cena and a certain part of his body, that was showcased a lot in the film. Idris Elba called it “ John’s tighty whitey scene”, Cena took the opportunity to thank director James Gunn for using a filter to enhance his anatomy, “My demands were to keep the costume and I wanted him to use a filter on my d**k and he did both.”

Not many filmmakers have the freedom to go so wacky or take such huge risks on big budget comic-book adaptations, but for Gunn it was one of the appeals of making the movie. “I really did feel a huge responsibility to people to do it the best I could, because I was being given so much freedom, I felt the responsibility to take risks. Making movies at this level, it does seem like big movies are the ones people are going to see in theatres, and if movies don’t continue to take risks, and change and try new things then people will not want to come to the theatres.  If it’s the same boring structure every time, people are going to get bored. I felt grateful, I felt a sense of magic, I felt a sense of purpose and a sense of almost destiny the whole time we were making the movie.”

Gunn previously directed Marvel’s ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ movies, so has a history of taking obscure comic book characters and turning them into household names, but with 100’s of DC villains to choose from he explains how he went about choosing characters to join the new Suicide Squad. “I selected them all in very different ways, I knew there were some past stories I needed to tell and there were some characters like Harley who I wanted to put in the movie and Boomer and these characters that I liked a lot and a lot of good actors that played them.

Then there were other characters like Polka-Dot man and I really wanted to use a character who was thought of as a lame supervillain. I literally put into Google who is the dumbest super villain of all time, and Polka-Dot man always came up near the top. Being able to take a character like that and then give him heart was fun for me, I love Rats, so Ratcatcher was an easy one.

I wrote Bloodsport for Idris Elba, I wanted to work with him; I wanted Idris to star in this movie. So it wasn’t a matter so much of who the character was, it was let’s find a character who is obscure who can build his own cinematic creations for Idris. So every character was different.”

One of the zaniest new characters introduced in the film is King Shark, voiced by Sylvester Stallone. “I’m a big fan of seafood, so I was offered this and thought oh well, how do I pass it. I would have preferred to play a grouper but I’ll take what I can get,” revealed Stallone about playing the larger than life CGI shark.  “I like that he is on a high protein diet, I think he’s more intelligible than I am. He has less of a slur. We bonded instantly…. I owe you one James, the next Rambo you are the first victim.”

THE SUICIDE SQUAD is at Irish cinemas from July 30th