Will Smith… or Won’t He?
Although a lot of attention has been paid to the Joker and Harley Quinn, Ayer thought that Deadshot is one of the movie’s primary focuses. “I think it’s really Will’s movie in a lot of ways. I kind of built it around him and his character journey is a fantastic way to move the audience through this. Part of what I do as a filmmaker is find the film’s viewpoint and he’s a fantastic way to tell a story.”
“The head of the Suicide Squad, in terms of the true members of the Squad, is Deadshot,” Roven said. “Even when David was writing, I would say he really wrote it for Will. He had his eye on Will from the beginning and Will had seen David’s movies and was a big fan of his movies and it really came out of that, I think.”
“He was the first choice and they had known each other before collaborating on this film, so it predated that and their desire to find something and then this seemed to be a really good opportunity for them to work together,” Roven’s producing partner added.
See Ya Later, Adewale…
“I discussed with David Ayer how we wanted to reincarnate the first vision of Croc in the movie,” he told us. “We wanted to ground him, really make him real. You’ll see that with the color of skin-tones that were used, which were blended in with my own, so that it was almost as if it was a disfiguration, a man that inherited a disease that gave him croc-like features and looks.”
“One of the reasons they went to a lot of detail in how to craft the mask was so that I could really do as many natural facial contortions as possible. Also, we decided not to use contacts so that you could really get to see the being, the soul, beneath the mask. We found that that really helps draw you into him as a being, as a creature. It’s different on several counts but mainly because of the level of detail that has gone into creating the sophistication of the mask and how real it is for me to be able to do the contortions.
“One of the great things about this character is the level of the prosthetics, the realness of it,” Adewale says about playing Killer Croc. “One of the things I had to do was practice a lot in the mirror with the prosthetic mask. I normally do that, but one of the reasons is to get a read on how much I have to push underneath the mask with my facial contortions or how much to pull it back. With this particular prosthetic it’s so real to life and so glued down on my face that it really mimics pretty much every facial expression I could do normally without over-exerting myself. And that’s one of the big differences between what I’ve done before. Kurse is full-bodied. This tends to be a lot more flexible and give you a lot more creative ingenuity in what you can do with your face.
“I did a lot of home research, to the point that I went down to the everglades down in Fort Lauderdale, watched the gators down there, spent hours videoing them, went in the ring with them,” the actor said about preparing to play Croc to the incredulous group. “Yeah, there’s a tourist thing. You can actually go in there. It’s really not that dangerous. They’re probably sedated. But just to touch them and feel them, and actually feel the texture of their skin, and the blood flow through them—its actually quite soft, especially on the belly—and to know that when approach them from a certain angle, because of their eyes they can’t actually see you. So you can actually get very close under here, but if you go in here you’re going to lose a hand.”
“Also, I studied a lot of video on how they kill,” the actor said to the rapt audience of journalists. “I was very intent on bringing the characteristics of a crocodile to him. So you’ll see in the movie, we’ve got these great signature moves, like what we call the death throw, where he latches on to his prey and they twist. We’re doing that not only on the ground, but in the water, so there’s a lot of movements. Even the way I walk, I walk like I’m moving through water. So he has this sinuous twist. When I was studying and training in the mirror, I did various walks but the minute I did that the whole prosthetic came alive and took another dimension. It was very creepy, but it was very, very animalistic. So we have this kind of sinuous walk like he’s walking through water even when he’s walking on ground. All of this came from watching them, studying them.”
Adewale also told us about Croc’s fighting style, which may be different from what we’re used to. “If you see crocs, they can be quite slow and sluggish, but the moment they move it’s very surprising how fast they are. And that’s how we were doing it. When he attacks he’s just like… “ With that, Adewale lunged at the neck of yours truly, which got a good laugh out of the other journalists. “And then he’s got you. It is really quite scary, and then seeing him bite somebody’s face off.” (Since this was intended as a PG-13 film, we were curious at the time how much of that we might see.)
One of the Belle Reve locations that was still intact was Croc’s cell, which is down in the lower levels of Belle Reve prison and it pretty much looks like a section of the sewer (and probably is). The entire place was rusty and dank with bones (leftovers from Croc’s meals) everywhere and there was an undercarriage to the set that was filled with water.
While it was fairly primitive, we did notice a number of cat statues on shelves around Croc’s cell which seemed odd. “I think it’s pretty much how he expresses himself,” Adewale explained when asked. “He’s very primal, carnal. He’s a creature, and those felines, those are his brethren, and so, if he’s making sculptures that reflect that. It may be a pet that he may have had when he was a child. Things like that. I was thinking today, after the battle he may sculpt people that he’s taken down, you know as symbols or trophies. He’s very creative. Again, another aspect that you’re going to see to him, just when you think you’ve got him pegged, he does something very surprising and makes these beautiful sculpted pieces. It’s a testament to the gentle, creative side of him. David is very much about bringing that out and juxtaposing it with the visceral, vicious, barbaric creature that he has to be when he needs to be. To me as an actor that’s some of the most exciting stuff to do because you have so much creative license. He’s a man who has become a croc. You can bring all these elements.”
There isn’t much else to say about the scene we watched them film that day as Adewale (in full Croc make-up and wardrobe) was basically standing in the cell as they drop something into the water, which we later learned was an entire dead goat wrapped in plastic—we only learned this because the crew was busy shrink-wrapping the plastic onto another goat while we interviewed Ayer. Yes, kids, it was Killer Croc’s feeding time and apparently he’s really into goat.
Raising the Flag
On the day we spoke to Kinnaman, he was basically just training, but his body showed clear wounds from the large battle sequence they had been filming, mostly scars from shotgun casings that hit him. Earlier in the day, producer Rick Suckle first explained to us why Rick Flag was in the movie. “He is Amanda Waller’s right hand and is given a particular job–which is very much a part of the canon of the Suicide Squad–to keep the members of the Squad together, because they are a very dysfunctional family and not unlike the canon, they’re being asked to do something that they don’t really have much of a choice in, so I’d say it’s very close to what was created.”
“In the beginning it’s definitely less than ideal, to say the least,” Kinnaman says about the team he’s forced into leading. “I think this is just something he’s forced into, the same way the whole squad is. In that way, they’re all in the same boat in one way or another. He doesn’t have a threat hanging over him like the others do, but over the course of the movie allegiances shift and I think he starts to question his whole moral foundation and his whole look upon what duty is, and who is honorable and who is worth leading, and who is worth following.”
Amanda Waller is a Bad-Ass
“She’s awesome,” Kinnaman agrees, as the actor and character who works closest with Davis’ Waller. “She’s phenomenal actress and she’s scary. She’s a cold, cold woman in this one. She doesn’t play around. She’s the kind of actress that switches it on, and we have fun around the scenes and joking around, but when the camera starts rolling she’s like (makes a serious face).”
Some Enchantress Evening
The movie is following suit for the most part, having June exploring a cave where she’s given her mystical powers, and she’s played by British actress and model Cara Delevingne. She also wasn’t on set that day, but director David Ayer said that Enchantress “leaves a large shadow across the scope of this film” and was hesitant to say much more about her.
“If you look at her origin, she emerges from this cavern,” he did tell us. “I imagine her as almost like this Paleolithic Goddess who was at one point sort of worshipped by primitive man. Again, it’s another character who has her own past and her own history. Her storyline and her evolution as a character figures very importantly into this construct.”
We already knew from visiting the costume shop that June will go through a number of transformations as the Enchantress, so she may already be a more interesting character in the movie than she has been in comics.
The Devil and the Steel
While Ayer didn’t specifically talk about Katana, he did tell us why he decided to include El Diablo in the mix: “There really hasn’t been too many opportunities for a Hispanic kind of villain/superhero comic book character. He plays pretty important into this. That’s something that’s important to me, so I kind of cherry-picked him to pull him into this.”
“I grew up in L.A., and I’ve had friends that have sort of gone down that path and joined gangs and been in prison, so I’ve witnessed it firsthand,” Hernandez would tell us during his interview. “It’s kind of interesting because throughout my career, I’ve essentially avoided doing anything in that sort of arena, because it was just kind of the obvious choice and just something I didn’t want to perpetuate these types of stereotypes that were sort of pervasive just in media in general. What you see in terms of news and the characters you do see in Hollywood a lot of times when it’s a Hispanic guy from Los Angeles, that’s the root that the character tends to go, right? So I avoided it to a large degree for the majority of my career, but this is like a whole different thing, and it’s at a time in my life where I’ve played a lot of different characters that were positive characters that were what I was trying to do just in terms of giving people something other to look at other than those types of images. When I read the script and talked to David about it, I thought it was very gutsy; it was very unique. It’s a powerful storyline, and I just felt like it was a kind of an hour to be able to do that in a movie of this caliber to this degree.”
As much as Fukuhara required hours of daily training for her sword-fighting as Katana, there’s also the aspect of the soul of her husband residing in the sword like in the comics, although we didn’t get any idea how that might be shown in the film.
El Diablo’s powers, on the other hand, are far more visual since he can produce and manipulate fire. “There’s some sort of practical aspects to the fire, and then there’s obviously going to be a layer of computer-generated graphics,” Hernandez told us about how those powers are created. “I think it’s gonna be a combination of both, but I think part of the reason why they use practical is for us as actors and also for light. I may be wrong about some of this, but trying to sort of create that digitally would be pretty complicated. So I think if they have a layer of the light in the scene, it does help sell it.”
