How would you go about correcting the Suicide Squad from 2016? Feel free to change characters and storyline.
Well, my main issue with the film is the editing, not the writing. The first act in particular is just a big structural mess that’s full of redundancies, and it really sours the audience to everything that follows. The main narrative issue is the failure to set up Slipknot properly, and that’s an easy fix: just add him to the montage of character introductions. That way, his death would actually hold some weight.
I’m not all that opposed to the story they chose to tell, but if I were pressed to excise Enchantress from the film (and if I couldn’t just replace her with Steppenwolf as Ayer originally intended), I might just borrow from their origin story in Legends and have them face Brimstone. I’d be a little more concerned about trying to do a movie where they go to Qurac or Vlatava (lest audiences read a xenophobic subtext into the film). A Janus Directive movie would probably just be too convoluted for their first outing. And the Kobra stories would just lead to accusations that we’re getting a knock-off of GI Joe.
I’d remove Slipknot and Enchantress’s brother from the movie entirely. Enchantress would be given a smaller roll as a team member. Katana would get a more detailed backstory. Captain Boomerang wouldn’t have his weird unicorn. Joker would be the movie’s villain.
Who knows what this movie was before the reshoots and meddling. I don’t believe this is the movie Ayers set out to make regardless of what he says. But even with the studio second guessing you still have that lackluster plot.
The “a member of the squad turns and is the actual villain” twist is something that should’ve been saved for the 2nd or the 3rd movie. We needed to see an example of what a mission could be, real world action, anything. Adapt elements of existing stories, anything but a magic based Ghostbusters.
Since the joker was known to be in it I would have expected they have to infiltrate his compound. Let’s say a mysterious Wayne Tech or Lex Corp satellite suspiciously fell out of orbit on an island ruled over by a dictator/weapons dealer. This dictator is connected with joker/other villains.