The Suicide Squad director James Gunn has explained why he felt the DC movie's original ending was "too dark" to make the final cut.
Gunn had "carte blanche" to kill off any character he wanted in his R-rated film but there was one character death that he ultimately decided to bury because he felt it would result in an ending that was "too dark." Gunn had originally contemplated killing Daniela Melchior's Ratcatcher 2, however, he opted to change the scene before submitting the final script.
The filmmaker recently outlined the details of how that original ending would have played out. "At the very end of the movie, Ratcatcher 2 had… smuggled in and gotten away with all of that information from Jotunheim, and the rest of the group didn't know about it," Gunn told CinemaBlend. "And [Amanda] Waller blew up her head, after they went back to the prison."
"At which point, Harley tries to talk Bloodsport — Bloodsport's freaking out, because he's connected to this person, like a daughter. And he's freaking out, and Harley is actually being sort of kind, in a weird way, trying to talk Bloodsport into just letting it go," Gunn continued, recounting The Suicide Squad's scrapped sequence.
"Bloodsport ends up shooting Waller in the heart with a combustible bullet and threatening to blow her up. It was sort of complicated, but it was something like that. He didn't shoot her in the heart. He shot her right below the heart with one of the exploding bullets, which we see Peacemaker using earlier in the movie. And so now she has to do what he says."
Melchior's character is arguably the heart and soul of The Suicide Squad, the least violent and most compassionate of the outcasts populating Task Force X. In the film's actual ending, Ratcatcher II — and her beloved rat Sebastian — survive the devastation of Corto Maltese and have a chance at a new life thanks to Bloodsport's climactic blackmailing of Waller.
The alternate ending presented a much darker version of events. "It was really just too dark," Gunn concluded. "It didn't really tell the story that I wanted to tell, which is much more about the characters' different journeys, emotionally. And for me, really, the ending with Bloodsport petting the rat… that, to me, was the perfect ending for the movie."
IGN's review of The Suicide Squad scored the supervillain blockbuster a 9/10, saying: "James Gunn absolutely kills it with The Suicide Squad. The film is a bloody, chaotic ride from start to finish that finally does justice to Task Force X. It's endlessly shocking and funny, and its showcase of F-list DC villains is nothing short of brilliant."
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.