There’s nobody else like James Gunn. Idris Elba knew that—that’s all that was on his mind, to be perfectly honest—as he drove to his meeting with Gunn to discuss joining his next film, The Suicide Squad.
There’s normally a lot of back and forth when a superstar, name-brand actor signs on for a gigantic Hollywood tentpole, with their people talking to other people’s people, with long contracts and NDAs and many things spelled out in words that no one uses in real-life but certain people get paid a lot of money to put into fancy, official documents.
Idris Elba, in this particular situation, wasn’t planning to play coy. He didn’t need to know what character he’d play. He didn’t need to know the details. All he needed was James.
“I signed on because I really wanted to work with James. He’s a genius, I think. I really was so touched and honored that someone of his talent was really keen to work with me, even though we didn’t have a necessary roadmap of who the character was. I very quickly invested in the exploration of that, because we could go anywhere,” Elba tells Esquire Middle East.
The meeting was the foundational move for Gunn’s sequel to the commercially successful but critically maligned Suicide Squad (2016), a film written and directed by David Ayer that had starred Will Smith as the supervillain assassin Deadshot, who leads a team of rogues and misfits on a black ops mission in the DC Extended Universe.
How do you move forward from mixed success? What do you keep, what do you reimagine and what do you throw in the bin? The proposition led to heavy speculation online, with some demanding that Ayer’s vision be fully realized, and others arguing for a complete reboot. It was a situation tailor made for the rumour mill, and immediately the mill started churning.
No sooner did Gunn and Elba have their meeting that it was reported by Variety that Elba was signing on to replace Will Smith as Deadshot, a move that many found shocking. It was later reported that they had backed off from the idea and decided Idris should play a different character, to assuage Smith and leave open the possibility that he may someday return to the franchise.
It was a great bit of gossip. But, like much of the best gossip, it turns out none of it was true, according to Elba.
“There was a rumour that my character might be a replacement for Will’s character in the first movie, but no, James had really very clearly stated that wasn’t what we were doing,” Idris tells us.
Alright, so if not Deadshot, who would Elba be playing? Hell if they knew.
The benefit of working under the banner of the Suicide Squad, rather than something like the Justice League, is that you can basically do whatever you want with it. The concept behind the comic book, after all, as conceived by writer John Ostrander in the late 80s, was to mine the depths of the DC rogues gallery, from perennial A-listers like the Penguin and Deadshot to the bit-part weirdos like Polka Dot Man, who had popped up in back issues of the biggest books back in the 60s and 70s and quickly disappeared due to said weirdness. Together, they would go on literal suicide missions, and either find a new lease on life or die instantly, depending on the vibe.
For Elba, that meant he could avoid the baggage or burden of donning Batman’s cowl or Superman’s cape. They could pick some baddie people barely remembered in the style of their choosing and, in making it their own, make us all care, much like Gunn had previously done with Chris Pratt and his Guardians character Starlord.
“Essentially, we got invested in the possibilities. There were maybe a few possibilities of a character from the DC universe that could be implemented into the film. However, what really sat at the heart of it was James wanting to take a sort of old 80s action hero-type character and dismantle that. Then get into these great discussions about what that might look like, and how we do that, and it became very clear that he wanted to use Bloodsport as that character,” says Elba.
Bloodsport, in Gunn’s film, is a guy rotting in a jail cell after putting Superman in the ICU by shooting him with a kryptonite bullet. He’s lost, listless and in need of redemption, whether he wants it or not, much like every other freakshow or wayward soul on his team.
Gunn was out for a bit of redemption himself. After all, it wasn’t long before Gunn signed on to helm the DC sequel that it looked like the world would be deprived of his output for good.
Let’s jump back to the summer of 2018, and re-live that uncomfortable story.
At the time, James Gunn seemed to be at the top of the world. He was four years removed from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), a film that had moved him from an underrated genre filmmaker to a household name amongst film buffs, in which he proved that it was possible to work within the tightly-controlled world of Marvel and still make a film that has the heart and soul of a singular voice.
He was also an outspoken political voice online, hyper-critical of the then-American president, which drew the ire of the man’s supporters. One prominent figure who wanted to shut the guy up for good started digging through Gunn’s old tweets and found to his delight that Gunn hadn’t followed the cardinal rule of life online—always delete your dumb edgelord jokes from the late aughts.
Soon, the internet was plastered with some admittedly horrible material from Gunn, and, armed with that ammo, there was a campaign to get Gunn fired from his post at Marvel for his old jokes.
It worked.
Gunn was let go from Disney and pulled from the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy 3, causing some to cheer and others, including actors who had worked with him such as Chris Pratt and Dave Bautista, to loudly voice support for the disgraced director, who they felt had been misjudged.
Gunn himself did not respond in anger. He apologized immediately, saying he understood Marvel’s decision. He then spent six months fixing his gaze into the mirror, knowing that whatever the aim of the people who took him down, he still had himself to blame.
“I just—things went crazy there for a moment. I just sort of stayed in my space, and I was honest to myself,” Gunn tells us, visibly still emotional about the experience.
“I didn’t let it destroy me in any way. I took responsibility for things that I had done. That was certainly not a blameless situation.”
A few months later, Gunn received a call from Warner Bros. They wanted to discuss whether he’d be interested in taking on the Suicide Squad franchise.
It’s a call that not only saved his career, but helped bring him out of the darkness he’d fallen into in the aftermath of his exile.
“I’m baffled by where my life is right now, considering where it was almost exactly three years ago. It may sound stupid, but I thank God for all the stuff that I went through, because I really needed this movie. I needed to tell the story. I needed to meet the people who I’ve met while doing this film, including Joel [Kinnaman] and Margot [Robbie] and Idris [Elba], and John [Cena], says Gunn.
“I just needed this movie. I needed to break outside of where I was, because I was not the healthiest person at that time. I was getting distracted by things that didn’t matter as much to me. With this, I really got back to just this pure creative spirit, which is why I made movies in the first place. And I think I had forgotten that a little bit.”
Why Warner Bros made that call to Gunn is another matter entirely. There’s one glaring reason that many fans have speculated about but everyone involved will surely deny—that Suicide Squad (2016) kind of wanted to be Guardians of the Galaxy.
From the first trailer and its excitable editing, throwback Queen soundtrack, and gang of wise-cracking misfits, the film seemed greatly inspired by what Gunn had created over at Marvel, but as skilled as David Ayer is in crafting street-level action drama, there was one glaring problem: There’s nobody else like James Gunn.
But it wasn’t just a matter of finally having the chance to get the guy that seemed born to helm this franchise. He had a history with the studio, going back to Gunn’s early script work on the Scooby Doo movies.
Producer Chuck Roven, who had stewarded both the Scooby films, vouched for Gunn, knowing full well he was better than some offensive tweets, and deserved another chance.
“Working with him, I discovered what an amazing mind he has, which mixes so many things seamlessly. His ability to go from jokey absurd to strong emotion is really unique. That’s why I think he’s truly a signature director,” says Roven.
For Gunn, life is like a movie, but not in the way you might think. In film and in life, the biggest moments and the smallest moments aren’t as different as they appear. They both come down to the same basic things, and without them, it all falls apart.
“For me, life comes down to interacting with other human beings, and telling stories. That’s my life. I really don’t care about anything besides those two things, besides maybe my dogs. Life is really simple to me,” Gunn continues.
Stories and people, that’s what matters to James Gunn, and that’s what The Suicide Squad would be driven by. Taking that to heart, Gunn assembled a cast list as wild as the film that holds them, bringing together actors who likely never would otherwise have appeared in a film together for a manic ride of violence, mayhem, crude humor, outrageous costumes and an invading force of giant alien starfish whose one mission it is to enslave us all.
Simple, right?
Idris Elba may have been the piece that Gunn needed to start his casting journey, but he by no means stopped there. In addition to bringing back the key pieces that made the first film work, including Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Gunn dove deep into the roster and made some inspired pairings.
Sylvester Stallone as a giant shark? Done. Peter Capaldi as a mad scientist with antennas sticking out of his head? Let’s do it. John Cena as a warped, murderous version of Captain America? Yep, throw that in there too.
From there, it came down to bringing out the best in each of the people he’d cast.
“What I loved about James is I feel like he knows how to select the perfect container for each of these characters and he trusts his actors that they will fill it with delicious dopeness and turn everything up to the levels of sassy that is required for each character,” says Flula Borg, who plays Javelin, a dude who has a javelin.
“Some require zero sassy. In my case I required a 400 milliliters of sassy and he saw that. Like, you know the lines on a roller coaster that ask ‘how tall are you?’ He saw mine could be filled up to about 392 milliliters of sassy, so I was overflowing. Apologies again to everyone on set,” Borg continues.
As funny as each of the actors that Gunn cast are on their own, we hate to break it to you, they did not go to set every day, put on cape, and improvise banter in front of a camera for eight hours. Gunn’s script was tightly written, something that made it much easier to attract the talent he amassed in front of the camera.
“However funny we all think we are, no matter what fun there is on set, it’s not going to be funny without a funny script. It’ll only be funny if someone is sat down and spent hours making it funny, and then we all pretend it’s just happening. That’s the trick of it, really,” says Capaldi.
“But you actually need very skillful actors to do that. Everybody in this cast has a kind of microclimate of mirth around them,” Capaldi continues.
Because Gunn made a point to pull out some of the most obscure figures in the DC canon, many of the parts were written with specific actors in mind, allowing each performance to be more a reflection of the person playing them rather than a strict adherence to some idea of a character in pedantic fan heads.
“There’s not a lot of things out there for most of these characters. I purchased every comic book that Javelin was in to do some research, and I concluded that I was just going to write my own backstory. So I imagined a weird time where Javelin watched all of The Hobbit movies back to back, didn’t go for a bathroom break, and had 28 pounds of Reese’s Pieces just to see what happened. That’s just a small thing I did,” says Borg.
Every part had their own idiosyncrasies and challenges, whether it was having to adjust to a ridiculous costume, as John Cena did in wearing what looks like a giant silver toilet on his head, or having to act next to John Cena wearing what looks like a giant silver toilet on his head, as was the struggle for poor Joel Kinnaman.
“Keeping your character grounded is already one of the big challenges of making a film like this and then you add John Cena wearing a giant silver toilet on his head. That does not make it easier, I can assure you,” says Kinnaman.
Daniela Melchior, who plays Ratcatcher 2 in the film, wasn’t distracted by Cena’s chrome dome. She was too busy trying to wrangle the living, breathing, rats.
“In my audition day, I had to have a chemistry test with the rats. They brought out three rats, and I had one in my hands, and suddenly, another was crawling into my hoodie. James was immediately taking pictures. I still booked the role, despite my limited rat catching skills at first. I had to repeat the process every day—going to set, asking for the rats, carrying them around. At this point I kind of miss them. I’m hoping I get to do a photo shoot with the rats. I’m open to everything right now,” says Melchior.
For Borg, the main issue with the costumes was how hard it was to go to the bathroom.
“I’m a man who loves to stay hydrated. I’m like a camel. Or wait, do camels stay hydrated? I don’t actually know. Anyways, I can spend all day drinking water, but you can’t easily just take a number one in the suit. I had to learn to meditate and not think about Niagara Falls,” adds Borg.
As madcap chaos ensued in front of the camera, Gunn kept a steady hand behind it, which allowed the actors the ability to let loose without the film falling apart completely.
“He’s a very genuine person that makes a real effort to make the environment on set to be a pleasurable and warm place for everyone to be. He’s someone that gets to have all the toys, and but at the same time, he will never go over time. No one’s worried about him going over budget. On the bigger budget films I’ve been on, they’ve always been much more chaotic, much more fraught with conflict and nervousness and reshoots, but here it was just a pleasure cruise, but at the same time you have a whole city blowing up around you,” says Kinnaman.
While the first film may have been fraught with issues, what set the experience apart for him was the camaraderie and bonds that it forged between the main cast, something that the returning members were able to harness more effectively in the new environment.
“Me and Margot and Jai brought in a familiarity, and we tried to bring all the others into that. But it quickly became a James Gunn set, and we all fell into that environment. I think in the first one we had this crazy chemistry. It was a bunch of lunatics on set at the same time. Here, there’s other lunatics, but it was maybe a little bit more focused on the actual work,” adds Kinnaman.
John Cena may have spent the last 15 years as a superhero in the squared circle on WWE television, but this marked the first time that the actor has appeared in a proper comic book film, something he reveled in.
“This is all kind of new for me. That’s a challenge that I enjoy. I enjoy having to rise to the occasion. I enjoy not being the smartest person in the room. I enjoy being surrounded by folks that can help me and that are in an environment that is geared to do that,” says Cena.
Often, they did have to lean on each other. The last month of filming in the sweltering jungles of Panama in Central America, an experience that tested each of them in different ways.
David Dastmalchian, who plays the Polka-Dot Man, says there were two moments on set that he really doubted himself. With James Gunn’s help, and the support of his fellow actors, he made it through.
“I can’t really divulge what those moments were, but they really scared me the most. When it came time to shooting those scenes, I tried my best to relax and be in the moment and not become performative. And God bless James Gunn, he held my hand as an actor, and helped me find my breath, find my feet, he gave me my favorite kind of direction I needed. It wasn’t giving me psychological backstory, he just told me to be present, to listen to my inner voice,” says Dastmalchian.
“I found myself stumbling, feeling shaky. He swept in in a very incredible way, and gave me direction that really just helped me ground myself and just stop and listen, and allow the moment to find an authentic place. I’m so grateful for that. It’s a marvelous thing when you’re in the hands of a director and seeing partners who are both so competent, and so skilled, and so loving and generous. And that’s something you can’t overlook the importance of. The love and care that goes into crafting collaborative creativity. And we had that in spades on this film.”
While Gunn signed on to the Redeem Team as an outcast from the House of Mouse, his banishment didn’t last long. The day after he signed on to do The Suicide Squad, Alan F. Horn, the then-chairman of Walt Disney Studios, picked up the phone and asked Gunn if he would be willing to return to finish his Guardians trilogy after all.
He said yes. But this time, Disney would have to wait. He had a suicide mission to complete.
“I went to [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige’s house, and I sat down with him. I said, ‘I’d really like to do this, but you have to know something. And then I told him what the movie was and what the situation was because he’s my friend. He’s another human being. I open and honest about all of that. And at the same time, I had to call [Warner Bros Chairman] Toby Emmerich and tell him too. But I told him, ‘I’m totally committed to The Suicide Squad, it doesn’t mean that I’m just leaving to go back to Marvel forever, and we’ll never be back to DC. I just want to be honest with everybody. I put everything in every movie I make, and leave nothing on the floor. That remains the same no matter what,’” says Gunn.
After nearly losing his career, Gunn is once again the most sought-after man in Hollywood. He’s been there before, but it feels different this time. In 2018, he was ready to make Guardians 3 without the passion it really needed. Now, because of The Suicide Squad, he’s himself again.
“Now I’m able to go into Guardians 3 with that same spirit, without sort of getting swept up in the things that don’t matter as much. Honestly, this was all so good for me.”
Stories and people, that’s what matters to James Gunn. And with the right people now staunchly in his corner, there will be so many stories to come.
The Suicide Squad is in theaters across the Middle East on August 4
