The third DC film to get a panel at the FanDome, and the single longest panel of this event interestingly enough, belongs to James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, which I think can be safely slotted into the role of a sequel, if only because every returning character is being played by the actor who played them in Suicide Squad. What was the panel about?
Well, after James Gunn answered a few fan questions about his history with the titular characters and who his favorite comic book characters are, we got a reveal of the full cast of the Squad, along with the characters they’d be playing. While we’d gotten the list of characters in the past, this was a reveal of who exactly each actor would be playing.
Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, and of course Margot Robbie will all be returning as Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Captain Boomerang, and Harley Quinn respectively. On top of that we’ll also be getting Idris Elba as Bloodsport (was originally going to be Deadshot, but they decided to change the character to give Will Smith an opportunity to reprise in future Squad or solo movies), John Cena as Peacemaker, Peter Capaldi as The Thinker, Alice Braga as Sol Soria, Pete Davidson as Blackguard, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man (yes, really), Michael Rooker as Savant, Nathan Fillion as T.D.K., Daniel Melchior as Ratcatcher 2, Steve Agee as the motion capture for King Shark, Sean Gunn as Weasel, Flula Borg as Javelin, and Mayling Ng as Mongal.
That’s…that’s a big cast. It will be interesting to see who lives and who dies. They’ve noticeably stocked the cast with almost entirely lesser-known characters, giving them more leeway in the kill count department than the previous film, but we’ll just have to wait and see. It is, at the very least, a very good cast, both in terms of talent and in terms of diversity. That’s something to be applauded, most definitely.
However…that’s more or less all we got for this movie. The rest of the time was devoted largely to a trivia game amongst the cast. It was fun and amusing, watching them bounce off of each other and tease and mock each other, trolling James Gunn and Michael Rooker, that was the majority of the panel. A few questions were trivia from the movie, but mostly it related to the comic book history of their characters. There was no real discussion of the plot of the movie, and unlike with Wonder Woman 1984 we don’t even have any trailers (beyond the behind-the-scenes hype video and the above character art teaser trailer) to work with, something odd given that the film has apparently wrapped filming and comes out around this time next year.
We did, admittedly, get a compilation of behind the scenes shots of the filming process, and some of the actors, James Gunn, and the producer enthusiastically praising the film, but that’s not really a trailer. And we did get some good looks at the costume of the characters (Harley’s, in particular, is excellent) which was indeed quite nice. But…that’s also sort of all we got. A look at the characters, glimpses of the scenes, and nineteen people playing a trivia game. Not a terrible panel by any means, but definitely a disappointing one.
Images courtesy of Warner Bros.
