Henry Cavill’s Superman Was Going To Be The Villain Of The Suicide Squad
Henry Cavill was supposed to star in The Suicide Squad, but the writer had to make a big change.
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Admittedly, Starro was a scene-stealing and tone-appropriate villain in The Suicide Squad. The alien creature was strange, and lonely, and in the end, a victim. Of course, Starro was also terribly violent and gave Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn the opportunity to do something bizarre in order to save the day. Overall, the villain was a great touch for The Suicide Squad, but it wasn’t always the villain the script’s writer had in mind. Before there was Starro, writer James Gunn was looking at a very different villain for his DC story. He wanted Henry Cavill’s Superman to go against Task Force X, making him the antagonist (villain) for the movie.
In fact, James Gunn only moved towards Starro after he ran into uncertainty surrounding Henry Cavill’s future as Superman for the franchise. He recently told the Script Apart podcast that he didn’t want to deal with all the questions. “At the time, there were a lot of questions like, ‘Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?'” Basically, it seemed like a hassle of politics and story jumping to James Gunn. So, he gave up his idea of Task Force X fighting Superman, but it was an interesting one, even if it was still in the early and vague sounding stages. While he wasn’t sure what would prompt his characters to track down Superman (other than Amanda Waller telling them to), the fun of the idea was, according to Gunn, “This group of lousy supervillains has to face the most powerful hero in the world.”
It doesn’t sound like he was disappointed when he decided to change the villain from Henry Cavill’s Superman to Starro. He shared that Starro was a perfect comic book character because he was “absolutely ludicrous”, which sounds exactly like the kind of approach to storytelling that we’ve come to expect and appreciate from James Gunn.
While James Gunn may have found it too much of a pain to dive into the issue of straightening out the DC Universe’s storyline and getting Henry Cavill in his movie, that kind of problem sounds like one he is preparing to face in the near future. Right now, the writer and director is working on more projects for DC. Hopes are high that he will be the creator to work on a more connected universe for the established characters that fans have come to love.
Could that mean that James Gunn will, someday, create a project with Henry Cavill as Superman? Fans are always asking if audiences can ever expect to see Man of Steel 2, but today, even a small appearance from Henry Cavill as Superman feels questionable. His days as Clark Kent may be over. That is, unless someone like James Gunn figures out the system at DC and gets the star in one of his films. Right now, it sounds like Gunn’s focus is on more projects for The Suicide Squad. Will a Superman appearance make sense in one of those projects? It made sense in his first draft of The Suicide Squad, and Superman still got a brief mention, so there’s no ruling a Henry Cavill appearance out yet.
