Anghus Houvouras on the possibility of Mel Gibson directing Suicide Squad 2…
Recently I wrote a column about the inherent struggles that come with separating the art from the artist. Most of the time this isn’t a problem as even the most educated film fans probably don’t know the intimate personal details of the writers, directors, and producers behind the movies they watch. There are, of course, situations with prominent filmmakers that manage to allow the skeletons to escape from the closet and stumble from the shadows into the tabloids all too eager to share their scandals.
Last year saw Nate Parker and his film Birth of a Nation go from critical darling to the highest priced acquisition ever at the Sundance Film Festival to a ‘mortal lock’ for a Best Picture Nomination and then rocketing into a downward spiral towards oblivion only rivaled by a heroin junkie on board a crashing jet liner. His past transgressions and allegations of sexual assault made the idea of celebrating his well reviewed film unpalatable. There are many other famous examples: Roman Polanski’s sexual assault and flight from justice. The perpetual ever swirling rumors of Bryan Singer’s off set antics. Woody Allen married his stepdaughter and has been accused of molestation.
It feels weird when you have to preface a column about Mel Gibson with this kind of contextualizing. Sure, he seems fairly mental. His drunken antisemitic rants made him a pariah in Hollywood and his angry, abusive outbursts towards his girlfriend gave us an ugly window into some of the more disturbing thoughts rattling around his noggin. The guy clearly has some demons that he hasn’t quite exorcised.
Gibson tap dances on that line between ‘reprehensible’ and ‘irredeemable’. I’m still a fan of his work. Hacksaw Ridge was my favorite movie of 2016 and I think movies like Braveheart and Apocalypto are strong pieces of cinema that have stood the test of time. So when I heard Warner Bros. was in talks to bring Mel Gibson on board to direct Suicide Squad 2, I immediately got excited.
Mel Gibson doing Suicide Squad? A strong-willed director with a distinct voice who actually understands story and structure doing a DC movie? It felt too good to be true. My excitement was quickly followed by that feeling of knowing you’re a fan of someone extremely polarizing. You can’t really defend Mel Gibson’s terrible behavior other than mitigating with arguments like ‘It’s the art, not the artist’ or ‘At least he didn’t rape anyone’. But if you have to use the second one as a defense for someone’s character, there’s a real possibility they don’t have any.
Still, as a fan of Gibson’s movies, I love the idea of a director of his caliber shepherding Suicide Squad. I am still a huge fan of the basic concept of the Suicide Squad, even if director David Ayer and Warner Bros. did a hatchet job to the film that would make the Lakota Indians at Little Big Horn envious. The first film is terrible in a way that seems almost confounding. A movie so dragged down by thinly developed characters and scatterbrained plotting that you wonder how on earth this mess exists in the first place. Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad might be the most terribly assembled blockbusters ever released. The fact that they were both excreted from the same studio and landed with the kind of loud, wet thud that accompanies fresh piles of shit within months of each other is miracle of malignancy. If there is an opposite to the expression ‘stick the landing’, it has to include the words ‘DC Extended Universe’.
And yet, from this pile of fecal matter could be the building blocks of something better. I still have hope for Justice League, misguided though it may be. And I firmly believe in the hands of a talented filmmaker given ample time to develop, Suicide Squad 2 could be something special. The idea of villains forced into Government servitude has been the basis for so many good stories in the comics. Both in Suicide Squad for DC and Thunderbolts for Marvel.
Mel Gibson is the kind of name you want to hear when it comes to a comic book adaptation, because he’s a director who cares as much about characters and crowd pleasing moments as spectacle. Like many great filmmakers, he understands that bombast and action pieces only matter if you care about the characters populating the cinematic real estate. Something I don’t think David Ayer or Zack Snyder did with their efforts.
Sure, it’d be great if we got someone like George Miller who has the same (if not superior) skill set for characters and kinetics, but bringing in Mel Gibson for a Suicide Squad sequel would be good for the final product. Gibson would easily be the most prominent filmmaker working on a comic book adaptation since Nolan gracefully left Gotham City.
So, yes, I’m all-in for Mel Gibson directing Suicide Squad 2. It’s an idea (and a director) so crazy, it might just work.
Anghus Houvouras
Originally published February 18, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
