One of the most buzzed about trailers from Comic-Con 2015 was Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad — but not entirely for the reasons you might think.
The trailer, which you can watch below, has a lot of fans excited. Based on the DC Comics team of villains and anti-heroes who act as deniable assets for the US government, the trailer is beautifully edited and has plenty of footage of Margot Robbie’s highly anticipated Harley Quinn.
It gives a nice, if also vague, overview of the film and story behind it, combined with good action and dark humor.
We also finally get our first footage of Jared Leto’s Joker. There’s a lot of scrutiny around this performance (as there was surrounding Heath Ledger’s) but he already seems to be putting his own unique stamp on the character and distancing himself from Jack Nicholson and Ledger.
That all sounds par for the course, right? So why else was the trailer so talked about? Because it was leaked, forcing Warner Bros. to scramble to pull it down before finally giving in and officially releasing it.
The company put forth a statement on their Facebook post of the trailer:
“Warner Bros. Pictures and our anti-piracy team have worked tirelessly over the last 48 hours to contain the Suicide Squad footage that was pirated from Hall H on Saturday. We have been unable to achieve that goal. Today we will release the same footage that has been illegally circulating on the web, in the form it was created and high quality with which it was intended to be enjoyed. We regret this decision as it was our intention to keep the footage as a unique experience for the Comic Con crowd, but we cannot continue to allow the film to be represented by the poor quality of the pirated footage stolen from our presentation.”
They have a point — Comic-Con attendees are told not to film footage. But to hold thousands of fans to the honor system is a stretch. In this day and age, it’s only expected that all the footage will get out to the public in one way or another. Suicide Squad wasn’t the only trailer leaked, either. Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse were also leaked by fans.
To imply that the trailer is a unique experience for the crowd is also misleading. What’s unique is being at Comic-Con at all, with thousands of other like-minded fans who you can share your experience with, and getting to be in the same room as the cast and crew of the film. Watching the trailer at home on your laptop, leaked footage or otherwise, doesn’t take away from that.
Donna Dickens at HitFix wrote a fantastic article about this:
“Geek culture is now pop culture. For every fan of Batman sleeping on the ground outside Hall H, there are tens of thousands back home instead of tens. Sci-fi and fantasy are the biggest money makers in the industry right now. But holding the attention of the world modifies the game. It’s good old-fashioned capitalism. Supply and demand. If the demand goes up but the studios won’t increase supply, the fans will take it into their own hands to shoot grainy cell phone footage for the ravenous hordes who didn’t make it to the show.”
Dickens also smartly points out that Lucasfilm has handled this wonderfully. They streamed their big panel at Star Wars Celebration and have officially released all their trailers and videos as soon as their panels finished.
Or remember how Marvel responded when their Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer was leaked?
The Suicide Squad trailer leaked because fans were excited and couldn’t stop talking about it. Surely that has to count for something.
Times are changing and I think we’ll start to see this reflected from studios in the next couple of years. Until then, we have the Suicide Squad trailer and we hope you enjoy it!
Suicide Squad is set to come out on August 5, 2016. It will be directed by David Ayer and will star Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, Scott Eastwood, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholtz, Jim Parrack and Adam Beach.
