James Gunn is revealing his innermost secrets involving his new film The Suicide Squad. On the Script Apart podcast, Gunn talks about why Rick Flag (Joel Kinneman) is on Team one and the deleted scene that helps us understand why he’s even on this mission.
“We realize that she picked out all of the people she didn’t like, and all the people she thought were really useless, just to use as a diversion so the team she thought was useful could get through,” Gunn said. “And it’s true. Team 2 is pretty deadly. They’re pretty good at what they do… they’re the real money team. And then there’s the other team.”
The Suicide Squad opens with Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) Blackmailing Savant (Michael Rooker) into becoming a part of team one (which Flag is a part of). The task is to infiltrate the island nation of Corto Maltese. As soon as team one touches down on Maltese soil, they are obliterated by the military. This is when Waller admits she purposely used team one as a diversion so Task Force X team could make its way through the island without issue.
It always seemed like Waller and Flag were on good terms, so why add him to an expendable team? On the podcast, Gunn details a deleted scene that describes why she made that decision.
“One thing we had to cut from the film that sometimes I’m like ‘oh, I wish we didn’t!’ is that we find out why Rick Flag is in that group,” Gunn explained. “We see a flashback where Rick Flag makes fun of Amanda Waller’s shirt. It’s this really ugly shirt with all these different colors on it, and he says, ‘It looks like a group of clowns sh*t all over you.’ And Steve Agee’s character, John Economos, is just laughing hysterically at Amanda Waller, and you can just see death in Viola Davis’s face. She just looks like death. And that’s why [Flag is] on that beach.”
At first, it seems like something like this would be beneath Waller. Why would she care about what Rick Flag feels? But no, Waller is not above being vindictive for even the most minor thing. However, it’s probably good the scene was cut because the film’s ending tells the audience why Waller was betting on Flag to die.
The Suicide Squad is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
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DISCUSSION
.........yeaaaaaah, no, that was a real, real good cut, James. It’d just make her look petty and vindictive. Amanda Waller is many, many things, but sending someone to die because he made fun of her shirt, that’s just not something she’d do.
If you want to make it clear why Waller sent him with the decoy team? Embrace that he put the mission on hold in order to rescue Harley Quinn, another liability that Waller would rather not deal with anymore. It’s a sign that he’s putting the lives of his squad members, whom he’s become friends with in many cases, above the mission.
Despite knowing that these squad members are chosen to be disposable fodder. That’s why he was on Team 1, at least in my mind: He was starting to care more about getting his team back home than about completing the mission, and between that and her knowing that this was a mission that, if he knew all the details about Starro, he wouldn’t complete?
He became a liability, much more than he was an asset. And Waller doesn’t tolerate liabilities in her team, not for long.