viola davis

These actors are a big reason why people love comic-book films.

If you liked the scene in Batman v Superman where Bruce Wayne watched YouTube videos about the future members of the Justice League, you'll love Suicide Squad. Instead of just one scene of plot-stopping fan service, Suicide Squad delivers an entire first act of soul-deadening exposition. The movie spends nearly 30 story-free minutes with a Machiavellian bureaucrat while she sits in a restaurant discussing a top secret personnel file. Here is Deadshot, the world’s greatest assassin; this is Harley Quinn, the Joker’s psychotic girlfriend. Oh, and have you heard about Captain Boomerang? And on and on and on.

The trailers for Suicide Squad have done a fairly good job of letting each member of Task Force X shine, though they have leaned a bit more heavily on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Jared Leto’s Joker — at least they know their target audience. But these new clips help us get to know some of the other major characters from David Ayer’s DC super-villain ensemble, like Will Smith’s Deadshot and Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller.

Suicide Squad is one of our most anticipated films of the summer — mostly because after a few months of watching heroes save the world in big blockbusters, it’ll be fun to see a team of villains swoop in to shake things up. If Amanda Waller is to be believed in these new TV spots, these guys (and a couple of ladies) are the worst of the worst, but maybe that’s what we need right now.

This week, DC’s cinematic universe took one more step towards becoming a reality with the release of a new trailer for Suicide Squad. Set for release in August and based on the comic of the same name, the film centers on a group of supervillains recruited to a secret government task force, starring Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. With its neon lights, quippy jokes, and Queen providing the soundtrack, it’s not the trailer we expected, but it’s definitely an interesting one. That’s why we’re breaking it down to see how successful it was at getting us excited about going to the theater, with CA’s Andrew Wheeler and Chris Sims taking a look at this week’s most divisive piece of advertising.

This past weekend at Comic-Con, fans attending the Batman vs. Superman panel were treated to an additional surprise: the entire cast of Suicide Squad appeared on stage (minus Jared Leto) and introduced our first ever look at footage from the upcoming supervillain film. Despite their pleas to not record any of the footage, someone of course did, and it leaked online shortly thereafter in a really crappy quality. Well, director David Ayer and Warner Bros. feel your pain and have decided to do the right thing and just release the whole trailer online.

One of yesterday’s highlights at Comic-Con — amidst the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice footage and the insanely crowd-pleasing Deadpool reel — was the first teaser for Suicide Squad. If you were waiting for Warner Bros. to put that footage online, you can stop, as it appears that the studio has no intention of releasing it anytime soon. We do have one thing, though: the official Suicide Squad logo.

It’s all coming together for David Ayer’s Suicide Squad as the upcoming DC film heads into production. Ayer himself has been pretty active on social media, posting pre-production and behind the scenes photos freely — which goes against the typical secrecy surrounding superhero film projects (not that Suicide Squad is your average superhero film). Today, Ayer assembled the cast for a big group photo, which features a few new faces.

And like that, ‘Suicide Squad’ has seemingly added another big name to its already impressive ensemble. According to the latest rumor, two-time Academy Award nominee and ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ star Viola Davis has nabbed the role of Amanda Waller in David Ayer’s upcoming supervillain team-up film. We’ll see how the actual movie shakes out in a little under two years, but this may very well be the craziest cast ever assembled for a comic book adaptation.