The first full trailer for James Gunn’s supervillain team-up movie The Suicide Squad has finally arrived and it’s full of ’70s war-movie action. While Gunn’s film may have a similar name to 2016’s Suicide Squad, this new version is a (nearly) total reboot of the franchise and is set to hit theaters and HBO Max on Aug. 6.
The trailer starts out with an introduction that reminds us of the Suicide Squad’s very simple concept in DC comics’ lore: a team of villains that the government puts together to do impossible missions that will probably kill them. Next we get a brief introduction to the dozen or so villains that are assembled on this team as well as what their powers are. Most of the characters are completely new to this version of the film, though Margot Robbie will return as Harley Quinn, as well as Jai Courtney as Boomerang from the 2016 version of the film. There’s also a kaiju. (Specifically, Starro!)
In the brief look we got at the movie from DC’s fandome event last year, we already knew that we could expect something along the lines of a war movie from The Suicide Squad, and the trailer clearly doubles down on that action. And, since this is a James Gunn movie, there are plenty of sarcastic one-liners thrown in for good measure.
The Suicide Squad is Warner Bros. Pictures’ second attempt at bringing the comic series to the big screen in the last 10 years. In 2016, the studio released Suicide Squad — no “The” that time around — which was technically written and directed by David Ayer, but apparently went through some significant reshoots and edits in order to get a lighter, more comedic tone.
A few years later in 2018, James Gunn was briefly taken off his Guardians of the Galaxy films by Marvel due to some insensitive jokes he had tweeted years earlier. While he was quickly reinstated as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Warner Bros. jumped in during his brief period of non-Marvel exclusivity and hired him to direct this new Suicide Squad reboot.
