What James Gunn can bring to the ‘Suicide Squad’ sequel

Not content with pulling Joss Whedon from the first two Avengers movies to work on Justice League, Warner Bros. has lured another Marvel alumnus — the fired James Gunn — to rework the Suicide Squad sequel, writing and potentially directing the second movie to feature the criminal superteam. It’s a pairing that is almost certain to work.

In many ways, Suicide Squad is the ideal property for Gunn to take on at DC. After all, he’s already told a variation of this story in his Guardians of the Galaxy movies; it should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen 2014’s first installment of that franchise that Gunn is interested in a story of a group of disparate ne’er-do-wells coming together despite their differences to save the day almost despite themselves. If anything, Suicide Squad is arguably more in tune with Gunn’s sensibilities because there’s nothing in the property’s comic book history that demands that the protagonists learn to become heroes in the process. They’re literally villains who end up doing the right thing against their wills, coerced by the U.S. Government, their own self-interest and the threat of having their heads explode if they don’t do the right thing.