Just last week we got confirmation that Tom Hardy was officially leaving the ‘Suicide Squad’ movie, which was a disappointing shock to many fans as he seemed the perfect fit to play the leader of the dark group of anti-heroes, and the story is the first crack in a production that, up until this point, looked to be firing on all cylinders. Of course, the typical answer we got for why Hardy left was your basic “scheduling issues” line, but the real truth most likely is far more interesting.
Hardy was not the only big name attached to the film, with Will Smith onboard to play Deadshot, Jared Leto signed on as the Joker, and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. According to Latino-Review, those big names are a large part of why Tom Hardy decided to bow out. According to their sources, Hardy was not pleased when he saw the latest draft of the script, which dramatically altered his character’s role in the film, and dropped a lot of his screen time in order for Smith and Leto to have more time in front of the camera. Bear in mind, this is still just rumor/speculation, but there is also a chance that Hardy saw the latest version of the script and just decided the production is going downhill, and wanted out. Either way, fans are struggling to figure out what this might mean for the highly anticipated film.
True, the studio already has a back-up in mind, with Jake Gyllenhaal supposedly already in talks to replace Hardy, but the loss of Hardy seems like a serious blow to the film. This could already mean studio interference in the script, by means of telling the writers that the big name actors come first and little things like story are secondary, which could spell real trouble for any movie, let alone a somewhat experimental one where super-villains are the protagonists.
Of course, there’s also a chance that Hardy was just being a diva, and left the film after finding out he wouldn’t have as much screen-time as when he played Bane in ‘The Dark Knight Rises,’ though if that is the case, he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ was the weakest of the 3 Nolan Batman films, and in large part it was due to boring villains that couldn’t match up against the brilliance of Heath Ledger’s Joker or even Liam Neeson’s Ras Al Ghul.
Regardless of the real reason behind the departure, let’s hope the production continues on track for its August 2016 release date, and manages to find the right balance between all the big actors and characters.
