One thing that hurt LetoJoker was that they put out those images first, in which he was shirtless and looked wacky, which led to all kinds of speculation about how it was going way off the reservation. Especially because for a lot of people The Joker is now
The Dark Knight's version. There wasn't any hint of how he was actually playing the character until the Comic-Con trailer and that was limited to the last ten seconds of it.
The two trailers since have shown him as much more of what you expect from The Joker traditionally and that he's not really playing it all that out there or weird. Even his outfits are what you expect from The Joker (an in-universe version of his classic purple suits, etc.) and it seems his shirtless thing is just one torture scene.
The trailers have done a lot to quiet the Harley complaints too. There were a ton of those as well, but other than the accent (which might just be because Robbie can't do it), and continued complaints about her outfits, it's seeming like basically Harley as we know her.
Hell, they've even done a lot for the Will Smith/Deadshot complaints as he doesn't seem to be dominating the film significantly more than the character (as the most prominent Suicide Squad member) warrants.
The one thing that hasn't hurt is that the trailers still look like Ayer approached this as a kind of ensemble action film first and then fit the Suicide Squad/DC characters into it. Which is how some of Marvel's better films have come about. BvS was way more like checking off the DC boxes first and then fitting it together as a film.
I'd really hate to be wrong though. I know I shouldn't get my hopes up off trailers after
Age of Ultron's bait and switch.
Side note I still think DC's lane needs to just go all the way anti Marvel stuff like Suicide Squad. DC has a lot of wierd shit, build on that, push that. Stop trying to just "What Marvel does/did but DC!" Fuck a flash movie, do a blue beetle movie, resurrect that Justice League Dark shit etc.
One of the things I'm hoping comes out of
Deadpool is not a glut of R-rated comic films but instead the realization that you can make a good comic film for under $80+ million and with smaller scales so you can plumb those lower tier/lesser known franchises with not too much worry by bringing in people who really want to do the films. (Like Ryan Reynolds.)
Ant-Man is another decent example, it was the cheapest Marvel movie to date at $130 million (!) and had production issues, and still made half a billion and has 80% RT.
Warner hasn't done a mainstream DC film for under $185 million since
Batman Begins. (
Watchmen was $130 million.) Fucking
Green Lantern was $200 million. Probably shouldn't rule out that they're budgeting Aquaman, Shazam and CYBORG at $150-250 million. And Justice League at $300+ million.
I thought Justice League Dark was one of the more promising films they announced, before quietly shelving it with del Toro slipping off it. That seems like the kind of film with an "unknown" franchise that can rope in outsiders with the proper production and style like
Guardians of the Galaxy. (They've kinda fallen backwards into it with
Suicide Squad by accident.) But Warner seems almost afraid to do something like that, even on a lower budget, whereas Marvel dropped $200 million into GOTG.
Probably doesn't apply to
Suicide Squad with Smith and Leto on board, they probably got paid more than the CGI budget.
