The Suicide Squad Guide: Runtime, Cast and Where to Stream

The definite article is doing a lot of work

There are two films called almost exactly this, and picking the wrong one is the most common mistake readers make. David Ayer’s Suicide Squad came out in 2016. James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad came out in 2021. They share a studio, a franchise, and four actors – Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman and Jai Courtney all carry over – and they sit on HBO Max as two separate pages distinguished by one word. This guide is the 2021 film, and the year on the hero card above is the fastest way to check you are on the right page.

The other thing readers arrive asking is where Deadshot went. Will Smith played him in 2016 and does not appear here; Idris Elba plays Bloodsport, a different marksman who occupies the same slot in the squad – the reluctant professional with a daughter – closely enough that people who saw the film once often remember it as a recast. It is not. They are two characters, and the 2021 film simply does not use Deadshot.

It is also not a sequel, which is the next thing worth knowing. Gunn reintroduces every returning character and does not continue the 2016 plot, so nothing is required before it. What it does do is set up what came after: Peacemaker, played by John Cena here, got his own series out of this film, and the whole tonal register of the DC material Gunn went on to run – the needle-drops, the disposable ensemble, the willingness to kill a lead in the first reel – is established in these 132 minutes. That is the real argument for watching it now rather than in 2021: it turned out to be the pilot for a studio.

Practically: it is rated R and earns it, which is a genuine difference from the 2016 film’s PG-13 and worth knowing before it goes on with anyone under seventeen in the room. It opened in US theaters and on HBO Max on the same day, August 6, 2021, a pandemic-era release strategy that cost it a box office and won it a streaming audience; the release record has the territory dates. John Murphy scored it. For where the DC slate went next, our Creature Commandos guide covers Gunn’s animated follow-up and our Superman guide covers the reboot proper – and our Man of Steel guide covers the film that started the continuity this one closed out.