Mel Gibson Might Be Directing Suicide Squad 2

In a move that’s not all that surprising, Warner Bros. is in early talks with Mel Gibson to take over Suicide Squad 2, as first reported by Variety. This film is the follow-up to 2016’s critically derided Suicide Squad from David Ayer, and is basically set out to ruin everything. Mel Gibson is a on a little bit of a comeback, with the recent release and Oscar nomination for Hacksaw Ridge, and recently starring in Blood Father.

It’s not a great move, but it is understandable. He just landed six Oscar nominations after not being in the chair for almost a decade. But that doesn’t make it a good idea. Gibson, while a gifted director, has a niche that he sticks pretty close to. He sticks with heroic redemption, which is not one of Suicide Squad’s motifs. Sure, it dabbles in redemption, but none of the characters in the first film grew in a way that would make them better people. At the end of the film, they’re still bad people in a bad movie. And yeah, he might make the sequel look like an improvement compared to the first one, but how hard could that be?

Gibson isn’t the only director that Warner Bros. is talking to—however, he is the biggest by far. Reuben Fleischer of Zombieland fame, Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) and Warm Bodies’ director Jonathan Levine are all in talks to take over the Suicide Squad sequel. Honestly, out of all these names, Fleischer is the only director who could carry over the visual flare from Zombieland to Suicide Squad. So yeah, if this absolutely has to happen, we’re all in on Fleischer. Give Gibson a better film to make, and we’ll go see that one instead.