Warner Bros. revealed a new trailer for "Suicide Squad" Tuesday night, and from the looks of it, the movie is going to heavily revolve around Harley Quinn, the Joker's henchwoman.
Sure, the trailer for the supervillain movie showed a lot of new scenes featuring Jared Leto's Joker; however, after watching the trailer a few times, I'm willing to bet those are all scenes of him in flashbacks.
It looks like the Clown Prince of Crime is being used to help bring Harley front and center. (That's not to say he won't eventually come into his own in other films. This is Batman's arch-nemesis after all.)
If you're familiar with the DC fan favorite, a character first created and popularized in the '90s "Batman: The Animated Series," the two trailers appear to offer a lot of flashbacks centered around Harley's origin story to show how she went from sweet, naive psychiatrist Dr. Harleen Quinzel to the Joker-obsessive harlequin clown's sidekick.
And they're not just showing any origin story.
It looks the film will be taking some inspiration from the more recent "Suicide Squad" comic beat for beat.
Issue #7 of DC's New 52 line of comics tells the origin story of Harley Quinn.
The long and short of it is Quinzel is the Joker's psychiatrist in supervillain hold up Arkham Asylum. She slowly falls for the seemingly misunderstood Joker. She eventually helps break him out of Arkham. In return, the Joker (the sweet guy he is), decides to celebrate Harleen's new attitude by tossing her into a vat of acid — the same way he made his Joker transformation — and renaming her Harley.
Here's how the scene plays out in the issue:
If you pay close attention to the trailers, it looks like we'll be seeing a somewhat similar set up.
The latest trailer shows a few scenes that look directly inspired by "Suicide Squad" #7.
We see the Joker take a dive into one of several acid vats before showing him lifting Harley from the green liquid, his clothes slowly being shredded.
It's not clear whether or not he shoves Harley into one of the giant vats himself.
One of the scenes that doesn't match up is this sequence in which it appears the Joker has Dr. Quinzel tied down and shocks her. Maybe this is his first attempt at turning her into Harley and in order to finish her transformation he seeks out the acid tub.
Here's my take on how we'll see Harley's origin story play out in "Suicide Squad":
We'll see Harley and the other "Suicide Squad" gang inductees at Belle Reve prison, and, throughout their assigned mission, we'll slowly see flashbacks of how Harley was corrupted by the Joker.
We'll see they used to go on missions together — like this one where they ended up in a Lamborghini chase with Batman.
Of course, we may see a Harley flashback all at once. From the first footage which debuted last summer at San Diego Comic-Con, it looks like other characters will be getting the flashback treatment as well — or, at least some of them to tell us how they winded up on the squad.
We've seen a few shots of Will Smith's Deadshot presumably before he was in prison.
The real question is how much of the Joker we'll really see in "Suicide Squad" and in what capacity.
While it looks like we'll see him in flashbacks with Harley, it's not clear whether we'll see him later in the film's story as well. It's not clear how Harley wound up in prison without Joker, but it would be great to see a reunion between the two after she starts working with the Squad.
"Suicide Squad" is in theaters August 5.
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NOW WATCH: Margot Robbie’s crazed Harley Quinn steals the show in the new ‘Suicide Squad’ trailer
