David Ayer still out here swearing his Suicide Squad was a million times better than what we got
Ayer compared the studio's edit of his 2016 supervillain movie to "having my heart torn out"

As reviews—almost uniformly positive—for James Gunn’s new supervillain splatterfest The Suicide Squad begin to roll in, the film’s positive reputation is already beginning to cast some understandable (and unflattering) attention back at its 2016 predecessor. David Ayer’s Suicide Squad—if we can even call it that, which, more on that in a second—was received with a sort of tepid shrug when it arrived in between Batman V. Superman and Wonder Woman way back when, with its most eye-drawing feature being Jared Leto’s unpleasantly method approach to embodying the film’s abruptly truncated take on the Joker. Those elements that worked from Suicide Squad have since carefully been scooped out and harvested, most notably with the expansion of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn into her own film, while Gunn’s movie is clearly taking a “build-your-own” approach to the original’s characters and details. Ayer himself was reportedly unhappy with the treatment of his movie, though, and while the Training Day writer’s ire at Warner Bros. was swiftly eclipsed by the subsequent battles between Zack Snyder and the studio over Justice League, calls for “The Ayer Cut” have been a low-key element of the DC film fan revolt for years.