More Suicide Squad Casting: Will Smith as Captain Boomerang?

[MovieBob]

More Suicide Squad Casting: Will Smith as Captain Boomerang?

A-list stars tapped for C-list supervillains in dark actioner from director David Ayer

David Ayer's Suicide Squad movie, the first villain-centric film in Warner Bros expanding DC Universe of movies, has reportedly The Wolf of Wall Street's [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138505-Margot-Robbie-Reportedly-Playing-Harley-Quinn-In-Suicide-Squad-Movie] Margot Robbie. Now, reports are hitting of who other actors circling the production may be portraying in the offbeat feature; in which a government program offers to commute the prison sentences of various supervillains... if they'll agree to undertake covert espionage missions with an extremely low probability of survival.

According to "Captain Boomerang." [http://variety.com/2014/film/news/jai-courtney-eyed-for-batman-villain-deadshot-in-suicide-squad-exclusive-1201354892/]

If it came to fruition, this would mark Will Smith's first role involving a superhero since 2008's Focus; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iFcGNOWnA8] plus Tom Hardy's return to the genre following his role as "Bane" in The Dark Knight Rises.


Source: Variety [http://variety.com/2014/film/news/jai-courtney-eyed-for-batman-villain-deadshot-in-suicide-squad-exclusive-1201354892/]


[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/movies-and-tv/]


[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/comics-and-cosplay/]

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[ShakerSilver]

Y'know as much as I like Will Smith, I don't see him playing a sociopathic Aussie with an affinity for Boomerangs. I mean, how much farther can you get from the "Fresh Prince" than a Australian supervillain? What's next, Emma Watson as Amanda Waller?

 

[Kaihlik]

This cannot be true. There is no way Will Smith is going to be Captain Boomerang. I mean come on its Will Smith playing Captain Boomerang. Someones leg had been pulled I think.

 

[STENDEC1]

Are they sure they haven't got this around the wrong way? Wouldn't it make more sense to have Will Smith play Deadshot and Jai Courtney play Captain Boomerang since he's actually, you know, an Australian? Besides which, I think Will Smith could be a pretty interesting Deadshot.

 

[ron1n]

Well to be fair...

Secretly the illegitimate son of an American soldier and an Australian woman... Throughout the first several years of the character's existence, Captain Boomerang spoke with an American accent. Beginning in the late 1980s he developed an Australian accent.

So sounds like they will probably just downplay his 'australian-ness' if Will Smith is cast as I cannot see him pulling off a good Australian accent at all lol

Oh and also:

However, Captain Boomerang's grating personality and blatant racism (among other things, he constantly referred to black team member Bronze Tiger as an "abbo") caused considerable friction among his teammates, and he was considered to be a dangerous, vicious, cowardly and undependable member of the team?dysfunctional even by the Squad's standards and the equivalent of a class clown.

Sooooo yeahhhh they might downplay that aspect of the character too LOL

 

[Something Amyss]

I've always wanted to see Will Smith in a superhero movie.

I mean, how much farther can you get from the "Fresh Prince" than a Australian supervillain?

Isn't that what he's been trying to do since about 1997?

 

[marscentral]

I really want to hear Will Smith try an Aussie accent.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

what is it lately with changing the ethic identity of characters to black guys in superhero movies?

 

[Erttheking]

what is it lately with changing the ethic identity of characters to black guys in superhero movies?

Probably because Hollywood has been changing Black Asian and Hispanic characters to white people for decades now.

 

[Ticklefist]

I thought Will Smith turned down roles that don't make him the centerpiece of the movie.

 

[Buizel91]

I thought Will Smith turned down roles that don't make him the centerpiece of the movie.

His character wouldn't be the centerpiece, We have the Joker, Harley Quinn, and god knows who else, if done right, this could be like an Evil Avengers film, all of them getting decent screen time and non been overshadowed by the other.

However this is DC and recently the only villains to be in the spotlight is the Joker and Harley so god knows xD

 

[ryukage_sama]

Maybe the source has their characters wrong. He could be playing the Black Spider. Hopefully the film will have similar approach as their animates Assault on Arkham direct-to-video movie. I could hope for a more different, improved adaptation, but this is Warner Bros. we're talking about so that would just be silly.

 

[Therumancer]

It seems to be a joke by someone who knows the comics, which should be obvious given the link and information on the character (which I re-read to double check). Captain Boomerang is a vocal racist and has tensions with Amanda Waller and Bronze Tiger because of it, that, and being "team screw up" is pretty much his contribution to "The Suicide Squad", which is the focus of this movie, as opposed to his more mixed track record against The Flash (whom he has "almost beaten" countless times).

If they did cast Will Smith as Captain Boomerang it would be kind of insulting and show a total disrespect for the material and one of the key points of tension in the team. I suppose there is a PC statement in making the racist character black in a movie, but I also have to wonder what the point of the character is going to be then since he's known in this context specifically for being an irredeemable arsehole. That and while Will Smith can do comedy, he seems to take himself far too seriously nowadays, compared to his earlier roots. If they cast Will as Captain Boomerang they will probably wind up increasing focus on the character, and probably avoid making him the team screw up. As he would be far and away the biggest star in the movie from what I've seen so far, his involvement will mean they will want to use him quite a bit for all the money they will likely be paying him and the fact that if his name is involved he's who a lot of people will be coming to see, he'd be wasted on Captain Boomerang unless they re-did the character to the point where there would be no point in having him anymore. Even if Will Smith regresses back to "Men In Black" type attitudes, his style of comedy in this case is more to play a competent character who winds up in absurd situations, tries to handle them fairly "straight up" and hilarity ensues. That's not really Suicide-Squad Captain Boomerang where the problem is supposed to be him, not the situations.

I'd think Will Smith might be able to do Bronze Tiger, but the problem would be the choreography since I don't think Will Smith knows martial arts. As odd as it sounds I was actually thinking it might be amusing to see if they could cast RZA given "The Man With The Iron Fists" and the ironic twist of how he's calling himself "Bronze Tiger" when his enemies included "Bronze Lion" and "Bronze Body" in that movie. A fairly subtle joke/reference in the casting. While his fight scenes were just okay in his movie, I remember hearing RZA does actually do kung-fu.

Also if I was planning this I'd probably want Manchester Black in The Suicide Squad (I believe he was a member as of the time of "Our Worlds At War" with the whole Imperiax thing), largely because they don't seem to have any mentalists in the DC Cinematic Universe yet (none even planned) and he's a decent villain for Superman. To begin with before his writers "lost it" and he became a total psycho obsessed with making Superman kill because of... reasons... he was actually fairly sympathetic and made some excellent points, while being interesting because he wasn't scared of Superman without even needing Kryptonite as his powers were perfectly effective against him.

I had a few minutes (relatively early today) so I figured I'd shoot my thoughts out there. The bottom line is that I think "Will Smith As Captain Boomerang" is a phrank, largely because it's probably the worst possible combination one could think of. Especially for a character where they could easily cast a bumbling aussie tough guy, and it seems like you see plenty of those on TV and in Movies as knock down villains (who might do something cool before being taken down). For a relatively minor character your supposed to hate, I'd expect a more humble actor to be cast, probably a character actor who does exactly that kind of thing on screen already (names elude me sadly).

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Guess they are hoping for Wills star power. Personally i would want a newer black actor, some one not many people know of because i think Will Smith will stick out like a sore thumb. I still have no idea how they intend to make Joker behave himself and fully the rules. There is no way he would and would be a far bigger threat to the team than to the enemy. But hey, this will be a new Joker, one that is house trained and will be the comical member of the team.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

He better have an Irish accent!

 

[ccggenius12]

Aww, come on. Paul Hogan needs work...
"That's not a knife, this is a knife."
"That's a boomerang..."
"Oh, I see you've played knifey-boomerangy before..."

 

[Abomination]

Apparently it's really difficult to find a racist in Australia.

I hope this is a joke or something, Capt. Boomerang's "established" persona is that of a white, racist, Australian, cockup with a perchance for throwing curved bits of wood around. This "re-imagining" of the character stinks of corporations afraid of having a racist protagonist.

 

[Lieju]

Apparently it's really difficult to find a racist in Australia.

I hope this is a joke or something, Capt. Boomerang's "established" persona is that of a white, racist, Australian, cockup with a perchance for throwing curved bits of wood around. This "re-imagining" of the character stinks of corporations afraid of having a racist protagonist.

Was that really a major part of his character?
I've read some comics with him and he was just a weird guy who threw boomerangs at Flash.
I guess this is a character-trait that was added later during the 90's or something?

Also a quick google search tells me there are two captain boomerangs?

But yeah, this sounds like a joke.
Although I can see how they'd want to make him black to distance the character from those elements if they're not going for that characterization.

 

[Tanis]

My reaction:

It's not because Will Smith happens to be black, it's because Will Smith happens to be Will Smith.

And Will Smith, well, whatever 'shine' he had...it's gone.

Will Smith should just fade away.