I was not a big fan of Suicide Squad, and that’s partly because the film is doesn’t make sense and isn’t properly constructed. However, when we spoke to director David Ayer, he told us, “But this cut of a movie is my cut, there’s no sort of parallel universe version of the movie, there released movie is my cut.” So Suicide Squad isn’t like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice where the “Ultimate Edition” is much longer and represents the director’s true vision.

And yet, in their quest to make more money, Warner Bros. has released an “extended cut” of Suicide Squad with 11 more minutes of footage. Does this clear up the plot holes? Does it make the characters more interesting? Does it make the movie better? I watched the extended cut to see what was added to the controversial supervillain film.

Slightly More Killer Croc

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Image via Warner Bros.

While there’s supposedly a lot of Jared Leto’s Joker on the cutting room floor, you don’t see much of him in these new scenes. If anything, the character who gets the biggest boost is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc. The character receives an extended introduction where Griggs (Ike Barinholtz) mentions that one time during a feeding, Croc bit off a guard’s hand, and then we see that guard sporting a prosthetic limb made from vulcanized rubber. A little later on when the gang is on the chopper headed for Midway City, Croc throws up on the ride.

It makes sense why these scenes were cut since they don’t tell us much about Croc’s character, they don’t make us care about him, and they slow down the pacing of the movie. However, these scenes do stick out because they’re the only additions for the first fifty minutes or so of the movie.

Extended Plot to Escape

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Clay Enos/ & © DC Comics Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

You may recall that in the theatrical cut of Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Deadshot (Will Smith) have a brief conversation about how they’re going to take out Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), and Deadshot tells Harley to “Spread the word, dollface.” However, before she can start chatting up her fellow Task Force X members, the group comes across the mutated citizens and a battle ensues.

In the extended cut, we actually see Harley spreading the word. She tells Boomerang (Jai Courtney) what they’re planning, and then he tries to rope in Diablo (Jay Hernandez), but Diablo wants no part of it, and you can kind of see the intent of the scene: this is a team that’s trying to bond over their shared duplicity, and failing. They’re basically bonding over being evil, but there’s no camaraderie or shared sense of purpose beyond wanting to escape.

That being said, this scene only serves to highlight a larger problem that comes when the first battle gets underway. As a group of mutants starts to drag off Flag, Harley seems pretty pleased, but Deadshot points out that if he dies, they all die. This makes no sense when just five minutes prior, Deadshot was planning to kill Flag. Far from clarifying a confusing problem, this extended scene only serves to further muddle the characters’ goals.

Harley Tries to Get Joker to Admit He Loves Her

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Image via Warner Bros.

This is an odd scene. Setting aside the fact that Suicide Squad is already overstuffed with flashbacks and exposition, this scene would have been the second of three Harley flashbacks within the movie (the other two are the dossier scene where Waller (Viola Davis) explains how Dr. Harleen Quinzel fell in love with Joker and the other is where Quinzel dives into the vat of chemicals to become Harley Quinn).

In this flashback, which we glimpsed during production, Harley and Joker have a spat on the road, and she pulls a gun on him. She basically wants him to admit that he loves her, and he replies, “I’m not someone who is loved. I’m an idea. I’m a state of mind.” (So to answer your question: no, more Joker doesn’t make Leto’s take on the character any better) While some leaked video showed Joker hitting Harley in this scene, he does not hit her in this extended cut. It appears that, whether or not Ayer oversaw this extended cut or not, it was important to show that Joker was not physically abusive with Harley Quinn except for when he gives her electroshock therapy, an assault which she says “She can take,” thus giving him an odd sort of permission.

There’s not much more new Joker material in the extended cut, and this added scene really only cements him as the least threatening Joker to appear in a major movie outside of Cesar Romero’s intentionally comic spin on the character.

Harley Quinn Psychoanalyzes the Group

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Clay Enos/ & © DC Comics Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

This isn’t a particularly good scene, but it’s an interesting one. Most people who write Harley Quinn never draw on her past as a psychologist. Once she stopped being Harleen Quinzel and started a life of crime as Harley Quinn, she leaves her medical training behind. In its theatrical cut, Suicide Squad follows suit and Harley Quinn is just a jolly psychotic who only has a few serious moments like when she tells Diablo to “own that shit” when he confesses to accidentally killing his family and when she’s bummed after Joker’s helicopter has been shot down.

In this extended scene as the group walks to rescue HVT 1, Harley starts trying to psychoanalyze the group. She asks weird questions like why Killer Croc wouldn’t eat her and then starts trying to dig into the psyches of her fellow squad members until Deadshot tells her to knock it off. It’s a half-baked idea that could have worked better in a movie that wasn’t so scattershot, but as it stands, I understand why Ayer left it on the cutting room floor.

Is the Extended Cut an Improvement on the Theatrical Cut?

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Clay Enos/ & © DC Comics Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Not at all! Watching the extended cut, all you see are a handful of deleted scenes that were polished up and inserted into the theatrical cut. They don’t change the shape of the movie or explain confusing aspects like “Why did Amanda Waller hide the fact that she was the one who needed rescuing in Midway City?” or “Why does Waller keep Enchantress’ heart in a highly secure briefcase but the statue containing Incubus is on a shelf next to the printer paper?” This isn’t like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition where the changes may not make the movie better, but you at least they help the plot make sense.

If you’re looking for a cut of Suicide Squad that fixes the movie, it doesn’t exist.