James Gunn's Remarks About The Suicide Squad's VFX Should Get Fans Incredibly Pumped

As technology has progressed and computer animation has improved rapidly, it's become increasingly cost-efficient for big action blockbusters to film nearly everything in front of a green screen and animate the big explosions into the scene in post-production. Some decry the method as making movies seem fake, but it's hard to argue with the incredible visual effects experiences this technique has yielded.

That said, fans of traditional visual effects will be happy to learn that there will be plenty of them in writer and director James Gunn's upcoming film, 2021's "The Suicide Squad." Gunn is now on the record saying it contains more practical effects than all of his previous movies combined, including "Guardians of the Galaxy." Total Film, which is published online through GamesRadar+, got to sit in on filming and interview the cast and crew back in the before-times of November 2019, and now that the movie's release is imminent, we're finally getting to see what the Total Film crew learned.

Acting as a bit of a soft reboot of 2016's divisive film "Suicide Squad" (note the lack of "the"), James Gunn originally came on to write and direct for the film after being temporarily fired from working on "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." Although Disney eventually re-hired Gunn following fan backlash, we're now getting the best of both worlds, with "The Suicide Squad" this year and "Vol. 3" in 2023.

Telling Total Film why he loves practical effects, Gunn said, "I love seeing things on set as they happen. And I love being able to give something for the actors and the camera folks to deal with practically. By having so many enormous practical sets in this movie, I think it just makes for a richer experience, a more creative one."

The cast appears to agree, or at least actress Margot Robbie, who reprises her role as Harley Quinn after the original "Suicide Squad" and 2020's "Birds of Prey." "I always prefer to do everything as practically as possible," Robbie told Total Film. "I've done movies before where I didn't know how big something was going to be because it was done in CGI, and then you see it on screen, and I'm like, 'Okay, if I knew was going to look like that my reaction would have been very, very different.' [When it's done practically] you get an adrenaline rush that you just can't really replicate, no matter how hard you're pushing your imagination."

"The Suicide Squad" releases in theaters and HBO Max in the U.S. on August 6, 2021.