Gunn Honored Chris Pratt with a Hidden Gem in Suicide Squad: Did You Find It?
Until recently James Gunn was best known for making Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2. Then he jumped ship to the DC side of comic book movies, directing Suicide Squad (2021).
Though Suicide Squad was well-rated by both critics and the audience, it ended up as one of the worst box office disasters in the troubled history of DC cinematic universe. Despite that, James Gunn, together with the producer Peter Safran, was appointed to lead said DC Universe, which immediately brought him to the forefront of media attention.
Gunn is not the first director to shift from adapting Marvel comic books stories to DC (Joss Whedon did that before him). In his new position he does not forget about his old friends from Guardians of the Galaxy sets – actors, particularly those playing major roles, have much harder time changing their allegiances, than directors, of course.
For example, he made a small shout-out to Chris Pratt ( Star-Lord) when filming Suicide Squad (and it was not a poster with Pratt on it, or something that you might usually expect).
You see, this version of the Suicide Squad included the master thief Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), whose power is to control rats, and who is constantly accompanies by a pet rat, Sebastian. In the movie, Sebastian was portrayed by actual rat "actors", whose names were included in the movie's credits. As Gunn said in an interview with EW:
"... we had two primary rats. One was named Jaws and one was named Crisp Ratt. [Laughs] They were our two main rats, and they were sweethearts, and they played Sebastian for most of the movie."
And if you, by some miracle, did not get the pun "Crips Ratt" had long been an Internet nickname for Chris Pratt.
Notably, Gunn ran the idea past Pratt himself, to check if the actor was okay with the joke, and, as Gunn says, "He thought it was hilarious." Well, good to hear that, and good to see that James Gunn remains on great terms with actors who worked under him. This gives us some hope that he might be a proper man to head DCU, after all.