[ad_1]
A Starro is about to be born.
When audiences sit down to watch “The Suicide Squad,” in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, they may walk away with a burning question: Did I really just watch superheroes battle an alien starfish? giant?
Indeed, you did.
He (she? That?) Might seem like a slight acid flashback, but the boss-level villain Starro is so real and, against all odds, is now appearing in a major summer blockbuster.
The film is both a near sequel to 2016’s poorly received “Suicide Squad” and a full reboot. Government Agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a motley group of convicts (including Idris Elba’s Bloodshot and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn) to infiltrate a South American island nation and destroy a secret laboratory.
That’s when they have to face Starro.
And if you think there have been so many superhero movies that we’re now using echinoderms as villains, you should know that Starro the Conqueror actually has a big place in comic book history. He was the villain in the very first Justice League of America print adventure in 1960.
His name was a riff on one of the late DC Comics editor-in-chief Julius Schwartz’s favorite stories, a 1925 novel titled “Tarrano the Conqueror” by Ray Cummings.
Why the starfish design with a big eye in the middle? It’s unclear. As author Michael Eury pointed out, however, Starro creators Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky could have borrowed his look from a 1956 Japanese film about kaiju called “Warning From Space,” in which the alien invader appears. practically identical to Starro.
“The Suicide Squad” director James Gunn said Starro fits the somewhat absurd tone of the film.
“As a child, I found Starro completely terrifying,” Gunn said at a press conference in July. “So it was about taking something that was completely, mind you, ridiculous [and] put him in a setting that is the sandy streets of Colón, Panama, and then allow him to do his scary business, but he’s also completely outrageous. And so, this mix of things appealed to my aesthetic.
Hoping the movie is doing well enough to warrant a sequel, and audiences have a chance to see which C-List villain could possibly come next.
[ad_2]
Source link