If you’re a fan of director James Gunn, you have a lot of movies to choose from when it comes to experiencing jaw-dropping special effects. From the practical monster work and impressive-for-its-time computer graphics in Slither to the fully rendered CGI alien creatures in his Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel films, the man has helmed a lot of unworldly stories on the silver screen.
When it comes to which of his films has the very best special effects, be it computer-generated or practical, however, that honor goes to one of his movies that came out earlier this year, DC’s The Suicide Squad, the director took to Twitter to clarify.
“#TheSuicideSquad definitely has the best VFX (& practical SPFX) of any movie I’ve ever worked on & the folks at @weta_digital, @Framestore, @trixterfilm, @Scanline_VFX & more all deserve a huge round of applause,” Gunn said.
If you’ve seen the movie, that is an answer that may not surprise you at all. Not only did The Suicide Squad feature incredibly life-like textures for a talking bipedal shark character named Nanaue and a gigantic alien starfish known as Starro the Conqueror, but there were a few other subtle touches to the movie that utilized special effects that fans may have missed. For instance, there is an extended fight sequence between John Cena’s Peacemaker and Joel Kinnaman’s Colonel Rick Flag in which a long shot of the hand-to-hand combat is shown in the reflection of Peacemaker’s chrome helmet. The scene in question was given its own VFX breakdown on the popular YouTube channel Corridor Crew.
In case you missed it when it initially hit theaters back in August, you can catch James Gunn‘s The Suicide Squad right now on HBO Max.