Somehow the Thinker from The Suicide Squad almost went out in even more brutal fashion, but director James Gunn decided to tone it down.
When asked on Twitter why he "cut the gorier version" that appeared in The Suicide Squad's Blu-ray deleted scenes, Gunn explained that it interfered too much with with the story's flow. "Most things for me come down to my gut & pacing," he tweeted. "That moment came at a time when we're really moving - boom boom boom - and although it's glorious (VFX work by Weta) it acted like an unnecessary pause in the film."
Gunn also responded to a tweet wondering why he deleted an interaction between Thinker (i.e. Gaius Grieves, played by Peter Capaldi) and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) that would have explained a certain injury on his body. "I guess you're talking about not saying how Thinker cut his ear," he wrote. "But I also don't mention where he bought his Hawaiian shirt, who crafted Sebastian's outfit, or where Polky got his bowl cut. I wasn't going to keep 5 minutes of screen time for that!"
In The Suicide Squad, Gunn's version of the Thinker served as the brains behind Corto Maltese's incarceration of the alien Starro the Conqueror, conducting experiments on the being while using electronic devices to enhance his own intellect. As part of its mission, Task Force X captures Grieves and uses him to break into Starro's facility to destroy it, in turn discovering all the political prisoners under the control of the alien's mini-clones that Grieves used as test subjects. However, as Grieves points out, the Squad's real mission is to cover up the U.S. government's role in discovering Starro and giving it to Corto Maltese's former political leaders, fearing that they might be implicated if the new regime used it against the world. When Starro breaks free of his control, he grabs the Thinker and, despite Grieves' pleas, tears his limbs apart and throws his body into a wall, causing it to explode.
Capaldi's Thinker marks the character's third appearance in live-action, following The Flash's depiction of Clifford DeVoe (Neil Sandilands) as Season 4's main villain. An alternate DeVoe also semi-cameoed in Stargirl's Season 2 premiere, with Courtney Whitmore coming across an old mugshot of the Thinker wearing his his Golden Age Thinking Cap.
Directed by James Gunn, The Suicide Squad is currently playing in theaters.
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