Statistically speaking, most movies are bad. Expressing shock because a big-budget film doesn't work out is like being taken by surprise every time it rains on a cloudy day. It's no guarantee, but it's a fair assumption. It's natural for an artist to try to fix mistakes in the art with their name attached. David Ayer wants to repair his widely despised 2016 film Suicide Squad, but that doesn't mean he can.
The practice of releasing special "director's cut" editions of films dates back to the early 40s but wasn't particularly prominent until the 70s. After the groundbreaking success of Star Wars in 1977, George Lucas's first two films, THX 1138 and American Graffiti, were re-edited to more closely fit the director's vision. Blade Runner was famously recut into two definitive iterations. Today, most director's cuts add little, leading the term to be gradually overtaken by "Special Edition" cuts. David Ayer has a model to follow, but it's the other most famous director's cut of modern memory.
David Ayer wants to release his version of Suicide Squad
In September 2014, David Ayer inked a deal with Warner Bros. to write and direct Suicide Squad. The film had been in production for five years at that point. Justin Marks, the writer behind the live-action Jungle Book remake and some percentage of Top Gun: Maverick, was set to write the film but stepped away for unknown reasons. The production seemed to go relatively well, but post-production was a nightmare. Ayer's excellent World War II drama Fury hit the big screen just after he took the gig. Editor John Gilroy abandoned the project in 2016. Ayer worked with Australian editor Lee Smith, who put together a picture-locked "director's cut" of the film.
In short, the version of Suicide Squad released to theaters in August 2016 is not the version Ayer and Smith agreed upon. Ayer has spoken at length about the differences between his edit and the one fans saw. Ayer's cut was 20 minutes longer than the original release. His version had no pop songs, relying instead on Steven Price's score. The plot would've been told in chronological order rather than the frequent flashbacks of the theatrical release. Ayer's take on the film was compared to Black Hawk Down, while the director originally conceptualized the pitch as a riff on The Dirty Dozen. The studio wanted a lighter film overall. They brought in Geoff Johns to devise reshoots, including a new third act that ditched almost all of Ayer's work. It's fair to say that Suicide Squad, as it exists, isn't really Ayer's film. But would Ayer's film be any good?
Suicide Squad had problems beyond the editing
Ayer's cut of Suicide Squad would have fixed several issues with the theatrical release. The editing was the most easily identifiable problem. There are scenes in the original release that don't make any sense, the pacing is awkward, planting and payoff are ignored or comedically over-explained, and so on. The edit is terrible. It feels like what it is. A compromise between several creatives with conflicting visions. However, while the editing is the biggest issue, it is far from the only one. It's tough to edit bad footage into a good movie. No matter how it's edited, Suicide Squad would still be a film about a woefully underprepared team of criminals fighting a witch. Suicide Squad would still have far too many characters and no time to make them relatable. Any cut of this film would still have Jared Leto's Joker in it, and that's an unsurvivable wound.
David Ayer's vision won't necessarily be better
The Ayer cut will almost certainly be a better overall experience than the theatrical release. It would be a more singular vision, a better edit, and a more challenging watch. It would be a dark war movie with a handful of superheroes thrown in. Harley Quinn and the Joker's relationship would be as explicitly abusive as intended. Ayer's script didn't make it to the screen, but enough of it remains to judge the overall quality. It would still be viscerally unpleasant, and in many ways more so than the theatrical release. Both versions of this film would most likely be terrible for many of the same reasons.
The perfect cultural reference for the theoretical Ayer Cut would be the Snyder Cut. Outside of Zack Snyder's fan communities, the general consensus is that his cut is vastly superior to the butchered theatrical release. It is, however, still a chore to sit through and one of the least enjoyable superhero movies ever made. What would be the point of putting the world through Suicide Squad again? Would it save Ayers' legacy? Suicide Squad isn't even his worst movie. The world has a good Suicide Squad movie. It doesn't need to see a terrible one reworked into a merely bad one. The Suicide Squad was created to be expendable. Just let them die.