At this point in his career, nobody can deny that James Gunn has had more experience than most in directing oddly adorable, vaguely humanoid characters of few words. He captured the hearts of millions with the various iterations of sentient tree person Groot in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, and now he hopes to do so again with the aquatic dad bod of The Suicide Squad, King Shark.

But it turns out Gunn's experience bringing Groot to life actually didn't help out in the King Shark process as much as some might think. Coming into the new film, he was surprised to find out that King Shark was a very different beast (in more ways than one) from Groot and even the other fully CG character from Guardians of the Galaxy, Rocket Raccoon. Apparently, there's a different kind of finesse required between turning a raccoon into a humanoid creature and doing the same with an actual literal shark.

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"He was actually harder than both Rocket and Groot to develop," Gunn said of King Shark while speaking with GamesRadar's Total Film. "Rocket was hard because it's difficult taking an animal and turning it into a humanoid shape, but it's five times more difficult to do that with a shark... at the end of the day, with the Guardians, we know they're good. That isn't true of the Suicide Squad. King Shark is a fish and he eats human beings. He doesn't have such a mammalian love for people. But he wants to belong and he wants to show that he's smart. And he's not."

King Shark Suicide Squad Teaser

This seems to go well in hand with the glimpses audiences have seen of King Shark in the trailers for The Suicide Squad. Sylvester Stallone's take on the character definitely radiates an idea of wanting to be more than he is, but lacking the capacity to actually figure out how to do that. Then there's the whole "tearing enemies apart and eating them" thing. It's probably hard to reconcile that with most teams of heroes, but luckily this is the Suicide Squad. Somehow, a giant man-eating shark with legs and a bit of a pudge isn't necessarily the most outlandish offering the team has.

The Suicide Squad sees a ragtag team of DC villains teaming up to do some hero work. Naturally, it isn't exactly their own decision, as they're forced to do so. But it definitely offers a great opportunity to see how so many bizarre and obscure baddies from Batman's rogues gallery (and also Harley Quinn) interact while attempting to work together. Gunn was given a lot of creative freedom to bring his story to life, which includes the idea that virtually anybody could potentially die in the upcoming film. So despite the difficulty of bringing King Shark to life, it looks like it will be well worth it in order to fully create the vision he had in mind. Judging by Guardians of the Galaxy, it's bound to be weird in the best way.

The film's release is finally looming on the horizon, with the UK getting a slightly earlier Suicide Squad release than everyone else. So fans don't have to wait all that much longer before getting to see their new favorite team of misfits wreaking havoc across the DC Universe.

The Suicide Squad releases in UK theaters July 30th 2021, with the US theatrical and HBO Max release coming a week later on August 6th.

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Source: GamesRadar