James Gunn has repeatedly insisted his The Suicide Squad is not a sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad. “Frankly, the weirdness of doing a sequel that’s not a sequel was part of the appeal of it,” he said during one widely quoted interview. Wikipedia (which is never wrong) describes The Suicide Squad as a “standalone sequel,” whatever that means.

Regardless of its technical status, the new film does feature several characters — and actors — from the old one, like Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag. Gunn just never goes out of his way to connect his work to the first film. For the most part, that approach is quite effective. But if you watch the two films back to back — which is pretty easy to do at the moment, because they’re both streaming on HBO Max — you’ll see that there are a few ways that the film’s don’t sync up. Some continuity established in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad gets ignored in James Gunn’s, Other elements are directly contradicted, and a couple of the returning characters act a little (or even a lot) differently this time around. Here’s a few of the most notable examples of ways The Suicide Squad doesn’t quite match up with Suicide Squad. (Note: There are some minor spoilers for both movies below.)

Ways The Suicide Squad Contradicts the First Film

The Suicide Squad is a sequel to Suicide Squad. But the two movies don’t match up perfectly. For example...

The Suicide Squad is now in theaters and on HBO Max.

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