Entertainment

This 'Suicide Squad' Spoiler Was Revealed Early

by Anna Klassen

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was no nervous that audience members would spoil the plot details of Psycho, that he crafted a special video informing movie goers of proper etiquette about how to view the film. The "special presentation policy" included a strict rule that no one would be admitted into the theater after the film started, and a police officer was even hired at theaters showing the film to enforce this rule. Audience members were also strongly urged, from a recording by Hitchcock himself, not to spoil the contents of the film to those who hadn't seen it. But that was more than 55 years ago, and in 2016's world of social media interconnectivity, spoilers spread like wildfire.

And unfortunately, on the Toronto set of Suicide Squad, one of the film's bigger secrets was spoiled almost immediately. Spoilers ahead. While the cast and crew were able to shoot many crucial scenes on stages built inside enclosed stages, certain scenes had to be filmed on real streets. And when the Squad took to a blocked off street to film, fans swarmed the surrounding areas and quickly saw the film's big secret: The Batmobile. And you can't have a Batmobile without Batman.

"I was a little disappointed," Jay Hernandez, who plays El Diablo in the film, says of the bat-tastic reveal. "But that's the state of our time, media in general. Everybody has the ability to film anything or record audio at any moment. Everybody has a cell phone, so it's ubiquitous. It's unavoidable," he reasons.And while their sets may have strict no cell phone policies, the public streets are a whole other beast. "When you're out in the street, you're exposed. I didn't like that story plot points were kind of being revealed," he says of fans figuring out that Batman would be included in the film. "But in a way, it was like a good thing because it got people talking about it and getting excited about it."But once word got out that the Batmobile was roaming the streets of Toronto, the crowds surrounding their filming location quickly become unmanageable. According to the film's unit rep, on the second night of filming with the iconic car, fans lined the streets with their families, lawn chairs, and generally set up camp. "There were so many people on the street. It was just kind of crazy. Families were driving from like two hours away to set up shop and like, you know, eat sandwiches," Hernandez says.

But this made filming the scenes unsafe, and the unit rep had to walk up and down the streets with a police officer and ask fans to please go home. She made these fans a compelling offer, though. She said she would drive the Batmobile up and down the street so fans could take photos up close, if they'd go home afterwards. Luckily, it worked, and the Squad could finally shoot the scenes. "So they paraded the Batmobile down the street so everybody could get their moment, get their shot," Hernandez says. "We literally got to do our first shot that night at 1:30 in the morning," the unit rep adds.

For those who weren't on the Toronto set a year ago when the film was shooting, Suicide Squad hits theaters August 5. Images: Warner Bros.; Giphy; Giphy