James Gunn held a Twitter "Watch Party" for The Suicide Squad with fans and he revealed a lot of fascinating pieces of information about not only the making of the film, but also his views of the film and the characters within it. One of those interesting revelations was Gunn sharing his views on who the true villain of the film was.Naturally, the easy answer is the giant alien starfish that the team has to come together to take down at the end of the film rather than surrender an entire island nation to its fate, but Gunn has a more nuanced answer.
You see, during the film, we discover that Starro was discovered in outer space by a United States space mission. The astronauts took him into their craft and the alien didn't actually take control of the minds of the astronauts until it was prodded by the astronauts. However, when the space flight returned to Earth, the United States government decided to house Starro in Corto Maltese in Jutenheim, where it was experimented on by the Thinker for thirty years.
Therefore, Gunn explained that he actually feels sorry for Starro and that he thinks that Amanda Waller is the true villain of the film.
It was Waller, after all, who sent the Suicide Squad into Corto Maltese not to take down this powerful alien who can possess the minds of a whole nation, but rather to just eliminate any evidence that the United States was sponsoring these experimentations. Not only that, but when Rick Flag wanted to alert the world to what happened with Starro, we learn that Waller had secretly entrusted Peacemaker with a side mission of killing off any member of the Suicide Squad that he felt could leak the information.
Finally, even after all of that, Waller was also willing to literally murder the remaining members of the Squad when they decided to kill Starro. That wasn't even against Waller's plan, as she noted, her mission was finished once the evidence was destroyed. She was just being spiteful for Bloodsport and the others ignoring her orders.
Once the Squad succeeded in killing Starro, its haunting final words lend credence to Gunn's willingness to feel sorry for it, as it died, "I was happy floating, staring at the stars."
Source: Twitter