The Suicide Squad is this year's breakout superhero film that surprised audiences by being better than anyone expected. This is especially interesting since there are no actual superheroes in it, just villains—and most of those villains are obscure characters almost no one knows or cares about. The two most recognizable characters are the hilarious antiheroines Harley Quinn and Amanda Waller. Amanda is a calculating government operative whose indomitable will has earned her the nickname "The Wall."
Amanda Waller oversees Task Force X, a paramilitary group of supercriminals who perform black ops missions to earn years off their sentence. Each convict has a bomb implanted in their head. If they disobey orders, Waller will not hesitate to kill them. Her callous mission-focused attitude and disregard for human life make her more villainous than most of the supercriminals under her control, but she is just one of the major villains in The Suicide Squad.
10 AMANDA WALLER: She Targeted Bloodsport’s Kid
This probably should go without saying, but killing kids is universally agreed to be an evil act. Amanda Waller does not care about attitudes. She wanted to get the convicted assassin Bloodsport to join the Suicide Squad (as Task Force X is called). When Bloodsport’s daughter stole a watch, Waller threatened to have her tried as an adult if he didn’t join the team.
Waller threatened to lock Bloodsport’s sixteen-year-old daughter in Belle Reve, a fictional maximum-security prison deadlier than any other in the DC Universe. Even if Bloodsport’s daughter wasn’t killed, she would certainly be tortured by guards and inmates alike.
9 OTHERS ARE JUST AS BAD: Peacemaker Is Happy To Kill Innocents For No Reason
Peacemaker is one of the many obscure villains in the film. He is an anti-hero who kills for his country, and he was actually the inspiration for the Comedian in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's comic The Watchmen.
In the film, he has a quote that more or less sums up his attitude: “I cherish peace with all my heart. I don’t care how many men, women, and children I have to kill to get it.” Peacemaker’s attitude about “peace” combines a callous disregard for human life with ruthless nationalism. He takes pride in killing, but he also seems almost addicted to murder, always looking for an excuse to justify this compulsion.
8 AMANDA WALLER: Has No Respect For Human Life
To say Amanda Waller does not care about human life is both a generalization and an understatement. She demonstrates a dispassionate and constant callousness rather than overt cruelty, but she is utterly ruthless.
Most of her individual actions could arguably be justified on their own. After all, she does these things in service to her country and never makes things personal. However, the sum of all of these actions paints a picture of a woman every bit as murderous as history’s worst despots.
7 OTHERS ARE JUST AS BAD: The Thinker Operated Project Starfish As A Death Camp
The Thinker was in charge of Project Starfish, a secret weapons project in the fictional nation of Corto Maltese where he experimented on a captured alien, Starro the Conqueror. Thinker tortured the extraterrestrial in every way imaginable. Some of this was research, but even the research involved vivisections (and worse). And much of the torture was for his own gratification.
On top of that, Project Starfish operated as a death camp used to detain and destroy activists, journalists, and political rivals of the Herrera regime in Corto Maltese. The Thinker clearly does not think much of human rights.
6 AMANDA WALLER: Furthers American Imperialism Through War Crimes
The United States has a long history of imperialism, meddling abroad in other countries and overthrowing their governments. Amanda Waller is directly responsible for furthering US imperialism. She knew about the US funding of death camps in Corto Maltese. She didn’t care. She was only interested in protecting the US from blame.
She sent two field teams to perform black ops missions in Corto Maltese, and she had no issue with Harley Quinn assassinating the new President of the country. In short, Amanda Waller okayed the overthrow of the country. There's no way to know how many other countries she helped the US topple, but given the types of work the Suicide Squad does, the possibilities seem limitless.
5 OTHERS ARE JUST AS BAD: The Herrera Family Were Mass-Murdering Despots
Little is known about the history of Corto Maltese, but early in the film, it is revealed that the fictional nation was ruled by the Herrera Family. They were deposed in a coup and then hanged in public.
For decades, the Herreras ran Project Starfish on behalf of the US, murdering anyone who opposed them... and also murdering their opponents' loved ones.
4 AMANDA WALLER: Oversaw The Torture Of Starro… & His Victims
Amanda Waller clearly had knowledge of the events of Project Starfish and the atrocities committed by the Herrera Regime.
In fact, the Thinker makes it clear that he answered directly to the US for a while. Her exact role is unclear, but Waller’s fingerprints are all over Project Starfish.
3 OTHERS ARE JUST AS BAD: Starro Is A Murderous Alien Conqueror
Starro is an alien starfish that can generate smaller starfish copies of itself. These latch on to people’s faces and the people become extensions of Starro, serving as a hive mind.
The first thing Starro did upon encountering human astronauts was assaulting them and taking over their bodies and minds. This was a hostile act of first contact. It was eventually captured and tortured, but it was hostile long before then. And when it broke free, it did not merely try to kill its captors, but to conquer an entire nation’s capital.
2 AMANDA WALLER: Was Happy To Let Starro Kill Millions Of People
Amanda Waller was okay letting Starro destroy the capital city of Corto Maltese. In fact, she tried to kill the Suicide Squad when they wanted to stop Starro.
The exact population of Corto Maltese and its capital are unknown. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the country’s Herrera regime kept an accurate census. That would make it harder to disappear people, after all. So, it is just a guess that Starro would be killing millions. But whatever the number, it’s way too high.
1 OTHERS ARE JUST AS BAD: Mateo Suarez Wanted To Destroy The World
Silvio Luna became the new dictator of Corto Maltese after he launched a coup against the ruling Herreras. His right-hand man was Mateo Suarez, the country’s Major General. While President Luna was a brutal autocrat, Suarez was overflowing with barely-contained rage and did not care about the consequences of his violent actions.
Suarez wanted to use Starro to destroy other powerful nations like the US, Russia, and China. In fact, he was happy to destroy any place on Earth to prove his strength and power. Like most political strongmen, he was not able to live up to his rhetoric. In fact, he died within 24 hours of taking power.