Die Antwoord Accuses ‘Suicide Squad’ of Stealing Their Style
Movie fans will recognize Ninja and Yolandi Visser — collectively known as the group Die Antwoord — as the human stars of Chappie, Neill Blomkamp’s RoboCop/Short Circuit hybrid about a dystopian future where a police robot gains sentience and starts talking like Sharlto Copley. According to Die Antwoord, though, movie fans should also recognize them as the people who inspired the look of Suicide Squad, currently the biggest movie in America, even though they didn’t get any kind of credit or compensation.
The group took to Instagram to air their “jockin” grievances, where they uploaded a video comparing images of Joker and Harley Quinn from David Ayer’s movie with images of the group’s unique sartorial style. Take a look (and note the accompanying text has some NSFW language):
The key passage:
yes David Ayer u jockin our style.
callin ninja up before your movie came our pretendin 2b down, so it looks OK when u bite our black & white graf style & our opening sequence to umshiniwam & an all da lil tiny details u nibbeld dat other people wont see but we notice. Cara & Jared told us how much u were talkin abt us on set but u never asked our permision to rip us off. An when ninja texted u sayin wassup wif dat u said nothin like a scared lil b----. U were jus flauntin our names pretendin to b down. u aint down an u never will b.
Even worse, Visser says, Ayer invited them to the Suicide Squad premiere, and that Ninja “had to sit through dat hole bulls--- movie.” And Ninja knows bulls--- movies; he starred in Chappie after all!
I kid, I kid. (Ish.)
Okay, so: Did Suicide Squad rip off Die Antwoord’s style? There are definitely some superficial similarities between Jared Leto’s tattooed Joker and Ninja. But it’s not like Leto’s Joker talks like Ninja or acts like Ninja did in Chappie (Thank God.) Granted I don’t know the “tiny details” Visser refers to, but without them there isn’t quite enough for me to condemn Ayer as a South African fashion plagiarist. The crappy movie part, though, I’m 100 percent on board with.