One of the lesser known DC characters that will be featured in Suicide Squad next year is Slipknot, played by Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actor Adam Beach. As the master of ropes, Slipknot, a.k.a. Christopher Weiss, will be one of the many criminals Amanda Waller recruits to join her team of operatives. Although he’s not as famous as teammates like Deadshot and Harley Quinn, Beach assures fans that Slipknot will play a key role in the 2016 blockbuster.
When asked how faithful this version of Slipknot is compared to the one in the comics, Beach gave a rundown to Rama’s Screen of what the rope-obsessed assassin is capable of, and said that he’s just as dangerous as the movie’s worst killers in certain situations. In Beach’s words:
My version is basically a guy who’s just pissed off to be there, he’s an angry boy. But ya know, he’s like everybody else, he is a hired mercenary, assassin killer, so you know that paying the right money and he’ll get the job done. And as long as I kept that nature about him that he can in any minute hang you with his ropes or stab you in the back, he is as worse as the Joker and Deadshot and Harley Quinn, that’s the beauty of it, we all filled the shoes of these villainous characters that are hired killers and now we’re asked to go and save the day in some shape or some form, how do you contain that?! Do you know what I mean?!
Beach went on to say that Suicide Squad's Slipknot won’t visually look like his comic book counterpart (in other words, "no spandex"), but instead be garbed in "heavy rope gear." The actor described Slipknot as the "escape plan," being able to get the team out of dangerous situations if need be. This makes him not just a skilled combatant, but an asset to get them out of tricky spots. In the comics, Slipknot was brought into the Suicide Squad early on during writer John Ostrander’s run, though he was badly injured shortly after being recruited.
Beach also went into detail on how Slipknot uses his ropes while out in the field, and the actor himself even learned a few practical moves while training during production. He explained:
When you researched the villains in the DC comics, everybody’s been through the assassin’s drill of training to kill. My skill is the ropes. Give me a rope and I can fight with it, I can tie you up. They were teaching me a move where if you try to throw a punch, I can use a rope to grab that punch, put the rope around your neck and just drop my weight and it snaps your neck. There’s a lot of martial art skills you can use with the rope and it was pretty cool, man! And I taught my daughter how to use certain moves with the ropes so if I reach out to grab my daughter who’s seven years old, she can trap my fists and spin me around and I can’t move (laugh)
Although Slipknot is clearly talented in his specialized field, I fear his chances of survival in the movie are low, given not only how dangerous the mission will be, but how much of a low-tier villain he is. Whether he’s killed by an enemy (be it the Squad’s target or one of his own teammates) or blown up by that implanted bomb Waller has each member injected with, the chances of him being a casualty are more likely than someone like Harley or Deadshot. On the other hand, maybe Slipknot will manage to pull of one of his infamous escape and live to fight another day, be it in a Suicide Squad sequel or elsewhere in the DCEU.
Suicide Squad hits theaters on August 5, 2016.
