Love that Joker or hate that Joker? Well, it’s certainly different than what’s come before, which counts as a win right off the bat. No pun intended…
After a month of false alarms and fuzzy leaked photos-of-photos, directed David Ayer has dropped an official photo of our new big-screen Joker. In fact, I initially thought this heavily-made up photo was another false alarm, but nope, it apparently came straight from the director’s Instagram accounts around 5:30pm today. To wit, the photo in question is one Mr. Jared Leto as the Clown Prince of Crime, who will play a supporting role in Suicide Squad.
The Warner Bros./Time Warner TWX +0.57% Inc. release, due August 5th, 2016, concerns a group of supervillains who are recruited by the government (personified by Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller) to undertake devious under-the-radar missions that so-called good guys won’t touch. The film stars Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn (more on that later), and Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang among others.
But it’s obvious that the film’s trump card and/or key added value element in the debut of the version of the Joker which will occupy the ongoing DC Cinematic Universe. Today is basically the 75th anniversary of the comic book debut of The Joker in the first issue of Batman, so today is as good a day as any to reveal the newest incarnation.
On one hand, there is concern that the inclusion of the Joker and possibly Ben Affleck’s Batman in the narrative will perhaps overwhelm the film’s intended emphasis on the so-called Suicide Squad and their crew of B-level villains. Unlike the majority of superhero films, this is one that will be as much about star power (Will Smith doesn’t generally do ensemble films or play villains) as it is about the characters being featured.
Having the most popular hero/villain combination in all of modern literature onscreen for the “first” time in this continuity is certainly a kind of insurance should audiences not thrill to the adventures of Rick Flagg (probably Joel Kinnaman) and Enchantress (Cara Delevingne). To be fair, the recent Batman: Assault On Arkham was sold as a Batman-centric story loosely based on the Batman: Arkham Asylum video games only to actually be a full-blown Suicide Squad adventure with just enough Batman and Joker to use in a trailer.
That Warner Bros. is willing to roll the dice on a supervillain team-up movie is impressive enough that I’m willing to cut them a little slack on using Batman, Joker, and Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor as a kind of insurance policy. And the fact that Warner Bros./DC Comics/Zack Snyder/etc. are willing to unleash their cinematic Joker in what amounts to a glorified spin-off movie shows something resembling courage (if Leto bombs in Suicide Squad the whole Batman-centric DC Universe is in trouble).
Moreover, as much as I’m tempted to roll my eyes at the notion that he’s just doing the Dark Knight Returns version of the Joker (and roll my eyes, I shall!), I’m frankly glad Warner Bros. is going ahead with a new Joker period. And that he clearly looks like a different interpretation from prior incarnations is a net-bonus. The character has had a thousand interpretations and is rife with big-screen potential, so I’m glad to see that the powers-that-be aren’t buying into the notion that the role somehow belongs to Heath Ledger.
I’m sure Mr. Ledger would agree that the character belongs to whomever happens to be playing him at a given moment, and that Ledgers’s variation is just as legitimate as Jack Nicholson’s whose take is just as legitimate as Mark Hamill’s whose version is as legitimate as Kevin Michael Richardson’s, and so forth. Even though again I wish they were going a different route in terms of source material (we saw Michael Emerson voice that specific Joker just a few years ago), and the photo looks like a kid who had a regular Joker drawing and decided to kill time by adding various details until the end of study hall, I am excited to see what Leto has in store. I like the character and it’s not like Suicide Squad or Batman v Superman will be a straight remake of the Frank Miller story. I’m sure the take will have more in common with Ledger’s somewhat impish schemer as opposed to Cesar Romero’s happy prankster, but it’s a mystery until it’s revealed, even if Leto doesn’t have the courage to go full method and cut off his own face for the role.
Anyway, we shouldn’t expect much more than photos and the like at least until July’s San Diego Comic Con, and I imagine if Warner Bros. can wait they’ll debut the first teaser with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice just under a year from now.
I’m sure the next big reveal will be Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, as her inclusion is really the ace in the hole in terms of the countless fans who grew up on Batman: The Animated Series and the various Harley-related animated and comic book spin-offs. You could make the argument that she is the single most popular female character in the DC universe right now, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Anyway, Suicide Squad arrives via writer/director David Ayer and executive producer Zack Snyder. It stars Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, Joel Kinnaman, Jay Hernandez, and possibly Ben Affleck and Jesse Eisenberg. It arrives August 6th, 2016, courtesy of Warner Bros./Time Warner. As always, we’ll see.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottme...-leto-as-the-joker-in-suicide-squad-revealed/
