‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Reveals its Joker
Jared Leto reprises the character in the new cut of Justice League, and his look is vastly different from the blinged-out Joker seen in Suicide Squad.
The release date of Snyder’s 4 hours long re-cut has been moved up from “summer 2021” to March 18th. You’ll be able to watch on HBOMax and several international platforms (not announced yet). They have also partnered with a meal service that has created JL themed meals that you can order.
Since the initial announcement, the project has gotten substantially larger than just cutting together existing footage with some quick re-shoots to fill in gaps. A large portion of the original cast is returning for new scenes, and the director added characters from elsewhere in the DCEU including Jared Leto as the Joker. Vanity Fair has the first photos of the Clown Prince of Crime plus some details about his part in the movie.
If you care about spoilers, this is where you should stop.
In Snyder’s interview with the magazine, he talks about wanting to include the Joker from the start (as far as 10 years back when he started work on the DCEU) and was the first character on his list to add to the re-cut. He always wanted to bring him in direct conflict with Batman but didn’t get the chance until he got the green light to create Justice League the way he wanted. Additional filming brought the Joker and Batman together in the new cut. The two meet in a dream sequence that takes place after Darkseid causes the apocalypse. The director shared a bit about the scene.
“The cool thing about the scene is that it’s Joker talking directly to Batman about Batman. It’s Joker analyzing Batman about who he is and what he is. That’s the thing I also felt like fans deserved from the DC Universe. That is to say, the Jared Leto Joker and the Ben Affleck Batman, they never really got together. It seemed uncool to me that we would make it all the way through this incarnation of Batman and Joker without seeing them come together.”
Justice League ditches the tattoos, bright green hair, and all of the flash from David Ayer’s Joker and replaces it with a simple hospital gown and more gothic makeup. In other scenes, he dons a bulletproof vest covered with grungy law enforcement badges – trophies of the chaos he’s caused.
Snyder did not get into if the mannerisms Leto developed would be a part of this performance, or what happened to the character between Justice League and Suicide Squad that would change his appearance so much.
“I would say that there’s been some water under the bridge. Who knows what’s happened. I don’t know if he’s wearing makeup, I don’t know what’s happening. It’s hard to say exactly.”
Zack Snyder’s Justice League drops on HBOMax on March 18th.
