The internet lost its mind when the penultimate trailer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League dropped last month and gave viewers their first glimpse of Jared Leto’s returning Joker, looking to make amends after his polarizing debut as the Clown Prince of Crime in David Ayer’s maligned Suicide Squad, which was admittedly largely taken out of the actor’s hands when the majority of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor.
However, most of the talk surrounding Leto’s Joker had nothing to do with his new look or surprise appearance alongside Ben Affleck’s Batman, but rather the dialogue that saw him reference the ‘we live in a society’ meme that originated on Seinfeld, but somehow found itself being closely linked to the Jester of Genocide. The majority of the memes appear alongside images of Heath Ledger’s take on the character, but fans even unsuccessfully petitioned to try and have it included in Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s billion-dollar awards season favorite back in 2019.
Snyder takes a lot of flak for his movies being self-serious almost to a fault, but the filmmaker clearly has his finger on the pulse of internet culture for allowing ‘we live in a society’ to sneak into Justice League. However, in a new interview, he admitted that Leto was actually the one responsible, and all he did was allow the moment of improvisation into the final cut of the movie.
“We went back and forth with it. I’ll give Jared credit for that little ad lib there.”
There’s something bizarrely hilarious about a 49 year-old actor and a 55 year-old director referencing a meme in a mega budget comic book adaptation just to wink at the audience, like a couple of uncool dads trying too hard to get down with the kids, but it at least shows that Snyder is more than willing to embrace the self-referential when it comes to Justice League.