Somewhere, buried deep within the Warner Bros. vault, is a performance from Jared Leto as the Joker that makes anyone take back anything they’ve ever said about the actor’s widely-divisive take on the Clown Prince of Crime in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Or, at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe.
If you buy into the premise that some turds can in fact be polished after all, both the two-time Razzie winner and the director behind the DCU’s worst-reviewed movie ever remain adamant that so much footage revolving around the Jester of Genocide was excised from the theatrical cut that it completely undermined all of the effort Leto went into in order to embrace the character.
We’re not sure if sending his co-stars porno mags, rats, and anal beads was entirely necessary, but it all proved to be for nothing anyway once his work was exposed to the world. We’re inclined to believe Ayer given how often he laments what happened to Suicide Squad, and he’s emerged with another never-before-seen snap of the Joker that makes the iconic comic book villain look genuinely menacing.
Most people would wholeheartedly agree that Leto is the worst live-action Joker we’ve ever seen by quite some distance, but his cameo in the epilogue of Zack Snyder’s Justice League also hinted that there was a stellar interpretation in there somewhere. Unless the Ayer Cut happens we’re not going to see it, though, so we’ll consider the jury still out for the time being.