Not only did Zack Snyder shock the world when he announced the #SnyderCut was real and would be coming to HBO Max, he did it again when he announced Jared Leto would be returning as the Joker.
To date, Leto’s only appearance as the Clown Prince of Crime was in 2015’s Suicide Squad. Joker’s tattoo, grilled gangster look wasn’t quite what fans were expecting, and his roughly 12 minutes of screen-time, playing love-sick puppy for Harley, left many fans underwhelmed, especially being the first live-action Joker since Heath Ledger’s iconic performance.
Due to the shifting of the winds at Warner Bros. and the DC Extended Universe, fans certainly thought they’d seen the end of Leto’s crazed clown. Although he wasn’t guaranteed to be in it, Ben Affleck’s The Batman ended up not happening, but in a solo Batman film it’s always possible for the Joker to show up. The Batman is now an out of DCEU continuity Matt Reeves film, and the Joker was also noticeably absent from Birds of Prey, and isn’t in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
Since the Joker wasn’t in Snyder’s original concept for Justice League, fans just assumed we’d seen the end of him. However, Leto was a part of the additional photography that took place for the film back in October. We recently got a look at the Joker in the film, and it’s a lot more sinister than what we saw in Suicide Squad. Snyder recently explained why he decided to bring back Leto’s Joker.
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 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.
It’s a good point by Zack and seems like he’s trying to give fans what we’ve been hoping for. By the events of Batman v Superman, Bruce has been Batman for 20 years. The shrine in the Batcave alludes to the Joker killing Robin, so obviously there’s history there. Other than the brief car chase in Suicide Squad, where the two enemies never share the screen, we haven’t had a Leto Joker and Batfleck scene, so it’s great Snyder added it.
To make it even more exciting and interesting, it’s looking like their scene will take place in the apocalyptic Knightmare first seen in Batman v Superman, as allies against Darkseid. Wouldn’t that be a twist to see the arch-enemies as allies for the first time in live-action?
Zack Snyder’s Justice League will be getting one last trailer on February 14th, before finally arriving on HBO Max on March 18th.
Source: CinemaBlend
