Despite not appearing in the original version of 2017’s Justice League, Jared Leto’s Joker is making a comeback in Zack Snyder’s Justice League – five years after he was introduced in 2016’s Suicide Squad. Now, Warner Bros has revealed two photos of the Clown Prince of Crime as he appears in the movie.
Check them out below:
What’s changed? Well, the Joker has lost his edgy tattoos from his first appearance, which once covered his face, and he’s wearing a hospital gown and surgical mask. You’ll also see him wear a bulletproof vest in the movie covered in law enforcement badges won as trophies, as Snyder tells Vanity Fair, which released the images.
According to that story, Snyder originally planned to bring Batman and Joker in conflict together in a future DC project – but instead he’s used this new cut of Justice League to make that happen. “it was always my intention to bring Joker into that world,” Snyder tells the outlet.
Additional footage was shot last year to bring Leto into the film – and this appearance will bring him face-to-face with Ben Affleck’s Batman for the first time.
Some mild spoilers follow if you don’t want to know more about what Snyder’s got planned for his version of the movie, which releases in one four-hour burst on HBO Max on March 18, 2021.
What is Joker doing in Zack Snyder’s Justice League?
Here’s the thing, though: Joker appears in a dream sequence – or a ‘psychic vision’ – with Batman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, as reported by Vanity Fair. The scene is set on Earth, after its invasion by Darkseid, in the same alternate future we saw in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice where Bruce Wayne was marching around the wastelands of Earth in a duster jacket.
The scene will have Joker psychoanalyzing Batman, and touch upon the death of Robin. “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.”
It sounds like a cool addition to the film, all said. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype when it lands next month.