Justice League director Zack Snyder shared a teasing glimpse of Jared Leto's new-look Joker last week, but Vanity Fair has now given us a proper look at the Academy Award-winning actor as the Snyder Cut's take on the Clown Prince of Crime.
As you'll see from these official images, Leto's Joker is looking quite a bit different to the last saw him in Suicide Squad. The classic purple outfit has been replaced by a grimy hospital gown, his once-green hair is much longer and darker, and, perhaps most noticeably, those facial tattoos are nowhere to be seen.
Snyder describes the character's sinister new outfit as "a remnant of his escape into the wild" when the world fell. “He has tons of badges,” he adds. “Those are his trophies.”
We also have some details on Leto's role in the director's cut of Justice League, so beware of spoilers from this point on.
There's been a lot of speculation that an older incarnation of the Joker will appear in the "Nightmare" future first glimpsed in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and that's now been confirmed. According to VF, Joker will feature in "a sequence set on a ruined Earth after the alien tyrant Darkseid invades and decimates the planet. It’s a dream sequence, a psychic vision, experienced by Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne."
“The cool thing about the scene is that it's Joker talking directly to Batman about Batman,” explains Snyder. “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.”
“The scene explains why Bruce had the Joker card taped to his gun that you see in Batman v Superman.”
Snyder also confirms that any potential follow-up to his Justice League (though we're unlikely to ever see one) would explore Robin's death at the hands of the Harlequin of Hate and the emotional toll it took on the Dark Knight.
“I'd always wanted to explore the death of Robin,” he says. "And if there ever was going to be a next movie, which, of course, there probably won't be, I wanted to do a thing where in flashbacks we learn how Robin died, how Joker killed him and burned down Wayne Manor, and that whole thing that happened between he and Bruce.”
Who knows - if Zack Snyder's Justice League is a big enough success on HBO Max, the filmmaker might be given the opportunity to revisit his plans for a sequel. After all, we never thought we'd see the "Snyder Cut" of the first film!
What do you guys make of Jared Leto's revamped Joker? Let us know in the usual place.