In the vast back catalogue of superhero movies slowly making their way to the screen after the
Great Hollywood Bottleneck of 2020, few entries are as highly anticipated as The Suicide Squad.
The behind-the-scenes story behind the franchise do-over is dramatic enough to
warrant its own blockbuster — after a tactical trolling at the hands of social media users,
Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn was briefly let go by Disney,
only to have Warner Bros. snatch him up a few months later.
As a result, the DC Universe is getting its own Gunn-brand crew of misfits.
Using David Ayer's critically disastrous, hyper-lucrative 2016 original as a jumping
off point, the film is set to introduce a wide array of new anti-heroes to the DCEU,
while expanding on the ones we've already met.
But despite a near-universal faith in Gunn's ability to turn The Suicide Squad into a
success story, fans have been vocally wondering about the absence of a certain big league star,
first introduced in the 2016 movie but nowhere to be found here.
So just why aren't we getting more of Jared Leto's Joker in The Suicide Squad?
DC fans will remember that Jared Leto's Joker was a shot heard around the nerd world when he first
appeared in promotional images for David Ayer's Suicide Squad. A whole mountain of expectations
were piled on his milky white shoulders in the lead-up to that movie. This was supposed
to be a fresh new Joker, more unhinged than ever before, and at long last paired with his squeeze,
Harley Quinn, on the big screen. Leto himself only added fuel to the fire,
describing the part in interviews as a chance to "strike new ground" with a beloved villain.
Sadly, the results were mixed at best. Diehard fans of this decidedly edgier
take on the Joker are few and far between, as a truncated edit and less-than-grounded
story left Leto's Joker largely undeveloped and underutilized.
Leto would only grace the screen for about 10 minutes of the two-hour movie,
and didn't do much even when he was around. In the eyes of many, it just didn't feel like
he had much to do in a story about extorted pyrokinetics and extradimensional sorceresses.
James Gunn, as it turns out, agreed with that assessment,
and said as much in a recent interview with the New York Times. Asked about whether he
considered bringing Leto's Joker back into the fray, the filmmaker didn't mince words, saying:
"Joker, no. I just don't know why Joker would
be in the Suicide Squad. He wouldn't be helpful in that type of war situation."
Gunn has a point, too. Despite the strange implications of the Justice League Snyder Cut's
sepia-toned epilogue, it's hard to imagine trying to keep a madcap, homicidal clown on
the straight and narrow during a fight. Harley Quinn seems like enough of a handful on her own,
and her sense of morality at least places her firmly in the "antihero" camp — but the Joker
enjoys a steadfastly chaotic evil approach to life. In short: he's not a team player.
Additionally, with a pool of more than a dozen new characters already in play, adding Leto's Joker to
The Suicide Squad probably felt like something of a trap. Overreaching to include one of the
world's most recognizable villains in the series' first installment was likely a "once bitten"
scenario for the studio. Not only that, but Margot Robbie has distanced herself from the portrayal of
Joker and Harley's relationship in the years since Suciide Squad. Take that into account,
and shoehorning Leto into the new story becomes an even more complicated affair.
On the up side, Mister J's absence doesn't mean that there won't be plenty of big-budget
blockbuster slaughter to go around. Gunn has been nothing if not clear about his willingness to
gleefully kill off as many of his characters as he wants at the drop of a hat. The body
count will be firmed up when The Suicide Squad hits theaters and HBO Max on August 5th, 2021.
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