Suicide Squad Director Reveals Cut "King Of Gotham" Joker Scene
Another dropped subplot revealed...
Despite the fact that the film has been out for a couple of years now and is widely considered to be not that great by all but its most ardent fans, Suicide Squad is still generating conversation. It's sort of part and parcel of being a DCEU film, but it at least means we get more insight into the film-making process.
And when the production was as notoriously conflicted as Suicide Squad's famously was, that's very welcome.
One of the biggest issues on that film was the edit process that apparently saw Jared Leto's Joker mostly excised from the film as the studio sought a different tone and moved away from the dangerous dynamic between him and Harley Quinn. It was such a hatchet job that we ended up seeing more of the cut footage than intended thanks to the trailers that made the marketing department look like a bunch of liars.
Now director David Ayer has revealed the story of one such scene that was hinted at in one of the trailers but didn't make it into the film. That sequence came during the climax and showed a battered Joker in a tuxedo throwing a grenade at the heroes, and it turns out it was supposed to show Mr J teaming up with Enchantress...
Clearly the scene was cut before the stinger of the Joker breaking Harley out of prison was filmed (since that's a direct contradiction of this subplot). And while it's not clear why it was cut, it would make sense for Warner Bros not to close off the relationship between Harley and the Joker if they were - at that point - genuinely looking to make their own movie.
Whether that happens now is up for debate, but we might well see both characters return in Suicide Squad 2. And hopefully, that film will have the conviction to actually follow through on their storyline.