Suicide Squad Reviews: 10 Things We Learned About The Joker
Clown Prince or bland pimp?
So, the cat's out of the bag: Suicide Squad isn't nearly as great as most people hoped. At least, according to the first round of critics who've been lucky enough to see it so far, anyway.
The general consensus - propped up by a stunningly low RottenTomatoes score of just 32% - seems to suggest that the film is a disappointment, though with punctuations of brilliance. Will Smith's Deadshot, Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn and Viola Davis' Amanda Waller have taken the lion's share of the plaudits, but if everyone's honest, there's only one performance that really matters.
Given that we've got a solo Batman movie coming up and the promise of a lot of his classic villains, the introduction of Jared Leto's Joker was always a big moment for the DC Cinematic Universe. Even if the rest of the film is classed a failure, it's such an important role that it could be considered a significantly redeeming factor. Or a distraction, however you look at it. So how did it turn out?
Here's what the reviews are saying about the most anticipated comic book movie performance of 2016...
10. He Doesn't Get An Origin
Despite the fact that all of the Suicide Squad get so much time in the opening sequences building their introductions, and also despite his immediately striking look (including the well-publicised quirks) the Joker gets no origin.
That is as it should be, given the Joker's mythology and how successfully mystery worked for Heath Ledger's iteration of the character. But it might strike some fans as slightly odd that he has so many tattoos - which were so consciously expressed as part of his "journey" that aren't explained. Still, it's not really his film, and an origin story would have had fans up in arms.