8 Ways Jared Leto's Joker Is Already The Worst Version Of The Character

7. Desperately Avoiding Heath Ledger

The DC Cinematic Universe seems to have been explicitly built around being different to what's come before. Henry Cavill's Superman is trying so hard to not be anything like Christopher Reeve's that it stops being Superman. Aquaman has been cross-bred with Khal Drogo because a decade of mocking on Family Guy has made Warner Bros. scared of the character. And now Leto's version of the Joker is running as fast as it can from Heath Ledger. The first reaction you have to this image isn't laughing at the tattoos, or laughing at the forced expression, or laughing at the token purple glove (we'll get to those), but sheer bemusement at how this is trying so desperately to not be anything like Ledger's version, to the detriment of the character. Look, everybody gets it - Ledger's version is a pretty big deal - but that doesn't mean you have to just do the total opposite. What made it work, after all, was that even though he was off-the-wall, it still contained all those trademark Joker elements - skirting around Ledger skirts around the character too.