Jared Leto Isn't Happy So Much Joker Was Cut From Suicide Squad
Sounds like he's hurt really, really bad.
Whether you actually liked Suicide Squad as a whole, one thing that most people seem to agree on is that it could have done either with more of Jared Leto's Joker, or just more ways for him to be relevant.
His performance was.... transformative, to say the least, with a lot to admire and some potential (if he's given the opportunity to work with a director who won't indulge him on set and actually give him some focus). But he's mostly a passenger, and if you remove him entirely from the plot, the film fundamentally doesn't change.
For someone like The Joker, that's catastrophic.
Maybe David Ayer was just aware that the performance was too big, and would chew everyone else out? Maybe Leto just went too far? Who knows, but we already know that there's a lot of the performance on the cutting room floor (including bits from the trailers), and Leto really isn't all that impressed.
In an interview with IGN, Leto was asked if he was upset about the cuts, and his answer tells a story:
“Were there any that didn’t get cut? I’m asking you, were there any that didn’t get cut? There were so many scenes that got cut from the movie, I couldn’t even start. I think that the Joker… we did a lot of experimentation on the set, we explored a lot. There’s so much that we shot that’s not in the film.If I die anytime soon, it’s probably likely that it’ll surface somewhere. That’s the good news about the death of an actor is all that stuff seems to come out.”
What an odd thing to say.
Will we get to see more of this Joker in the next movie (if there is one)? Will he get a chance to play opposite Ben Affleck in his solo outing? All of this remains to be seen, but Leto might take some convincing now.