The Evolution Of The Joker - Movie Timeline

2. Suicide Squad

In some ways, Jared Leto's Joker was borne out of a need to both reclaim the character for the fans of the course, but also to be so different and so revolutionary that he could barely exhibit any of the character's defining characteristics.

He wasn't so much a reflection of society as he was an attempt to take superficial things out of the comics

But then, as David Ayer initially planned, Leto's Joker WOULD have been more of a product of social anxieties around toxic masculinity and the commodification of sex as a weapon. His relationship with Harley Quinn should have been Ayer's commentary on the dynamic between unlawful male sexual aggression and power inequalities in relationships but so much of it was edited out that his Joker ended up lacking drive, nuance or substance.

It's also probably fair to say that Leto's Joker missed Batman, but he was never meant to be his opposite. In Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn is the yin to his yang and it's in her that we see Ayer exploring what should have been this film's most clever real world consideration - the idea of how easily people can be radicalised, given the right inspiration.

In a world otherwise governed by complex villains playing heroes - complex because each of them had something we were supposed to empathise with - this Joker is a wildcard. He's arguably more dangerous because there's nothing of Batman reflected in him, but without the subtleties that were ripped out of his characterisation, all we got was a pantomime, garish idiot whose motivations were missing, taking that message about radicalisation with it.

Hey, but at least his failure meant that we got to see another performance pretty quickly off the bat...

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