As every day brings us closer to the arrival of the long-awaited Snyder Cut of Justice League, officially titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League, we’re getting a flurry of fresh info and images. Last week we found out about its official R-rating from the MPAA and got a first blurry hint of the return of Jared Leto’s Joker, teasing an entirely new look than he sported in Suicide Squad – and now we’ve got a much clearer photo of Leto returning as a very different take on Clown Prince Of Crime. We know what you really care about: is that ‘damaged’ tattoo still there on his forehead? Well, canonically it probably is – but for now you can’t see it, since its covered in a ton of white make-up. Take a look at the new shots below:
This is clearly a very different Joker than the slick gangster of Ayer’s Suicide Squad – now sporting long gothic locks, and looking more like The Crow than Gotham’s criminal mastermind. But the reason for his significantly different appearance makes sense given the context of his role in Zack Snyder’s Justice League – a late addition to the movie, added in the recent extra shooting that took place for the four-hour redux. As revealed in a Vanity Fair interview, Snyder says that the Joker shows up as part of the post-apocalyptic future that Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne first got a glimpse of in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’s ‘Knightmare’ dream sequence.
Leto’s Joker will be part of a fresh vision experienced by Bruce Wayne – a way for Snyder to make sure that the DCEU’s incarnations of Joker and Batman at least interacted with each other once on screen, even if not physically. “The cool thing about the scene is that it's Joker talking directly to Batman about Batman,” Snyder tells Vanity Fair. “It's Joker analysing Batman about who he is and what he is. That’s the thing I also felt like fans deserved from the DC Universe. That is to say, the Jared Leto Joker and the Ben Affleck Batman, they never really got together. It seemed uncool to me that we would make it all the way through this incarnation of Batman and Joker without seeing them come together.” Check out the full Vanity Fair piece for more from Snyder himself.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is set to debut on HBO Max in the US on 18 March – and while its arrival is just over a month away, there’s still no official confirmation yet over how it’s going to be seen elsewhere around the world. Stay tuned for more information on the UK release whenever we get it.