Unlike Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, and Joel Kinnaman, Jared Leto will not reprise his role from David Ayer’s Suicide Squad in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. The superhero film won’t feature the Joker at all, so don’t expect to see Joaquin Phoenix or another actor (Tim Robinson or GTFO) playing the Clown Prince of Crime either. Back in 2019, Gunn fielded a question from an Instagram follower about how he could “justify a Suicide Squad movie” without the Joker. “No one but me and a few others know all the characters in the movie, but if the Joker isn’t in the film, I don’t think it would be strange as he isn’t a part of the Suicide Squad in the comics,” he wrote. Gunn elaborated on his decision to leave out “Mr. J” in a recent interview with the New York Times.
“Joker, no. I just don’t know why Joker would be in the Suicide Squad,” the filmmaker said when asked if he considered bringing back the Joker or Will Smith’s Deadshot. “He wouldn’t be helpful in that type of war situation. Will — I really wanted to work with Idris [Elba]. It is a multi-protagonist film. We go off for a while with Margot, and Daniela [Melchior] is the heart of the film in a lot of ways. But if there’s one protagonist, it’s Idris”:
I wanted somebody who had that gruff, Unforgiven-type feeling about him. This guy who had been reduced from being a bigshot supervillain — he took Superman out of the sky — who is now scraping gum off the floor at the beginning of the movie. He absolutely doesn’t want any part of it — he just has accepted this is his life. And I just think that character is Idris Elba.
Good call. Also a good call: keeping The Suicide Squad set a rat-free zone.
(Via the New York Times)
