It’s hard to imagine a ranking of the best big-screen Jokers, from Jack Nicholson in Batman to Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, that doesn’t have Jared Leto on the bottom. His much-maligned performance in 2016’s Suicide Squad was dramatically cut down, with Leto claiming that “there are a lot of scenes that didn’t make it to the final film. Hopefully they’ll see the light of day. Who knows.” They haven’t yet, although Squad director David Ayer (who recently clarified that he didn’t cut Leto’s screentime because he was dissatisfied with his performance) shared a photo from a cut scene on Instagram.
“Movies are fragile. They are like dreams, haunting moments that run from your vision. They have their own logic and truth. If you change the destination after the trip, is complete is it still the same journey?” he wrote. “The spine of Suicide Squad was Harley’s journey. In many ways it was her movie, her escaping her relationship with Joker was the major emotional through line. A director holds an invisible compass in their hands. It guides every shot, every performance. That compass points to the destination. If the destination changes, did the journey even happen?” The image shows a scorched Joker pointing a gun at Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn; unlike Leto, she’s reprising her role in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).
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Ayer appears to be voicing his displeasure with how Suicide Squad turned out in his caption. It was supposed to follow Harley’s relationship with Mr. J, which tracks with the image that Ayer shared; instead, we got Cara Delevingne wiggling her hips while whispering “Enchantress,” while a decade-old Eminem song plays. No wonder Harley ditched that dead weight before Birds of Prey.
