What are peoples thoughts on Jared Leto's Joker?

If you're unsure about the DC movie Suicide Squad the quick take on the comic is take a bunch of DC villans / anti-heroes and making some sort of secret governmental sanctioned team outta them. Movie in my opinion has the dream all-star cast I envisioned in my head when rumors of a Dragonball Z live action film was going to hit Hollywood in the late 90's. The cast currently boasts the star talent of the likes of Will Smith (Jiggy with it / Wild, Wild West Will Smith), Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, and the one and only Jai Courtney (I still blame this guy for Die Hard 5 sucking).

There's been a lot of enthusiasm with comic book adaptations recently with Avengers: Age of Ultron hitting theaters in a few weeks and the Batman v. Superman trailer recently leaking on the net so it doesn't surprise me that Suicide Squad is getting equal watch. Probably the biggest surprise for myself came today with a picture of Jared Leto in full on Joker wardrobe for the new Suicide Squad film.

Quite different then the usual Joker in a purple suit look. I for one am divided on this one but have to remind myself I was also unsure about Heath Ledger's performance until I was totally blown away by him in Dark Knight. I'll hold my reservations for now till I actually see a trailer or film but I think Jared Leto is quite a fine actor and am kinda excited to see what he'll bring to the role.

Looks really stupid taken out of context but who knows.

Maybe the performance can sell it, but that photo does not give me a good initial impression of the direction they're going with the character or the Suicide Squad film in general.

Talking about just the look I think it looks fine if the tattoos were all gone. If anything the "damaged" forehead tat is the one that absoultly has to go. That is awful.

I think the Joker would have cooler tattoos than that.

It would be like if Two-Face had a tattoo that said "Heads or Tails." Like, yeah, I get it. Your tattoos don't have to be that literal.

Also the whole Marilyn Manson look is like 2 decades late.

It seems edgy for the sake of being edgy, but none of us have seen it so maybe it'll make sense.

Yeah can't say I like it either, though it could possibly work... I will say not to be a total dick. I think it looks pretty awful out of context though. The self aware tattoos and a forehead tattoo I can't imagine is somehow pulled off. Looks super lame. I am not giving DC the benefit of the doubt like I would Marvel.

Leto's great, the tattoos are a bit much. I'm just picturing Joker sitting in the tattoo parlor laying out the exact number of HaHaHa's he wants inscribed on his body.

Well judging from that photo, I already hate it. But who knows, maybe it will be good.

I like it. Leto was going to get nowhere if they tried to simply ape Jack or Heath. He needs to make this version of the joker his own and I think he will do just that.

Alex retweeted a very funny tweet that was comparing his tattoos to over the top environmental storytelling in videogames, which I think is right on with how on the nose the tattoos are.

The tattoos are stupid. Well, two of them are. The J under his eye and the "damaged" on his forehead is just... stupid. It's not menacing or humorous. Just dumb.

As far as Leto himself goes, he actually looks good as the Joker. The makeup job looks great. I think the metal grill give him an interesting look and I'm sure performance wise he'll do fine. But those tats, man. Jesus.

Makes me wonder if Ben Affleck does decide to stick it out for more films as Batman, and Jared Leto does decide to stay on as Joker could we possibly see these two in a film together soon?

Not the strangest adaptation of the Joker I've seen. Anyone remember The Batman 2004 cartoon series where Joker had dreads?

It's really lame.

The Nolan batman movies, for better or for worse, are unique because they really ground the comic book material in reality. It always was possible for it to go over the a line into stupidity, but for me at least, it never did. This one image goes into that stupidity territory. Other's have said it, but it really looks like a Joker cosplay that went really overboard. It's still possible they can pull it off, but as of now it's pretty damn stupid.

@i_stay_puft: I do :p

They are obviously going with a very different style of Joker. I just don't know if I like a Joker that operates within a "team". That said I think the only way the tattoos would work is if they looked like Joker did them himself.

All that said Leto is a terrific actor and could play a great Joker as long as the script and director are good enough.

I'll wait to hold my judgement until at least a trailer is released.

That Suicide Squad animated film that came to DVD a little while ago seemed like it was directly aimed at teenagers. It had little to say other than "HEY GUYS DO YOU LIKE SEMI-NUDE HOT CHICKS, SWEAR WORDS, AND EXPLOSIONS? WE HAVE SO MANY OF THOSE!!!" Somehow I get the feeling this movie is aiming itself at the same audience, and that audience would probably think those tattoos are pretty cool.

The teen angst is real in this one. I don't like it at all, at least based on the concept art, just need to see how it's delivered before making final judgement. But so far I think it's incredibly lame and has no edge to it

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

@yesiamaduck: @doskias: In my experience, teenage nihilists really like Fight Club and/or The Joker, and anything else they think represents anarchy, so I fully expect them to market to that demographic pretty hard.

I really like the idea of Jared Leto as the Joker, but this looks real dumb. The face tattoos are completely ridiculous and if they want to have him covered in tattoos, they should make them look like prison tats. No version of the Joker would spend hours of his life calmly sitting under a needle.

This feels over-designed like a recent Tekken character. Every single piece of free space needs to be filled with stuff.

I absolutely hate it.

First off, the tattoos. Who is the Joker's tattoo artist? Who would he let draw tattoos on him? Who would be ballsy enough to tattoo the fucking Joker? I could see Joker trying to tattoo himself, but it wouldn't be anything neat and clean like he has going there.

He doesn't look insane, he looks like he's trying to act insane. Double that with "Damaged" on his for head and it looks like he's posing for an album cover.

Where it really breaks for me is when you combine all of that. He just doesn't look like the Joker. He looks like some punk kid whose friends said he looked like a crazy person when he made that stupid face and he took it way too far. He looks like a fucking poser. I feel like I could go to a concert at the Showbox and see this asshole walking around there after the show. He looks like a piece of shit.

That glove is stupid as fuck.

On mobile but can someine post that pic of joker photoshoped with the gameboy color?

Seeing that pic hit me: he looks like a joker if he was in the 90s batman movies (batman forever and batman and robin)!

I don't know anything about the context, but the premise sounds really stupid (and I don't like the picture either, for me it completely doesn't understand the joker already, but I'm sure better people than me will get into that).

To me it feels like while Marvel has been on a streak (mostly, not entirely) DC movies have been going down hill. I love Christopher Nolan, for example, but DKR was awful (even if there are things to like about it), Man of Steel was ehh, and I'm not super into the Batman vs Superman movie (I won't predict that it will be bad- I think it will be bad, but I hope it's good).

I'll take a wait and see approach as always and hope for the best. Even if I'm not into it the fans deserve a good movie, right?

I'll reserve judegment but my initial reaction is that Batman knocked Joker into a big ass vat of "Hot Topic" at Acme chemicals.

That picture seems like a total misinterpretation of the Joker character to me. The Joker wouldn't have so many meta tattoos and he especially wouldn't have a tattoo on his forehead saying "damaged". The Joker doesn't see himself as damaged.

So far I'm not impressed.

Tonally it's very reminiscent of Lee Bermejo's take on the character in Azzarello's Joker mini which I mostly despised. Just swap rotten teeth with metal ones, and weird dragon tattoos for this random/very-on-the-nose ones. The picture is very out of context to be fair.

Performance wise I'm sure Jared Leto will do a great job, I have faith in him, but the movie as a whole is a massive wait and see.

DC movies unfortunately never really do it for me. At least not so far.

Edit: when I first heard it was to be Leto, I really hoped he would bring the Elegant, Creepy Joker which we've never seen outside the books at this point. And even in the books he has been absent for a damn long time. Since The Dark Knight everyone has just been making him weirder and more extreme.

I've heard Leto is a great actor so he'll make something compelling out of it. I'm just so ambivalent to anything involving DC films. My thoughts are that DC has their work cut out for them with these live action ventures. They've had a bad track record lately and I don't know that this is the time to be making a Suicide Squad movie when this Justice League thing is not a guaranteed home run. Wish they'd put more money into cartoons which is what they're good at. I know they probably make a pittance amount of money on animated stuff but goddamn it they haven't been making some of the best TV from the 90's onward.

Despite Jared Leto being a good actor, when I see this image I can't help but have low expectations.

It's especially worse after I finally watched Man of Steel. It was pretty bad and I think Zack Snyder is a mediocre director.

Also I can't help but think of this when I see that image:

Even the grill would work for me, but the tats are silly looking to say the least. I would love to see a Joker closer what Hamill did in the animated series - a psychopath who takes malicious joy in his work. Hamill's Joker was actually funny, unlike any of his iterations in the films.

not very good but not as terrible as the collective known as the "internet" claims it to be

If it's an extra batshit crazy Joker that's also entirely self-aware of his ridiculous tattoos, it could actually turn out kinda awesome. I'll wait until I see him in action.

@i_stay_puft said:

Makes me wonder if Ben Affleck does decide to stick it out for more films as Batman, and Jared Leto does decide to stay on as Joker could we possibly see these two in a film together soon?

Not the strangest adaptation of the Joker I've seen. Anyone remember The Batman 2004 cartoon series where Joker had dreads?

I scrolled through SO MUCH Facebook to find this photo for you/us. There's one that turns up immediately if you search "Affleck Batman tattoos" by it's not as fun/good-looking/awful.

The DC cartoons are definitely my preferred DC "universe", but that just means I don't much mind them trying out weird shit for their movies. The cartoons are still there, and still great.

You know, I think I would prefer it if all his tattoos were HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Dumb but need to see it in action to have a real take personally. Tattoos are lame but most are.

Not a big fan but I could see it working in live action. I actually don't mind the tattoo's at all, except for the forehead one, it is more then teeth, hair, and latex glove that throws me off. It looks like they are going for a more wild crazy Joker and I just don't see that working well with his hair being cut quite short and in general it looks like the character is trying to be crazy rather than is just naturally disturbed. With that said put him in his suit and have him in a more sinister pose and I could see him looking great.

His teeth are a major issue though. The Joker is defined by his grin and that is ruined by the messed up teeth.

Crappy. He looks like a rock star instead of the Joker. I'm not gonna watch it anyway. I don't like crossovers.

I know some are annoyed with a lot of the negative response, but I am loving the fun people are having with it.

"im really crazy guys lol #damaged"

Absolutely absurd, and not in a Joker-y way.

It's one publicity shot, though. It could very well be fine. Maybe it's from a scene where Joker infiltrates a lowrider gang to get some info on Hombremurcielago and where he gets those wonderful juguetes. Hell if I know. Hey, it might be drastically different when the movie actually comes out.

I thought the reveal photo of Ledger's Joker looked stupid as well, and we saw what became of that. So fingers crossed that they know what they're doing.

I partially agree with people. Some of the tattoos are preeety dumb but on the other hand this picture is clearly taken entirely out of context. Its best to save judgement until a trailer is released and we actually see the whole get-up, gonna take a guess the purple suit will make an appearance.

@theht: I've liked some of the DC animated stuff. Would you have any Batman-related cartoon suggestions?

"Damaged" tattooed on a forehead is a little less subtle than I'd prefer, but I don't hate the look entirely. I don't love it either though. In the end it's the performance that matters to me.

honestly, I'm afraid how Harley Quinn looks. But it reminds me of 2008's Batman RIP joker.... but also reminds me why I hate current DC comic's designs.

I am willing to accept everything except the grill. I also don't really understand the latex glove (what is he planning on using it for?) but that's not an eyesore like the teeth. That being said this is the first time I'm hearing of this Suicide Squad thing, and this does nothing to interest me at all. Even though I'll probably still see it because why not.

I agree with someones opinion on twitter that he looks like he fell into a vat of hot topic.