Though most of his scenes were ultimately cut from Suicide Squad, many fans and critics still thought the movie had a little bit too much of Method Actor Jared Leto's Joker. Certainly his colleagues got a whole lot of the Joker while filming the damn thing. And even though it might be time to give the beloved Batman villain a break, Warner Bros. and DC are going all in on the character.
Even though the villain has appeared in The Dark Knight, Suicide Squad, and in animation with The Lego Batman Movie in the span of nine years, news broke yesterday that Martin Scorsese is producing a stand-alone Joker origin movie that will be more like a hard-boiled crime thriller with yet another (likely younger) actor playing the character. Strangely enough, this will exist in a separate universe than the upcoming Suicide Squad 2 and Justice League movies in the DC Universe (which is a confusing caveat on its own). But on top of that, Warner Bros. has announced today that it's working on another Joker movie starring Leto and Margot Robbie's excellent Harley Quinn.
The studio is calling it a "criminal love story." Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (NBC's This Is Us, I Love You Phillip Morris, and Crazy, Stupid, Love) are attached to direct.
What this shows is the studio's fundamental misunderstanding of the Joker. Many fans were angry yesterday at the thought of a Joker origin movie (let alone one directed by the guy who did The Hangover). That's because the ambiguity of the Joker's origin is what makes him such a terrifying and alluring character. He's pure chaos, and chaos has no explanation. The studio is reversing everything Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger did to make the Joker such an iconic cultural image. Remember how Ledger's Joker kept changing his own origin story? That wasn't an accident!
Now, Warner Bros. is going to oversaturate and over-explain the character with another origin story—this one a romance and in the full DC Universe. I'm not eager to see Leto add a rom-com element to his already embarrassing Joker—especially after Suicide Squad already fumbled the origin of his relationship with Harley Quinn. But I would like to see Robbie's Harley Quinn get her own movie, independent from her love interest clown, as was originally reported. And here's the real shitty thing, as Variety reports:
WB revealed in December that Robbie and Ayer were re-teaming on the female DC villains movie Gotham City Sirens, based on a comic series launched by DC in 2009 with the Harley Quinn, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy. The new Joker-Harley Quinn project appears to have superseded Gotham City Sirens at this point.
What the hell?! Instead of going with a movie led by three female villains, you're going to have Leto creepily flirt with Robbie for two hours? This DC movie universe is a mess, and like it's done to Batman and Superman, it's prepared to ruin the Joker, too. Hopefully it doesn't drag Quinn down with it.
