We don’t tend to post a ton of first looks here, but this one is different. As in, truly different.
The vision for Suicide Squad’s Joker is aggressively new. This is a Joker who listens to Slipknot, wears Affliction t-shirts and bought his hair dye at Hot Topic. He’ll also probably look perfectly natural in a David Ayer movie. Imagine that. The director tweeted the image to celebrate the Joker’s 75th birthday.
If he looks familiar, it’s because he is. Here’s a deeply-researched diagram to prove it:
Sean from SLC Punk! and Captain Howdy. A match made in Heaven’s trailer park.
This look is bound to be divisive, and that’s what I love most about it. They could have gone safe and simple, and instead they went in a direction that’s wholly unexpected. Jack Nicholson’s gangster hepcat Joker would have no idea what to do with this guy, although it’s going to take a lot of heavy lifting to earn goodwill from everyone who thinks of Heath Ledger’s embodiment of the figure as the dominant version.
My only big problem is the forehead tattoo. Forever emblazoning “Damaged” on your forehead is a poser move. If you’re damaged, you don’t get “Damaged” on your head. You get a pony dancing on a rainbow made of spaghetti.
I can only assume that if he turned around we’d see a full-sized, thumbs-up Steve-o tattooed on his back.
Or at least I hope so.
At the very least, this picture (unlike most first looks) offers a radically distinct appearance of a famous character and portends the kind of insanity that Ayer and company envision for Jared Leto’s take on the green haired maniac.
Suicide Squad hits theaters August 5, 2016. It’s written and directed by Ayer, starring Leto (obviously), Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller and (probably) Jesse Eisenberg bridging this movie to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice by appearing as Lex Luthor (hopefully as president of the United States).