Jared Leto’s Joker in Zack Snyder’s Justice League Looks Very Different

Looks like Jared Leto’s Joker’s tattoos were just temporary ones he picked up at Spencer’s. In new images released alongside a Vanity Fair article, Zack Snyder has revealed Leto’s new look as the Joker in the upcoming Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the nearly four-hour HBO Max film. The new look completely ditches the much-derided gangster aesthetic featured in Suicide Squad and opts for something that’s more akin to Heath Ledger’s take on the character. It also appears that this Joker is a post-apocalyptic version.

Viewers of the original Justice League will remember that Bruce Wayne had a dream taking place after the downfall of the earth after Darkseid had basically taken over. Joker appears in the new film during this sequence. It was a bit confusing in the original film but was supposed to show Wayne what would happen if he didn’t create a superhero team to take down Steppenwolf. Joker in Zack Snyder’s Justice League will act as a “sort of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, supplying motivation through terror.” Maybe it will make the sequence a bit clearer.

The images are entirely in black and white, much like all the rest of the marketing despite the fact that the film is entirely in color. They feature a long-haired Joker wearing a dirty medical gown and surgical gloves sitting in a small room, possibly stolen from Arkham Asylum when the world fell. That won’t be his only costume though, as in some scenes he wears a bulletproof vest festooned with grimy law enforcement badges. The Vanity Fair article also reveals that this Joker is a new addition to Snyder’s vision of the film as he was never planned to be in the original version Snyder filmed.

“The Joker is really the only thing that I thought of in retrospect,” Snyder said. “But I will say that it was always my intention to bring Joker into that world.”

As for where the hell the tattoos went and what happened to the Suicide Squad version of the Joker, it appears that Snyder doesn’t really care all that much. “I would say that there’s been some water under the bridge. Who knows what’s happened,” Snyder said. “I don’t know if he’s wearing makeup, I don’t know what’s happening. It’s hard to say exactly.” Clearly, he’s put a lot of thought into this and it’s always a good sign when a director shoves a character into a movie and says, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League will release on HBO Max on March 18.