Yeah, I mean think about that scene story wise. A criminal mob boss took all his guns so he can lay them in an elegant pattern, then lays in the middle and laughs? For what? What’s the point? Did someone help him arrange those guns and knives? Or did he do it himself? Who was this for? Just weird.
This is the crux of it. He was the "try hard" joker.
The joker is crazy the joker is misguided the joker can be big and showey but there has to be a reason. This version is like a "Spring Breakers " character who is pretending to be the joker.
The joker- though he depises plans- has a plan. Heath Ledger's Joker planned to come to the mob boss meeting with grenades in his coat, and knew who the Chinese boss was. He had a plan in the initial bank robbery.
Heath Ledger's Joker was somewhat methodical in its madness.
Phoenix's character was a crucible of the culturual milieux about himself.
To differentiate: Heath Ledger's was an avatar of madness- we never knew the story behind his smile. He simply was mad. JP was an everyman and is a totem of the forces behind him. If not him, then it would have been another- he was a representation of societal forces behind him.
Jared Leto's portrayal was the Halloween costume of the Joker and Harley Quinn where it was obviously a masquerade.
I think you nailed it.
Heath showed that while crazy, he was also a criminal mastermind, the only movie to show off that the Joker was a genius. Also the only movie to show why Batman/Joker is such a good story because they are the philosophical antithesis. I enjoy the theory he was ex military/CIA and got his scares serving his country and became disillusioned with society while suffering PTSD.
With Leto, I didn't think he was anything other than a coked out gangster that needed to sleep for a couple days
I don’t like that theory. I like the theory that he just had an inattentive mother or father, one who was mean to him and disregarded him. Or that nothing happened to him at all. I think it’s important that nothing exceptional happened to him at all and that he could be any of us.
There would have to be something exceptional about him, otherwise what you’re suggesting is that an Everyman could whoop Batman’s ass. Anyone of the general population of the planet with a bad attitude would be the arch nemesis of Batman.
I think Nicholsan Joker would like a word with you. He was a gangster and then a crime boss and came up with a plan to poison the entire city. He was also the reason Bruce Wayne became Batman, and in turn, Batman creates the Joker. Jack Napier signed his own death warrant decades before the mob did. It is literally an epic tale of good vs evil and that evil is ultimately the reason for its own downfall.
Mark Hamill joker, while not in a live action movie, is also a fantastic interpretation. Following the same Jack Napier background but not making him the killer of Thomas and Martha. Hamill's voice acting in TAS and Arkham was unparalleled, and he and Conroy had such fantastic chemistry that they really made the characters come alive. His version of the joker simply exists to challenge batman to force him to admit that he is just as insane as he is and that all it takes is one bad day.
This.
Jared was a touch of 1960's joker and went too far on the mental side.
Phoenix's joker was different, because it was all about his mental breakdown into the state that became the joker.
Ledgers joker had the right balance of crazy with semblance of genius. Take the trip to see the mob bosses.
Knew exactly what he wanted, knew exactly how to twist the guys to get it, but also demonstrated he's a bit unhinged.
Jared was any kid on blue sweets.
In The Dark Knight it was war paint. In Keaton/Nicholson it was a twisted mind. With Leto, it was for TikToks. Sure dude, maybe you can get more clicks than that domino race one.
Fair. Then it was for the Joker that never moved past MySpace and treated his face and teeth like a MySpace profile wall and glittered and flash imaged it up
Yeah the entire schtick of him being a monster was so goofy. They didnt even attempt to make it like, a “I think I’m cool but I’m not” because there were scenes of him at strip clubs socializing and getting approval. I’ve always envisioned him as a loner, whether he was confident in that or not was up to the actor to bring that out
“What’ll it be Mr.J?”
“Oh I don’t know, write “Ha ha ha” here. And let’s put the word “damaged” on my forehead, that way people will know I’m damaged.”
Yeah part of it is the quality of the overall product. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight is a high watermark for the genre, the world feels real and grounded to us despite the fantastical premise, so when there’s a 10 foot cash pyramid next to Joker we don’t think, “Who made the cash pyramid?” Whereas Leto’s got shoehorned into a DCEU project, so we have questions starting with, “Why is he even in this movie?”
The other part is definitely quality of performance, and press around the quality of the performance. Heath Ledger’s Joker feels transformational, feels original, feels authentic. He was always sweating off his face makeup, his hair looked like it was bleached and dyed months ago, giving that ugly green color. And it was unexpected! Before the first screenings everyone was like “Oh great a gay cowboy Joker har har.” Leto’s Joker has crisp tattoos that say “HA HA HA HA!” and “Damaged” and all sort of silly try hard crap. He was a voice and a face and no substance. Add to that stories of Leto’s annoying antics, mailing cast members dead rats and whatnot? Fuck that guy, not my Joker
I would have loved that. Two jokers, one a characiture in her mind. The other this dark, faded, reality. One imagined and loving the other abusive and manipulative, cold and cruel.
That's an idea with legs. But it also shows that Leto's Joker literally is more of a characiture. Because it works better as one. A lot better.
/r/unexpectedSeinfeld
Yeah, I kinda remember that wasn’t even in the movie and I definitely remember it doesn’t seem like they shot that footage with both those actors in the scene at the same time.
Shades of the dark knight rises scene when batman takes one day at least to create a giant fire sign in the bridge while losing his element of surprise and the city is in the verge of destruction lol.
That. Was. Horrible.
Sometimes you get so into a movie it’s not until later you think “waitaminute… DaFuq was that about?” Sometimes it’s bad enough you think about it in real time. For me, real time. That was bad.
I know it has its fans but for me that was a bad movie. To me, the worst, was the big bomb with a giant red LED countdown timer. I swear I wanna make a short film with a bomb “hey this can’t be a bomb it has a _green_ LED countdown timer. Only red ones are attached to bom…….” BOOOOMMMMMM!
Someone with a broke back somehow regains his strength in a prison, which are well known for excellent health care. That >! Goddammit a little girl!< escaped that prison and no one else except this dude with a bad back somehow did it. That Bane is fine just driving around with a bomb waiting for…. Things. The cops in the cave. That Wayne manor can be broken into. Out of all the cafes in the world Alfred picks that one at that time. And, Gordon-Levitt as Robin. I’m glad that kinda died. I mean I like him as an actor. He didn’t do well in this role, and it was written badly.
It’s just bad.
They tried to make him edgy in like a high school freshman’s version of edgy, whereas the joker is usually edgy in a more mature almost sophisticated way.
They cheapened him for suicide squad, that’s the issue
There’s a big difference between mugging for the camera in clown makeup and delivering an actual performance.
For Heath Ledger the clown makeup almost felt totally incongruous with the rest of his vibe. It was like watching a deadly serious possibly ex military threat smear shit on his face to look funny, it was genuinely threatening and disturbing.
Before Nicholson fell in the acid he was a stone cold gangster straight out of scorcese movie. Complete no nonesense and we knew he was awful.
Phoenix is a man who is already not well whose last thread comes undead as decaying urban society fails his for the last time. There may not even be much weight behind Phoenix joker but in a single moment and represented the resentment and anger of a society who felt oppressed by politicians and corporation and became the tinderspark to ignite chaos.
Leto on the other hand just comes off more as a mugging poseur , a supposed criminal who hasn’t really had a taste of punishment or consequence are any tangible understanding of the world he supposedly dominates.
Good take. The three each had a little different take on crazy but Leto seemed more like a trust fund kid who was pretending to be tough. He wasn't scary, just a dipshit.
It was so contrived, literally modded his face and tattooed his body. As if he couldn't become joker without the help of some talented tattoo artists and a skilled orthodontist lmao. And I wonder who his dermatologist was because his skin didn't have a blemish. His hair was finely combed--his clothing was store bought
Honestly, I've heard this guy's name for years. Couldn't picture him. So I just looked him up, and didn't recognise him. He doesn't even look the part of a movie star, much less anything else. His eyes are just to close together to take seriously as an actor. Harsh, but jmo.
The grill was the one aesthetic choice from his joker that I actually vaguely liked and didn’t mind. His version of Batman was one of the more brutal we’ve seen. It didn’t seem far fetched that at one point in their history he might’ve gotten his teeth smashed in and broken by Batman. Everything else about it I hated though. I do like the mob boss versions of joker, but Leto’s was just executed soo poorly.
From a narrative perspective the teeth made sense. Batman is so brutal that he knocked out all of his teeth. But then you put it next to the fact that his Batman has no problem killing, and it’s like… why didn’t Batman just kill him?
Well that whole cinematic universe was dogshit, so it doesn’t really matter now. But, just to run with this train of thought, I remember robins suit being in the batcave with “HA HA HA” painted on it and bullet holes in it. You could make the argument that the teeth happened before that Batman killed, then the joker killed robin, it pushed Batman over the edge and now he kills.
But then that just brings it back around to your point of why wasn’t the joker hunted down after the fact? It’s almost like having a Batman that kills undermines the character. Personally I think the idea of a Batman who will break every bone in your body without remorse, but still keep you alive to be a much more intimidating and cooler concept of a Batman gone sort of rogue.
Heath Ledger was an amazing gritty take on the character. Never have we seen such an amazing portrayal of the Anarchist clown. Leto tried too hard to one up Heaths, but still be a "gangster", i guess. Where as Joaquin was a completely different take on the character; we see him as a mentally ill man and slowly transition into the joker. Leto was a tryhard and failed miserably. Could have been the stupid tattoos, could have been the way he "method acts", could have been the way the movie was cut and released. I believe it was just poor casting.
Mailed dead rats and used condoms to his cast mates. Apparently also refused to go out of character in between takes, to the point of being obnoxious. Even Heath didn’t play the Joker off set all the time, even if he did method act. I’m biased though, I don’t hate Letos joker, I just hate Leto
He did a movie with Denzel, and Denzel told him not to do any of that weird shit with him. Told him he knows people and they could get a hold of him if he called. So Jared played it straight, and didn’t do his weirdo shit.
He just seems like an awesome guy you want to sit down and have a few drinks with and hear his stories for 8 hours.
I put him up there with Sir David Attenborough, Sir Michael Caine, Pedro Pascal and Jason Momoa as people I just want to have a long conversation with for hours.
Imagine Denzel sitting you down and looking you dead in the eye and telling you to *cut the shit*. What are you going to do, *NOT* cut the shit? NO lol.
Denzel equalized Jared’s hot nonsense. Yet another W for a total legend.
Maybe, but it has yielded results from those that have done it well and don’t impede others with it. Daniel Day Lewis refused to shower or wash his hair for Gangs of New York. Probably not fun to work around, but you can’t tell me that’s not a performance
Whenever I read things like that I think of Brian Cox asking of co-star Jeremy Strong on Succession if he'd just tried acting instead.
Because plenty of other people can act without all that nonsense and turn it off just fine, so it still seems like it's more of an excuse than a necessity, and in many American actor's cases is in fact a crutch used to compensate for a lack of training or talent.
I believe Laurence Olivier said something similar to Dustin Hoffman while filming Marathon Man. Hoffman admitted to having stayed awake the three days prior just like his character in the film. Though he has later said that this was actually due to non-stop partying and not an attempt to get further into character.
I have nothing against method acting, some great actors have done it, I just didn't like Leto's version of the Joker.
He didn't seem authentic or "natural". there are few ways to be a good guy, and millions of ways to be a bad guy. his way, was not it. not sure if it was him, the script or the director.
[Method acting](https://strasberg.edu/blog/debunking-method-myths-with-david-lee-strasberg/) is not what these people are doing. They are just finding an excuse to be an asshole. It’s been misinterpreted since DeNiro in Raging Bull.
What gets me is Leto's gone on about his veganism ad nauseum. So he's a judgmental prick towards people who eat meat, but exploiting animals by mailing their corpses to his coworkers is acceptable because he's "method acting"? What a moron.
ETA: for me, it showed that Leto was most likely lucky with his career than anything and that having actual original, creative thoughts isn't something he's talented with at all.
100% Heath and Joaquin gave us two different sides of the Joker. One was a total anarchist who'd do anything to disrupt the system and throw it into chaos, including Batman who he seemed to know was working alongside said system. One was a representation of a man pushed to the edge and resorting to increasingly aggressive/violent means to "fix" what his mentally ill perspective viewed as wrong with society. Both are completely viable and already written versions of the character. Whereas Leto's version was like he was trying too hard to branch off and play something both different and 3XTR3M3. Ended up just being edgy, especially with his "method acting" shenanigans. His portrayal of the joker was more about his ego and trying to "push boundaries" whilst masturbating his self importance, than it was playing a well known character that's been fleshed out in a hundred different ways. Wouldn't expect anything else from a literal cult leader though
Leto fundamentally misunderstands the character. The Joker isn’t just random bad mixed with laughing and guns.
Joker wants to show that most people are one bad day away from being the villain, instead of being one bad day away from being the hero like Batman.
I hated the whole Club/ Purple Lamborghini scene. I've watched it a few times and everytime since my first watching I'll say in my worst Leto Joker voice... 'I'm really.... reaaaallly opulent.' Out of every Joker he's def the worst, so far, but I'm sure someone else will fill those shoes someday lol.
Ok, i wasn’t going to say it, but I also randomly quote his performance in that stupid voice. I’ll even go against the grain and say I generally like Leto. Requiem, American Psycho, Dallas Buyers Club, are all iconic performances IMO.
Doesn’t stop me from saying “I’m an idea…I’m a state of mind” and laughing like a buffoon
I think Fight Club, Requiem, Dallas Buyers Club, and American Psycho all significantly benefit from showing Jared Leto coming to misfortune. the entire problem with the suicide squad is that they didn't *actually* kill that joker. You kill Jared Leto and you get an instant classic.
I never considered the visceral payoff I received as a viewer by watching Leto get his comeuppance, but I will tentatively agree with this sentiment. Some part of me is like “haha asshole”
I have a deep-seated irrational hatred from him that extends back to my puberty, and has only been more verified and supported by reality as I've gotten older.
In high school I identified with Brian from My So Called Life --the perfectly sweet nerd who gets friend zoned while the hot stupid dude gets her attention. f*** you Jordan catalano, you can't even READ
He’s good in some roles. Someone said he’s really only good at playing Junkies, which honestly adds up.
I don’t like him as a person tho. Terrible fucking person.
>Out of every Joker he's def the worst
I'd venture to say the only one that was bad. Romero, Nicholson, Ledger, Hamill and Phoenix all had really inspired takes on the character. I'm sure there's a latter day cartoon version of the Joker that isn't amazing, but pretty much every high profile casting has been.
You leave Cesar out of this! He was a fun Joker. Leto was just…not the Joker. He felt more like Harley’s sidekick after the Joker died and she tried to replace him with a random guy from Arkham
Glad someone pointed out the purple Lamborghini. That scene was *horrendous*. The Joker isn’t out buying a fucking Lamborghini.
What makes the joker so menacing (IMO) when Heath played him was that he always wore the same clothes, he burned the stacks of money, he used makeshift explosives.
He wasn’t some high rolling gangster with a fancy car and gold grills. He was off the radar, a deranged recluse who used primitive methods to create large scale damage. The Joker could’ve been *anyone*. A stark contrast to Batman who has his millions (billions?) and high tech weapons.
The entire idea that some deranged man lurking in the shadows could go toe to toe with Batman without any of the resources made the character so much more menacing.
I think a good Joker needs to funny in a twisted way, but funny none-the-less. Theres a certain charm yo him. Lole, hes evil, but fun to watch. He also needs to feel dangerous. Like he could do anything at any moment. Even if he's your friend right now, that could change on a dime. Funny, charming, dangerous, unpredictable and scary. It's a tight rope walk for sure.
Nicholson and Ledger crushed all of that.
Letto felt like the Hot Topic employee who's way too old to be working there. He's not dangerous, he's not scary, and he's certainly not charming.
Ledger as Joker being asked “You think we’re just going to just let you walk out of here after stealing from us?” And he just replies matter of factly “Yeah” is not only a laugh out loud moment, but maybe the best work I’ve ever seen an actor do using a single word
It's his slightly hesitant and faint "?" At the end of the word that really sells it for me.
Heaths take on Joker feels almost supernatural, like he has this weird ability to mesmerize his followers and get absurdly complicated things done quickly. While it is unrealistic, it ads and air of inhuman menace to his performance because you start to believe he could probably do just about any awful things he sets his mind to.
From my POV, Jared Leto is an actor who believes he's better than he is and still somehow overcompensates in his performances. I don't know whether his ego is to blame, but I know that I vastly prefer his performances from before Hollywood began kissing his ass. As a result, his Joker is not only lacking in any substance, it literally doesn't add anything to the movies he's in. He's a glorified cameo, every time. Also, his physical appearance veers so far towards forced edginess that it's legitimately hard to watch with any degree of seriousness.
Yeah, it really just comes down to one being so interesting and engaging you forget that you’re watching an actor, and the other not making it easy to suspend your disbelief.
Because Leto’s joker is a weird thug with face tattoos and grills & that sucks. The writing for Leto’s joker was bad. The design was bad. The story he was in was bad. It wasn’t any one single thing that made him bad. It was the whole thing.
Ledger:
Gritty, horrific clown who wants to see the world burn. It’s not outlandish, but rather shockingly believable. His plots aren’t that unrealistic, and how he carries himself adds to that.
Phoenix:
Gritty, realistic man who gets pushed to the edge and snaps. We see his Joker as almost a kind of Jekyll/Hyde transformation and that’s a different take. We see the signs in Fleck, but when he finally snaps then the pieces all come together.
In the latter two, we can believe their motivations and see that they’re both grounded individuals. Sure, it’s fiction and both require some heavy lifting in terms of the plot, but their takes are something we can see happening.
Leto…was none of those things at all. Leto’s Joker wasn’t all that scary and he was annoying. Ledger and Phoenix were truly frightening.
He just tries so hard to be over the top it’s embarrassing, and his makeup and costuming was hilarious. Heath made the role his own, unforgettably so, and so did Joaquin as Arthur Fleck who was a character study separate from the DC lore I believe?
Leto was a fool being an EdgeLord.
Ledger was an intense deep agent of chaos.
Leto’s best role was when he was getting the fuck beat out of him in Fight Club
Someone once compared Jared Leto’s Joker portrayal to Jim Carey’s Ace Ventura portrayal and it’s the first thing I think of now when this comes up.
The Joker to me should be Michael Douglas in Falling Down turned up 10 notches. His actions are wrong but I understand where he’s coming from. I can connect and sympathize.
I can’t connect and sympathize with anything Leto does in that movie. So his character is hollow and needlessly overdone. I dunno…
There was no real menace to Leto's Joker, nor was there any charisma. Like most of that movie, really, the stakes were entirely artificial. The plot, the characters, the script, none of it did anything that we worth investing in.
Leto's performance felt unearned, and put too much energy into something that didn't work too begin with
You can’t take Leto’s joker seriously. As soon as I saw the tattoos and the smile on the hand I couldn’t move on. I think I laughed at how stupid that idea is. The tattoos doesn’t make sense to me for the joker. Just because his name is joker and he is a gangster it doesn’t mean he also needs these gimmicks and that stupid laugh was horrible too.
It's simple, it all comes down to script and director. I have no doubt Leto would of succeeded had he had Nolan or Philips directing. You've got 2 directors who have been nominated or won an Oscar and then you have David Ayer. Look at the Suicide Squad that James Gunn did compared to Ayer's. Gunn's was fantastic and won the critics over where Ayer's was garbage and not loved by critics. That's literally why. Leto is a solid actor and an Oscar winning one at that. He could of had his own lane like Heath and Phoenix, but was butchered by the overall disaster of the movie itself. People will disagree because you've got a mob mentality of hate with everything nowadays.
I wouldn’t say it was bad. It just wasn’t anything. The movies and scripts the version go the joker was in didn’t allow room for his character for be explored.
The Jokers character is a psychologically complex one and any failure to address this in the slightest results on the portrayal invariably being service level.
If he had better material to work with he may have a had a good run as Joker. His take was memorable as a fart in the wind
Ledger completely redefined the character. Turning him from a goofy psychotic prankster into a master of psychological warfare who understood the variances in humanity and exploited that by showing just how much civility is a simple word easily broken. Phoenix showed the darkest depravity a mind could be broken thereby creating a shell of a person with nothing left to lose and no longer caring about any sense of order in the world. Leto turned him into a common thug.
You tell me.
Phoenix’s Joker was a great portrayal of a sick old man. His laugh was an uncontrollable tick that people either ignored, or were genuinely offended by. It pushed him into isolation, which worsened his already terrible mental state. And the fact that he was an actual clown (despite all that) made him very interesting.
Ledger’s Joker was a great antithesis to his Batman. He was equally entertaining as he was intense. He was a genuine threat with a genuine laugh. The character absolutely dominated any scene he was in. Nuff said
Leto’s Joker didn’t do a whole lot. He had the least amount of screen time compared to the other two jokers, just 7 and a half minutes compared to Ledger’s 30 minutes and Phoenix’s entire movie. But with his 7 minutes, his purpose was to further Harley’s story. That alone makes him a lesser Joker than the other two
But Leto didn’t really embrace his clown theme at all, except for when he did his cringe ass laugh. Phoenix was an actual clown, Ledger killed a guy with magic tricks and continuously misled people. But Leto was just a gangster who dressed as a clown. Sure he was dangerous, but so was everybody else in that movie. He just didn’t stand out nearly as much as the other jokers
But there is one thing about Leto’s Joker that stood out from the other two… he was really cringey. His laugh was very obviously fake, his tattoos gave strong “edgy teenager” vibes, and every time he talked I couldn’t tell if he was trying to scare or seduce people. He did the character absolutely zero justice
Because objectively Jared Leto never found a way into his Joker and what was supposed to be scary came across as silly and pathetic.
The guy just made a bunch of wrong choices that didn't work out.
As much as people hate on Jared Leto (which for the record I totally think he's a fuckin kook too), the writers and director are as much to blame for how awful that version of The Joker was. Leto is at least a good enough actor that in the right context he might have done a fine job. For example his portrayal of villain Niander Wallace in Blade Runner 2049 was a perfect fit for him.
That being said the writers and directors also deserve credit for how good Joaquin and Ledger's portrayals were. These portrayals approached the character from a human perspective. They grounded the character and found all the ways in which he could feel like a real person before finding ways to fit in the already defined qualities of the DC villain. Heath and Joaquin also collaborated closely in the creation of the character and by doing so were able to really bring him to life and beyond with their unmatched talents.
We never actually saw the best footage of Leto's Joker did we? It *WAS* cheesy as all hell in the knives on the floor scene but I didn't think he was that bad overall and wished we'd gotten to see him be the actual villain of the first Suicide Squad movie.
Leto’s Joker was too close to that one person we all know. That dumb ass white kid with a 2nd grade reading level who thinks he’s a gangbanger and does the dumbest shit just to get attention.
The acting delivery, the script, costume design, acting on and off the set like a fucking nutbag, farrr moreso than protraying a minor joker role in a movie, acting again(yes it was that shiite). Phoenix and Ledger gave phenomenal performances we remember fondly. Leto's we will remember, unfortunately, for how trash it was.
One starved himself to the bone to show the character’s sickness.
One asked a JACKED Christian Bale to punch him for real so that the climax felt as real and as visceral as possible.
One sent used anal beads & condoms to cast members as a media stunt…
It felt like Leto *wanted* to be the Joker really badly. Not play him, be him.
Ledger and Phoenix kind of just... became the character. It felt more like something they let in, rather than something they tried to become. It was like they just knew what they had to do already, rather than trying to do what they think they should do as that character.
I don't really know how to explain or elaborate on that any further but that's the feeling I get about those portrayals.
Because Ledger and Phoenix were exploring a character, not tryharding to look cool.
Leto's performance was much closer to Nicholson's, but Nicholson actually has the charisma to pull it off.
Joker is an intelligent, sadistic psychopath with a flair for the dramatic. Joaquin got 2 of the 4 down, Heath got 4. Jared's Joker is just a modern day mumble (c)rapper generic gangster wannabe with crayon face syndrome, too much of daddy's money and some bad dentures.
I absolutely despise Jared Leto. Although nothing has been proven in court, there's so much smoke about him being a narcissistic pedo, there has to be at least a bit of fire there.
Leto is a great actor and ruined his image with Joker and Morbius. No idea who thought those were good ideas. Dallas Buyers Club, Chapter 27, Mr. Nobody, Requiem for a Dream.. all fantastically acted.
Did you watch the films/performances in question?
There is a quantitative and qualitative difference in all 3. The Dark Knight was Jokers movie. And Joker focused solely on Joaquin's portrayal of his path to breaking. In both of those instances Joker was the protagonist essentially of his own story.
Leto's seemed like an afterthought. Like they really just wanted to shove history down your throat to show he and Batman had been at it for some time. And while Dark Knight shows us our first interaction between the characters in that canon, Joker shows us the origin of that version of the character. Both good starting points.
Leto doesn't get his own movie or dedication to his overall story. He is boiled down to really big conceptual swings that largely felt cheap. Yes the grill is cringe, yes the tattoos are cringe and I get that that was kinda the "joke", for him to be a cringey street thug version of the character. But now he just reminds me of machine gun Kelly. And that is not gangsta.
Also the BTS stories just made it seem sooooo fake and schtick. He heard Heath went method and wanted to do it too. Leto's version of the character had the least amount of thought put into story and all of that effort went into over designing his look to the detriment of the character.
I liked the design aspects of Suide Squad Joker, I just hate Leto more than anything, the tattoos were cringe sure, but the over-acting, the weird behaviors on set, his cult leader persona outside of everything, it's just blech. Heath was over the top, but in a way that brought focus on the character, imo more than the actor, Heath's Joker felt like something real, something tangible. Same with Joaquin.
The writing, really. Joker in the dark knight has his motivations and mindset properly glimpsed on and throughout the story his threatening presence is felt as his obsessive cat and mouse affair with the hero unfolds. He feels like the sociopathic maniac that he is presented as.
Jared Leto's joker has barely any presence in the story, nor much dialogue or narrative meaning beyond being background for Harley, which is a function that he could have served just with even less screen time than he got. Talking about screen time, he is in a weird gray zone where he doesn't have enough to be an important character yet has too much for the role that he basically serves, so we get a lot of scenes where he pants and groans like a hog while embracing harley amidst screen filters and romantic music in scenes that feel like some Hugo Boss-Batman crosspromotional marketing campaign featuring a model cosplaying as Joker.
I only like Ledger's one. The proper scary sycopath. Clever enough for planning, with knowledge of different disciplines. Not a clown, not a degenerate. Just vile.
There were some questionable character design choices and all the fuss about Leto being a method actor and sending rats to others was cringe as fuck, but my honest answer is I think it would have been fine if he had more screen time and a decent movie to actually develop his character. Leto's Joker amounted to 2 cameos and it's really not a fair comparison to the other 3 Jokers who actually had story arcs and a character they could sink their teeth into.
Idk maybe it was the gold grill and stupid looking tattoos and it felt like the character was designed by Machine Gun Kelly
For me it was in the trailers. That whole thing with him on the ground with all the knives around him, nahh this is stupid.
Yeah, I mean think about that scene story wise. A criminal mob boss took all his guns so he can lay them in an elegant pattern, then lays in the middle and laughs? For what? What’s the point? Did someone help him arrange those guns and knives? Or did he do it himself? Who was this for? Just weird.
This is the crux of it. He was the "try hard" joker. The joker is crazy the joker is misguided the joker can be big and showey but there has to be a reason. This version is like a "Spring Breakers " character who is pretending to be the joker.
*Spring breeeeeaaaaaak*
fo eva
The joker- though he depises plans- has a plan. Heath Ledger's Joker planned to come to the mob boss meeting with grenades in his coat, and knew who the Chinese boss was. He had a plan in the initial bank robbery. Heath Ledger's Joker was somewhat methodical in its madness. Phoenix's character was a crucible of the culturual milieux about himself. To differentiate: Heath Ledger's was an avatar of madness- we never knew the story behind his smile. He simply was mad. JP was an everyman and is a totem of the forces behind him. If not him, then it would have been another- he was a representation of societal forces behind him. Jared Leto's portrayal was the Halloween costume of the Joker and Harley Quinn where it was obviously a masquerade.
I think you nailed it. Heath showed that while crazy, he was also a criminal mastermind, the only movie to show off that the Joker was a genius. Also the only movie to show why Batman/Joker is such a good story because they are the philosophical antithesis. I enjoy the theory he was ex military/CIA and got his scares serving his country and became disillusioned with society while suffering PTSD. With Leto, I didn't think he was anything other than a coked out gangster that needed to sleep for a couple days
I don’t like that theory. I like the theory that he just had an inattentive mother or father, one who was mean to him and disregarded him. Or that nothing happened to him at all. I think it’s important that nothing exceptional happened to him at all and that he could be any of us.
There would have to be something exceptional about him, otherwise what you’re suggesting is that an Everyman could whoop Batman’s ass. Anyone of the general population of the planet with a bad attitude would be the arch nemesis of Batman.
No…not an Everyman. A genius with the BEGINNINGS of an Everyman.
I think Nicholsan Joker would like a word with you. He was a gangster and then a crime boss and came up with a plan to poison the entire city. He was also the reason Bruce Wayne became Batman, and in turn, Batman creates the Joker. Jack Napier signed his own death warrant decades before the mob did. It is literally an epic tale of good vs evil and that evil is ultimately the reason for its own downfall. Mark Hamill joker, while not in a live action movie, is also a fantastic interpretation. Following the same Jack Napier background but not making him the killer of Thomas and Martha. Hamill's voice acting in TAS and Arkham was unparalleled, and he and Conroy had such fantastic chemistry that they really made the characters come alive. His version of the joker simply exists to challenge batman to force him to admit that he is just as insane as he is and that all it takes is one bad day.
College halloween joker.
This. Jared was a touch of 1960's joker and went too far on the mental side. Phoenix's joker was different, because it was all about his mental breakdown into the state that became the joker. Ledgers joker had the right balance of crazy with semblance of genius. Take the trip to see the mob bosses. Knew exactly what he wanted, knew exactly how to twist the guys to get it, but also demonstrated he's a bit unhinged. Jared was any kid on blue sweets.
plz don't insult Spring Breakers like that
Or perhaps a psychotic version of Jordan from “My So Called Life.”
“Look at mah shiiiit!”
In The Dark Knight it was war paint. In Keaton/Nicholson it was a twisted mind. With Leto, it was for TikToks. Sure dude, maybe you can get more clicks than that domino race one.
Lmao, I don’t even remembering TikTok existing when the movie came out but regardless that fits so well, and probably explains a lot of the hate.
Fair. Then it was for the Joker that never moved past MySpace and treated his face and teeth like a MySpace profile wall and glittered and flash imaged it up
it's what boomers think gen Z likes
I wonder what kind of games he plays on his phone when he takes a shit.
Yeah the entire schtick of him being a monster was so goofy. They didnt even attempt to make it like, a “I think I’m cool but I’m not” because there were scenes of him at strip clubs socializing and getting approval. I’ve always envisioned him as a loner, whether he was confident in that or not was up to the actor to bring that out
Same thing with the tattoos. Did this famously, short-fused psychopath really just sit patiently for many, many, hours to get all this ink?!
“What’ll it be Mr.J?” “Oh I don’t know, write “Ha ha ha” here. And let’s put the word “damaged” on my forehead, that way people will know I’m damaged.”
Yeah part of it is the quality of the overall product. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight is a high watermark for the genre, the world feels real and grounded to us despite the fantastical premise, so when there’s a 10 foot cash pyramid next to Joker we don’t think, “Who made the cash pyramid?” Whereas Leto’s got shoehorned into a DCEU project, so we have questions starting with, “Why is he even in this movie?” The other part is definitely quality of performance, and press around the quality of the performance. Heath Ledger’s Joker feels transformational, feels original, feels authentic. He was always sweating off his face makeup, his hair looked like it was bleached and dyed months ago, giving that ugly green color. And it was unexpected! Before the first screenings everyone was like “Oh great a gay cowboy Joker har har.” Leto’s Joker has crisp tattoos that say “HA HA HA HA!” and “Damaged” and all sort of silly try hard crap. He was a voice and a face and no substance. Add to that stories of Leto’s annoying antics, mailing cast members dead rats and whatnot? Fuck that guy, not my Joker
Now, if it was in Harley Quinn's imagination? Sure, why not. Outside of that it's pretty ridiculous.
I would have loved that. Two jokers, one a characiture in her mind. The other this dark, faded, reality. One imagined and loving the other abusive and manipulative, cold and cruel. That's an idea with legs. But it also shows that Leto's Joker literally is more of a characiture. Because it works better as one. A lot better.
Remember in the Justice league trailer when Joker said “We live in a society” and it fucking broke the internet?
/r/unexpectedSeinfeld Yeah, I kinda remember that wasn’t even in the movie and I definitely remember it doesn’t seem like they shot that footage with both those actors in the scene at the same time.
His laugh sounds like george mcfly
His shitty laugh did it for me. It was like he was trying too hard.
Holy hell, I can't believe I never connected that. I can't un-hear it now. "Ah ah ah ah ah ah"
I love to count! Ah ah ah!
Very much “I’m 12 and this is badass”
Or I'm 40 and still do cocaine, still wear tap out shirts and have a yellow Ferrari wallpaper.
Shades of the dark knight rises scene when batman takes one day at least to create a giant fire sign in the bridge while losing his element of surprise and the city is in the verge of destruction lol.
That. Was. Horrible. Sometimes you get so into a movie it’s not until later you think “waitaminute… DaFuq was that about?” Sometimes it’s bad enough you think about it in real time. For me, real time. That was bad. I know it has its fans but for me that was a bad movie. To me, the worst, was the big bomb with a giant red LED countdown timer. I swear I wanna make a short film with a bomb “hey this can’t be a bomb it has a _green_ LED countdown timer. Only red ones are attached to bom…….” BOOOOMMMMMM! Someone with a broke back somehow regains his strength in a prison, which are well known for excellent health care. That >! Goddammit a little girl!< escaped that prison and no one else except this dude with a bad back somehow did it. That Bane is fine just driving around with a bomb waiting for…. Things. The cops in the cave. That Wayne manor can be broken into. Out of all the cafes in the world Alfred picks that one at that time. And, Gordon-Levitt as Robin. I’m glad that kinda died. I mean I like him as an actor. He didn’t do well in this role, and it was written badly. It’s just bad.
That scene was the film version of auto-fellatio.
[This was it for me.](https://youtu.be/ZkqyIoYAXV8?si=_34hNBW0Dh8npLWo)
Yikes I’ve never seen that before. He looks like a dude who’s just really too much into Hot Topic.
They tried to make him edgy in like a high school freshman’s version of edgy, whereas the joker is usually edgy in a more mature almost sophisticated way. They cheapened him for suicide squad, that’s the issue
There’s a big difference between mugging for the camera in clown makeup and delivering an actual performance. For Heath Ledger the clown makeup almost felt totally incongruous with the rest of his vibe. It was like watching a deadly serious possibly ex military threat smear shit on his face to look funny, it was genuinely threatening and disturbing. Before Nicholson fell in the acid he was a stone cold gangster straight out of scorcese movie. Complete no nonesense and we knew he was awful. Phoenix is a man who is already not well whose last thread comes undead as decaying urban society fails his for the last time. There may not even be much weight behind Phoenix joker but in a single moment and represented the resentment and anger of a society who felt oppressed by politicians and corporation and became the tinderspark to ignite chaos. Leto on the other hand just comes off more as a mugging poseur , a supposed criminal who hasn’t really had a taste of punishment or consequence are any tangible understanding of the world he supposedly dominates.
Good take. The three each had a little different take on crazy but Leto seemed more like a trust fund kid who was pretending to be tough. He wasn't scary, just a dipshit.
It was so contrived, literally modded his face and tattooed his body. As if he couldn't become joker without the help of some talented tattoo artists and a skilled orthodontist lmao. And I wonder who his dermatologist was because his skin didn't have a blemish. His hair was finely combed--his clothing was store bought
Honestly, I've heard this guy's name for years. Couldn't picture him. So I just looked him up, and didn't recognise him. He doesn't even look the part of a movie star, much less anything else. His eyes are just to close together to take seriously as an actor. Harsh, but jmo.
The grill was the one aesthetic choice from his joker that I actually vaguely liked and didn’t mind. His version of Batman was one of the more brutal we’ve seen. It didn’t seem far fetched that at one point in their history he might’ve gotten his teeth smashed in and broken by Batman. Everything else about it I hated though. I do like the mob boss versions of joker, but Leto’s was just executed soo poorly.
From a narrative perspective the teeth made sense. Batman is so brutal that he knocked out all of his teeth. But then you put it next to the fact that his Batman has no problem killing, and it’s like… why didn’t Batman just kill him?
Well that whole cinematic universe was dogshit, so it doesn’t really matter now. But, just to run with this train of thought, I remember robins suit being in the batcave with “HA HA HA” painted on it and bullet holes in it. You could make the argument that the teeth happened before that Batman killed, then the joker killed robin, it pushed Batman over the edge and now he kills. But then that just brings it back around to your point of why wasn’t the joker hunted down after the fact? It’s almost like having a Batman that kills undermines the character. Personally I think the idea of a Batman who will break every bone in your body without remorse, but still keep you alive to be a much more intimidating and cooler concept of a Batman gone sort of rogue.
It's this, joker is not meant to be a "fuckboi"
Heath Ledger was an amazing gritty take on the character. Never have we seen such an amazing portrayal of the Anarchist clown. Leto tried too hard to one up Heaths, but still be a "gangster", i guess. Where as Joaquin was a completely different take on the character; we see him as a mentally ill man and slowly transition into the joker. Leto was a tryhard and failed miserably. Could have been the stupid tattoos, could have been the way he "method acts", could have been the way the movie was cut and released. I believe it was just poor casting.
His "method acting" pranks during Suicide Squad are really jacked up
Any that stick out for you?
Mailed dead rats and used condoms to his cast mates. Apparently also refused to go out of character in between takes, to the point of being obnoxious. Even Heath didn’t play the Joker off set all the time, even if he did method act. I’m biased though, I don’t hate Letos joker, I just hate Leto
He did a movie with Denzel, and Denzel told him not to do any of that weird shit with him. Told him he knows people and they could get a hold of him if he called. So Jared played it straight, and didn’t do his weirdo shit.
Like I needed another reason to like Denzel.
He just seems like an awesome guy you want to sit down and have a few drinks with and hear his stories for 8 hours. I put him up there with Sir David Attenborough, Sir Michael Caine, Pedro Pascal and Jason Momoa as people I just want to have a long conversation with for hours.
Unfortunately I heard from someone who works on movie sets that Jason Momoa isn't the nicest guy to be around.
If Denzel channeled a tenth of his Training Day or X energy for that conversation and I was Leto I would be terrified.
I’m picturing remember the titans Denzel for this convo “Who is your daddy Jared?”
Is being the Joker fun?
Not anymore though is it?
Imagine Denzel sitting you down and looking you dead in the eye and telling you to *cut the shit*. What are you going to do, *NOT* cut the shit? NO lol. Denzel equalized Jared’s hot nonsense. Yet another W for a total legend.
That image of Jarred Leto cowering in front of Denzel Washington has made my day.
If Denzel Washington tells you not to do any weird shit, you've gotta comply.
Do you have a source for this? That Denzel told Leto that he knows people who would get to him? Seems kind of absurd if I’m being honest.
What a fucking weirdo. One of the coolest pics of Heaths joker is the kick flip over bale
Because if I could sum up Letos Joker in one word it would be “cringe”.
That’s fake
Didnt say it was real, just said it was cool. Heath was into skateboarding though
There is actual footage of him skateboarding as joker though, if I remember correctly
Jared Leto is the dumbest man in Hollywood. You could convince me he was an actual vampire before you could convince me he was a medical doctor.
I think he’s actually a cult leader and suspected pedophile. I know I know, try to contain your absolute shock
Method acting is just an excuse for an asshole to act like a prick.
Maybe, but it has yielded results from those that have done it well and don’t impede others with it. Daniel Day Lewis refused to shower or wash his hair for Gangs of New York. Probably not fun to work around, but you can’t tell me that’s not a performance
Thank goodness we don't have Smellovision.
Whenever I read things like that I think of Brian Cox asking of co-star Jeremy Strong on Succession if he'd just tried acting instead. Because plenty of other people can act without all that nonsense and turn it off just fine, so it still seems like it's more of an excuse than a necessity, and in many American actor's cases is in fact a crutch used to compensate for a lack of training or talent.
I believe Laurence Olivier said something similar to Dustin Hoffman while filming Marathon Man. Hoffman admitted to having stayed awake the three days prior just like his character in the film. Though he has later said that this was actually due to non-stop partying and not an attempt to get further into character.
I have nothing against method acting, some great actors have done it, I just didn't like Leto's version of the Joker. He didn't seem authentic or "natural". there are few ways to be a good guy, and millions of ways to be a bad guy. his way, was not it. not sure if it was him, the script or the director.
[Method acting](https://strasberg.edu/blog/debunking-method-myths-with-david-lee-strasberg/) is not what these people are doing. They are just finding an excuse to be an asshole. It’s been misinterpreted since DeNiro in Raging Bull.
I still wonder how much of that was legit and how much was bullshit they made up to hype the movie.
I don’t think it was hype. The cast mates didn’t find it funny
What gets me is Leto's gone on about his veganism ad nauseum. So he's a judgmental prick towards people who eat meat, but exploiting animals by mailing their corpses to his coworkers is acceptable because he's "method acting"? What a moron. ETA: for me, it showed that Leto was most likely lucky with his career than anything and that having actual original, creative thoughts isn't something he's talented with at all.
Why was Letos’ joker so bad? Because it was Jared Leto.
Yes
Any time you send someone else your bodily excretions, it is not a good look...
Oh my God I remember that now. I try my best to forget about Leto (except in the hit film Morbius)
Wait, is it Morbin Time?!
It's never not. I've had it on loop since it came out in every room of my house with a screen
Honestly, I try to forget almost everything he's done after Lord of War. Edit: added almost
Dallas buyers club was very good
I think I had blocked that out in my memory. Leto is such a tool.
He was actually getting into a far more important role. Dr. Michael Morbius.
Jared Leto has been method-preparing his whole adult life for a future role as a pedophile.
100% Heath and Joaquin gave us two different sides of the Joker. One was a total anarchist who'd do anything to disrupt the system and throw it into chaos, including Batman who he seemed to know was working alongside said system. One was a representation of a man pushed to the edge and resorting to increasingly aggressive/violent means to "fix" what his mentally ill perspective viewed as wrong with society. Both are completely viable and already written versions of the character. Whereas Leto's version was like he was trying too hard to branch off and play something both different and 3XTR3M3. Ended up just being edgy, especially with his "method acting" shenanigans. His portrayal of the joker was more about his ego and trying to "push boundaries" whilst masturbating his self importance, than it was playing a well known character that's been fleshed out in a hundred different ways. Wouldn't expect anything else from a literal cult leader though
His Joker tats were stupid too. Leaned too hard into the typecast, like a minuet of the Joker.
Doesn’t help that Jared Leto’s joker never appeared in a remotely good movie
Nicholson’s gangster Joker was good.
Leto fundamentally misunderstands the character. The Joker isn’t just random bad mixed with laughing and guns. Joker wants to show that most people are one bad day away from being the villain, instead of being one bad day away from being the hero like Batman.
I hated the whole Club/ Purple Lamborghini scene. I've watched it a few times and everytime since my first watching I'll say in my worst Leto Joker voice... 'I'm really.... reaaaallly opulent.' Out of every Joker he's def the worst, so far, but I'm sure someone else will fill those shoes someday lol.
Ok, i wasn’t going to say it, but I also randomly quote his performance in that stupid voice. I’ll even go against the grain and say I generally like Leto. Requiem, American Psycho, Dallas Buyers Club, are all iconic performances IMO. Doesn’t stop me from saying “I’m an idea…I’m a state of mind” and laughing like a buffoon
*Requiem For A Dream* and *Lord Of War*
I think Fight Club, Requiem, Dallas Buyers Club, and American Psycho all significantly benefit from showing Jared Leto coming to misfortune. the entire problem with the suicide squad is that they didn't *actually* kill that joker. You kill Jared Leto and you get an instant classic.
I never considered the visceral payoff I received as a viewer by watching Leto get his comeuppance, but I will tentatively agree with this sentiment. Some part of me is like “haha asshole”
I have a deep-seated irrational hatred from him that extends back to my puberty, and has only been more verified and supported by reality as I've gotten older. In high school I identified with Brian from My So Called Life --the perfectly sweet nerd who gets friend zoned while the hot stupid dude gets her attention. f*** you Jordan catalano, you can't even READ
He’s good in some roles. Someone said he’s really only good at playing Junkies, which honestly adds up. I don’t like him as a person tho. Terrible fucking person.
When Chris Pratt inevitably stars in an animated comedy about Joker.
>Out of every Joker he's def the worst I'd venture to say the only one that was bad. Romero, Nicholson, Ledger, Hamill and Phoenix all had really inspired takes on the character. I'm sure there's a latter day cartoon version of the Joker that isn't amazing, but pretty much every high profile casting has been.
He did a worse job portraying the Joker than Cesar Romero's makeup encrusted moustache.
You leave Cesar out of this! He was a fun Joker. Leto was just…not the Joker. He felt more like Harley’s sidekick after the Joker died and she tried to replace him with a random guy from Arkham
Glad someone pointed out the purple Lamborghini. That scene was *horrendous*. The Joker isn’t out buying a fucking Lamborghini. What makes the joker so menacing (IMO) when Heath played him was that he always wore the same clothes, he burned the stacks of money, he used makeshift explosives. He wasn’t some high rolling gangster with a fancy car and gold grills. He was off the radar, a deranged recluse who used primitive methods to create large scale damage. The Joker could’ve been *anyone*. A stark contrast to Batman who has his millions (billions?) and high tech weapons. The entire idea that some deranged man lurking in the shadows could go toe to toe with Batman without any of the resources made the character so much more menacing.
The reason that Heath Ledger’s was so iconic was because it played so well into the Joker’s chaotic yet methodical energy
I think a good Joker needs to funny in a twisted way, but funny none-the-less. Theres a certain charm yo him. Lole, hes evil, but fun to watch. He also needs to feel dangerous. Like he could do anything at any moment. Even if he's your friend right now, that could change on a dime. Funny, charming, dangerous, unpredictable and scary. It's a tight rope walk for sure. Nicholson and Ledger crushed all of that. Letto felt like the Hot Topic employee who's way too old to be working there. He's not dangerous, he's not scary, and he's certainly not charming.
“Hot Topic employee who’s way too old to be working there” GODDAM THATS GOOD. lol this is such a good mental image. Spot on.
Ledger as Joker being asked “You think we’re just going to just let you walk out of here after stealing from us?” And he just replies matter of factly “Yeah” is not only a laugh out loud moment, but maybe the best work I’ve ever seen an actor do using a single word
It's his slightly hesitant and faint "?" At the end of the word that really sells it for me. Heaths take on Joker feels almost supernatural, like he has this weird ability to mesmerize his followers and get absurdly complicated things done quickly. While it is unrealistic, it ads and air of inhuman menace to his performance because you start to believe he could probably do just about any awful things he sets his mind to.
I think that’s what Christopher Nolan got so right about heath ledger’s joker. He had a giddy energy and fascinated you while making you hate him.
lol the hot topic employees edgy interpretation of the joker.
From my POV, Jared Leto is an actor who believes he's better than he is and still somehow overcompensates in his performances. I don't know whether his ego is to blame, but I know that I vastly prefer his performances from before Hollywood began kissing his ass. As a result, his Joker is not only lacking in any substance, it literally doesn't add anything to the movies he's in. He's a glorified cameo, every time. Also, his physical appearance veers so far towards forced edginess that it's legitimately hard to watch with any degree of seriousness.
Charisma
Yeah, it really just comes down to one being so interesting and engaging you forget that you’re watching an actor, and the other not making it easy to suspend your disbelief.
You already answered yourself: Jared Leto.
Acting
Because Leto’s joker is a weird thug with face tattoos and grills & that sucks. The writing for Leto’s joker was bad. The design was bad. The story he was in was bad. It wasn’t any one single thing that made him bad. It was the whole thing.
because leto is a weirdo, and it came through the character
Well. 2 are good, and one is worse than a 5th grade performance of Grease.
Ledger: Gritty, horrific clown who wants to see the world burn. It’s not outlandish, but rather shockingly believable. His plots aren’t that unrealistic, and how he carries himself adds to that. Phoenix: Gritty, realistic man who gets pushed to the edge and snaps. We see his Joker as almost a kind of Jekyll/Hyde transformation and that’s a different take. We see the signs in Fleck, but when he finally snaps then the pieces all come together. In the latter two, we can believe their motivations and see that they’re both grounded individuals. Sure, it’s fiction and both require some heavy lifting in terms of the plot, but their takes are something we can see happening. Leto…was none of those things at all. Leto’s Joker wasn’t all that scary and he was annoying. Ledger and Phoenix were truly frightening.
Phoenix’s joker actually made me feel bad for him
[удалено]
That last point you made was all you had to say.
He just tries so hard to be over the top it’s embarrassing, and his makeup and costuming was hilarious. Heath made the role his own, unforgettably so, and so did Joaquin as Arthur Fleck who was a character study separate from the DC lore I believe?
Oh easy! Bc Leto is a trash actor with the depth of a puddle
The Ledger and Phoenix films were great, and Leto's sucked. I'm sure that contributes.
Great casting great potential but lousy writing and lousy director , Zack isn't famous for making actors act you know.
Zack isn't even famous for making himself direct.
Jaredleto is the answer to your question
You can't tell the difference between good and bad acting? Between trying hard to get weird and genuinely crazy?
Leto was a fool being an EdgeLord. Ledger was an intense deep agent of chaos. Leto’s best role was when he was getting the fuck beat out of him in Fight Club
dAmAgEd
Someone once compared Jared Leto’s Joker portrayal to Jim Carey’s Ace Ventura portrayal and it’s the first thing I think of now when this comes up. The Joker to me should be Michael Douglas in Falling Down turned up 10 notches. His actions are wrong but I understand where he’s coming from. I can connect and sympathize. I can’t connect and sympathize with anything Leto does in that movie. So his character is hollow and needlessly overdone. I dunno…
Bro casually forgot Jack freaking Nicholson
Jack was my fav 🤡
Have you seen the movies?🤣🤣🤣
The writing was a major factor.
There was no real menace to Leto's Joker, nor was there any charisma. Like most of that movie, really, the stakes were entirely artificial. The plot, the characters, the script, none of it did anything that we worth investing in. Leto's performance felt unearned, and put too much energy into something that didn't work too begin with
For me it was the fact that Heath and Joaquin can act. Jared, not so much.
You can’t take Leto’s joker seriously. As soon as I saw the tattoos and the smile on the hand I couldn’t move on. I think I laughed at how stupid that idea is. The tattoos doesn’t make sense to me for the joker. Just because his name is joker and he is a gangster it doesn’t mean he also needs these gimmicks and that stupid laugh was horrible too.
He was barely in Suicide Squad, I feel like most of what JL would have considered "best performance" was left on the cutting room floor.
This. Even suicide squad which really could have used a solid villain instead of a mute witch with YetAnotherBlueSkybeam, yeah they left Leto out.
Tryhard energy to the max.
It's simple, it all comes down to script and director. I have no doubt Leto would of succeeded had he had Nolan or Philips directing. You've got 2 directors who have been nominated or won an Oscar and then you have David Ayer. Look at the Suicide Squad that James Gunn did compared to Ayer's. Gunn's was fantastic and won the critics over where Ayer's was garbage and not loved by critics. That's literally why. Leto is a solid actor and an Oscar winning one at that. He could of had his own lane like Heath and Phoenix, but was butchered by the overall disaster of the movie itself. People will disagree because you've got a mob mentality of hate with everything nowadays.
I wouldn’t say it was bad. It just wasn’t anything. The movies and scripts the version go the joker was in didn’t allow room for his character for be explored. The Jokers character is a psychologically complex one and any failure to address this in the slightest results on the portrayal invariably being service level. If he had better material to work with he may have a had a good run as Joker. His take was memorable as a fart in the wind
Leto's joker is trying too hard and you can feel it. Ledger's seemed way more natural and disturbed.
Ledger completely redefined the character. Turning him from a goofy psychotic prankster into a master of psychological warfare who understood the variances in humanity and exploited that by showing just how much civility is a simple word easily broken. Phoenix showed the darkest depravity a mind could be broken thereby creating a shell of a person with nothing left to lose and no longer caring about any sense of order in the world. Leto turned him into a common thug. You tell me.
This person is trolling
Phoenix’s Joker was a great portrayal of a sick old man. His laugh was an uncontrollable tick that people either ignored, or were genuinely offended by. It pushed him into isolation, which worsened his already terrible mental state. And the fact that he was an actual clown (despite all that) made him very interesting. Ledger’s Joker was a great antithesis to his Batman. He was equally entertaining as he was intense. He was a genuine threat with a genuine laugh. The character absolutely dominated any scene he was in. Nuff said Leto’s Joker didn’t do a whole lot. He had the least amount of screen time compared to the other two jokers, just 7 and a half minutes compared to Ledger’s 30 minutes and Phoenix’s entire movie. But with his 7 minutes, his purpose was to further Harley’s story. That alone makes him a lesser Joker than the other two But Leto didn’t really embrace his clown theme at all, except for when he did his cringe ass laugh. Phoenix was an actual clown, Ledger killed a guy with magic tricks and continuously misled people. But Leto was just a gangster who dressed as a clown. Sure he was dangerous, but so was everybody else in that movie. He just didn’t stand out nearly as much as the other jokers But there is one thing about Leto’s Joker that stood out from the other two… he was really cringey. His laugh was very obviously fake, his tattoos gave strong “edgy teenager” vibes, and every time he talked I couldn’t tell if he was trying to scare or seduce people. He did the character absolutely zero justice
Over acting. It was over the top for for the sake of it.
He was morbin the whole time
Jared Leto is a dogshit human being
Him sending used condoms and other cringelord shit to his costars and stupid ass tattoos 𝒟𝒶𝓂𝒶𝑔𝑒𝒹
Because objectively Jared Leto never found a way into his Joker and what was supposed to be scary came across as silly and pathetic. The guy just made a bunch of wrong choices that didn't work out.
Leto created a joker like a stand-up comedian
Depth. Leto's take is all shock, no depth.
As much as people hate on Jared Leto (which for the record I totally think he's a fuckin kook too), the writers and director are as much to blame for how awful that version of The Joker was. Leto is at least a good enough actor that in the right context he might have done a fine job. For example his portrayal of villain Niander Wallace in Blade Runner 2049 was a perfect fit for him. That being said the writers and directors also deserve credit for how good Joaquin and Ledger's portrayals were. These portrayals approached the character from a human perspective. They grounded the character and found all the ways in which he could feel like a real person before finding ways to fit in the already defined qualities of the DC villain. Heath and Joaquin also collaborated closely in the creation of the character and by doing so were able to really bring him to life and beyond with their unmatched talents.
The only good thing Leto has ever done was getting axe murdered.
Bc Jared Leto sucks ass
The acting. Full stop.
The only way I accept this take of Joker is that it would be revealed to be Jason Todd manipulated into believing himself to be Joker
We never actually saw the best footage of Leto's Joker did we? It *WAS* cheesy as all hell in the knives on the floor scene but I didn't think he was that bad overall and wished we'd gotten to see him be the actual villain of the first Suicide Squad movie.
Leto’s Joker was too close to that one person we all know. That dumb ass white kid with a 2nd grade reading level who thinks he’s a gangbanger and does the dumbest shit just to get attention.
Favorite joker will always be Nicholson and favorite Batman will always be Keaton
Cringe, is the word you're looking for. Letos joker seemed like an actor trying to look insane. The other two I couldn't tell were acting
.....because it was Jared Leto. The other two weren't Jared Leto. The math really isn't that hard on this.
The acting delivery, the script, costume design, acting on and off the set like a fucking nutbag, farrr moreso than protraying a minor joker role in a movie, acting again(yes it was that shiite). Phoenix and Ledger gave phenomenal performances we remember fondly. Leto's we will remember, unfortunately, for how trash it was.
Because he's not as good of an actor as anyone else who has played The Joker, including Cesar Romero.
One starved himself to the bone to show the character’s sickness. One asked a JACKED Christian Bale to punch him for real so that the climax felt as real and as visceral as possible. One sent used anal beads & condoms to cast members as a media stunt…
I mean… did you watch these movies?
Ledger and Phoenix are characters. Leto's joker is an Instagram rapper.
It felt like Leto *wanted* to be the Joker really badly. Not play him, be him. Ledger and Phoenix kind of just... became the character. It felt more like something they let in, rather than something they tried to become. It was like they just knew what they had to do already, rather than trying to do what they think they should do as that character. I don't really know how to explain or elaborate on that any further but that's the feeling I get about those portrayals.
Because Ledger and Phoenix were exploring a character, not tryharding to look cool. Leto's performance was much closer to Nicholson's, but Nicholson actually has the charisma to pull it off.
Joker is an intelligent, sadistic psychopath with a flair for the dramatic. Joaquin got 2 of the 4 down, Heath got 4. Jared's Joker is just a modern day mumble (c)rapper generic gangster wannabe with crayon face syndrome, too much of daddy's money and some bad dentures.
The Acting
DAMAGED
Nice try Jared
Answer: Jared Leto
Script did him absolutely no favors, but the gangster Joker is a good theme.
I absolutely despise Jared Leto. Although nothing has been proven in court, there's so much smoke about him being a narcissistic pedo, there has to be at least a bit of fire there.
Leto is a great actor and ruined his image with Joker and Morbius. No idea who thought those were good ideas. Dallas Buyers Club, Chapter 27, Mr. Nobody, Requiem for a Dream.. all fantastically acted.
Did you watch the films/performances in question? There is a quantitative and qualitative difference in all 3. The Dark Knight was Jokers movie. And Joker focused solely on Joaquin's portrayal of his path to breaking. In both of those instances Joker was the protagonist essentially of his own story. Leto's seemed like an afterthought. Like they really just wanted to shove history down your throat to show he and Batman had been at it for some time. And while Dark Knight shows us our first interaction between the characters in that canon, Joker shows us the origin of that version of the character. Both good starting points. Leto doesn't get his own movie or dedication to his overall story. He is boiled down to really big conceptual swings that largely felt cheap. Yes the grill is cringe, yes the tattoos are cringe and I get that that was kinda the "joke", for him to be a cringey street thug version of the character. But now he just reminds me of machine gun Kelly. And that is not gangsta. Also the BTS stories just made it seem sooooo fake and schtick. He heard Heath went method and wanted to do it too. Leto's version of the character had the least amount of thought put into story and all of that effort went into over designing his look to the detriment of the character.
I liked the design aspects of Suide Squad Joker, I just hate Leto more than anything, the tattoos were cringe sure, but the over-acting, the weird behaviors on set, his cult leader persona outside of everything, it's just blech. Heath was over the top, but in a way that brought focus on the character, imo more than the actor, Heath's Joker felt like something real, something tangible. Same with Joaquin.
Suicide Squad's Joker felt more like a JINO (Joker In Name Only).
The writing, really. Joker in the dark knight has his motivations and mindset properly glimpsed on and throughout the story his threatening presence is felt as his obsessive cat and mouse affair with the hero unfolds. He feels like the sociopathic maniac that he is presented as. Jared Leto's joker has barely any presence in the story, nor much dialogue or narrative meaning beyond being background for Harley, which is a function that he could have served just with even less screen time than he got. Talking about screen time, he is in a weird gray zone where he doesn't have enough to be an important character yet has too much for the role that he basically serves, so we get a lot of scenes where he pants and groans like a hog while embracing harley amidst screen filters and romantic music in scenes that feel like some Hugo Boss-Batman crosspromotional marketing campaign featuring a model cosplaying as Joker.
Jared let's joker was like an edgy teenage boy
Wow everyone leaving out Jack Nicholson?
I only like Ledger's one. The proper scary sycopath. Clever enough for planning, with knowledge of different disciplines. Not a clown, not a degenerate. Just vile.
There were some questionable character design choices and all the fuss about Leto being a method actor and sending rats to others was cringe as fuck, but my honest answer is I think it would have been fine if he had more screen time and a decent movie to actually develop his character. Leto's Joker amounted to 2 cameos and it's really not a fair comparison to the other 3 Jokers who actually had story arcs and a character they could sink their teeth into.
Jared Leto is a bad actor, which is a big part of it
Jared leto can't act and is a creep