Suicide Squad Director Says Joker Isn't a Joke in the Ayer Cut

The Joker in David Ayer's Suicide Squad director's cut is no laughing matter, according to the filmmaker. Ayer took to social media to share how his unreleased vision for Jared Leto's Joker, the clown prince partner in crime of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, compares to the theatrical cut. (Before DC debuted the R-rated Joker in 2019, Leto told BBC Radio that there's enough Suicide Squad deleted scenes "for a Joker movie," adding that there is a "rated R or rated X performance in there somewhere.") On X, the director explained how Joker scenes trimmed from the PG-13 version differ in the Ayer Cut (or is that the #JokerCut?) 

"Joker is formidable, intense, and a force of nature in my cut. Not unfocused and silly," Ayer wrote in response to a fan. "In my cut he has a story arc that hangs powerfully over the entire film. In the studio cut he's a prop, not a character."

The director revealed details about the Joker's cut scenes back in 2018. In one cut sequence that sends Task Force X — Harley, Deadshot (Will Smith), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and their handler Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) — into Midway City, the Joker is aboard a helicopter that Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) orders shot down.

The mystical Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) would have then "made a deal" with Joker so he could "take Harley home and be 'King of Gotham,'" Ayer tweeted at the time, adding that Harley "stood up to him and refused to betray her new friends. The Squad turned on him and he escaped." (In the theatrical cut, Harley resists Enchantress' temptations and ultimately escapes Belle Reve prison with the Joker, who returns in the film's final moments.) Ayer added the scenes were in support of Harley's arc of "growth and empowerment."

"We filmed so much of [Harley and Joker's] backstory," Robbie told Tipsy Talk in 2016. "They probably realized the emotional through-line of the story had to be the mission we were on, and kind of explaining the Enchantress's position and all of that kind of stuff."

Robbie explained, "Some of the stuff we shot is insane. They are flashbacks, meant to be snippets. But I think when we were filming, maybe we got too engrossed into flashbacks. Especially when you've got Jared, he's going so deep with that character and we're all like going really deep, and David goes really deep with the characters. So there's a lot, but it didn't make sense to confuse the  present storyline to incorpate all of that."

Ayer has shared snippets of Leto's Joker in the Suicide Squad Ayer Cut, which the filmmaker is hopeful will be released after Warner agreed to #ReleasetheSnyderCut of Zack Snyder's Justice League in 2021.