Nobel Prize-winning writer William Faulkner once said, “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” This applies whether you’re writing novels, comics, plays, and movies. Sometimes the story just works better when you have to take out some of your most beloved bits, even if those bits include one of the most iconic villains of all time.
Though he is prominently featured in promotional materials for the film, The Joker is not a major part of David Ayer’s ‘Suicide Squad.’ In fact, Jared Leto’s version of the Clown Prince of Crime only appears in the movie for about 10-12 minutes altogether. But while speaking to the French publication Telestar, the actor revealed that there was so much more that didn’t make it theaters:
“There are a lot of scenes that didn’t make it to the final film. Hopefully they will see the light of day. Who knows?”
Considering that the story is meant to focus on Task Force X, it’s not all that surprising that the legendary bad guy isn’t getting a lot of screen time. But in this day and age where director’s cuts and extended editions are the norm, could we see those scenes reinserted into the movie? Don’t count on it. Ayer echoed Faulkner’s words to Collider, while teasing that the home release could have a good amount of deleted scenes:
“We have a chunk, there’s definitely over 10 minutes of material on there. But this cut of the movie is my cut, there’s no sort of parallel universe version of the movie, the released movie is my cut. And that’s one of the toughest things about writing, shooting, and directing a film, is you end up with these orphans and you fucking love them and you think they’d be amazing scenes and do these amazing things but the film is a dictatorship (laughs), not a democracy, and just because something’s cool and charismatic doesn’t mean it gets to survive in the final cut. The flow of the movie is the highest master.”
Having seen the movie and thinking that Joker was one of the more interesting parts, it was disappointing that we didn’t get more of him. However, since it’s called ‘Suicide Squad’ and not ‘The Joker’, it’s not hard to see why the filmmaker had to cut down the infamous miscreant’s role. After all, we couldn’t and shouldn’t have him overshadowing Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and the rest of the merry malefactors. And now we’re left even more curious about where the Joker will pop up next.
Are you disappointed that Jared Leto’s Joker isn’t a prominent piece of ‘Suicide Squad’? Let us know in the comments below.
‘Suicide Squad’ starring Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholtz, Scott Eastwood, and Cara Delevingne breaks out on August 5, 2016.
Despite being a “professional writer”, Ben likes run-on sentences far too much. For more of his attempts at being funny and the occasional insightful thought, follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
