Okay, I'll be real. This post should have manifested in 2016 when Suicide Squad was all the rage. That didn't happen, so now you get to hear me two years later. Without further ado -- let's get right to it. Jared Leto's performance as The Joker in Suicide Squad got A LOT of attention, but it was not all good in the Gotham hood. The Heath Ledger squad showed up and showed out in force against Leto's less insane depiction of the villain clown. This is actually my first point. Suicide Squad was a re-telling of the Batman universe -- he wasn't an offshoot of Christopher Noland's dark universe. Therefore, the story is allowed to be told from a FRESH perspective. We don't need to go on a comparison rant, because really there is nothing to compare. The two Jokers are meant to be vastly different interpretations. There's nothing wrong if you prefer Heath Ledger's Joker, but you can't say that Leto didn't live up to his performance. Now let's break it down. We already know that Leto is an award winning actor. He won an Oscar for his performance of a trans woman in 2013 in Dallas Buyers Club (plus another 50 wins for other performances). Each time he was given a proverbial new pair of shoes to step into he played the character that he was given and he did a fine job of it. He may not be the psycho that Gotham needed, nor the psycho Gotham "deserved", but he played his role to a tee.

   So, what happened? To me, the answer is that his performance was undercut by marketing. Yes. Marketing. Data supports that millennial women are the largest target audience for consumer goods. Now who was going to buy all of the Harley Quinn merchandise and costumes? (Smart move to release this film right before Halloween btw). That's right. Millenial women and their daughters. So, who was the target for the story? Young girls. I am imagining here that this was knowledge attained post writing process as Leto admits that they cut him out of most of the film, and that time and money on location and with crews is not free. So, we create a Harley centric film part way through the production process and cut out the rest of Leto losing a majority of his acting

performances. This would also explain some of the strange editing effects in the movie. Now that Harley is our anti-hero and the possible role model to amassed girls, and weighing the negative consequences of pushing a domestically violent hero as Harley's love affair, the director softened Joker's role. They had to look like a positive role model couple (or as positive as a villain can be). Pairing Harley with the devil was not an option. Terribly immoral and terribly high risk of creating bad PR for future roles with the merchandise queen. Unfortunately, because of this sudden shift, Leto became the scapegoat. Rumors surfaced about his performance and his offstage antics to justify cutting him out of the film, but really it was because the studio wanted to make merchandise. George Lucas knew this was where the money was at when he asked for royalties on merchandise sales for Star Wars -- and apparently DC studios decided to follow suit. So by all means, have a favorite -- just don't make unfair comparisons.