Jared Leto vs Joaquin Phoenix: A battle of the clown princes (Photo Credit – Instagram)
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The Joker is one of those rare yet legendary villain characters who often divide the audience on who to root for in a showdown against the superhero. For decades, the role carried a strange energy that was nicely translated to the silver screen by Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, before Heath Ledger championed the role to a whole new level.
Then came the moment the world turned its eyes on Jared Leto, the rockstar-actor who once looked unstoppable. However, what followed felt like a disappointing end to a promising development. And Leto was obviously not impressed with the outcome.
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How Suicide Squad Marked The Fall Of Jared Leto’s Joker
Leto entered 2016’s Suicide Squad with the weight of a legacy on his shoulders. DC wanted a bold swing, something to match Marvel’s meteoric rise in the genre. However, the whole thing fell apart in the theaters. The reshoots rearranged the story, and the bond between Joker and Harley Quinn shifted without warning. Leto claimed that large portions of his scenes were cut in the edit, leaving him with approximately ten minutes of screen time. The fans walked in expecting something grand and walked out confused and disappointed.
Additionally, the off-screen stories only made the situation worse. Leto tried to sink into the character, even sending gifts to his co-stars that created more discomfort than depth. His idea of immersion pushed him into a caricature of method acting, and the cast carried the weight of those choices. The disappointment locked into place, and this became his single turn as the Clown Prince of the Batverse.
The character was never going to stay buried, as Joker always returns. However, what nobody foresaw was the way Joaquin Phoenix stepped into the role three years later and changed the entire conversation around it. Todd Phillips’ Joker arrived with both debate and fascination, but what mattered the most was the fact that Phoenix walked away with a Best Actor Oscar, which had seemed an impossibility in the superhero universe for a long time. The industry felt a jolt, and so did Leto.
Jared Leto’s Furious Reaction To Joaquin Phoenix’s Rise
The Hollywood Reporter reported, citing sources, that Leto was furious with his talent agency for not informing him of the Phillips film earlier, as he would have tried to use his influence with Warner Bros. to shut the movie down. He believed he had been promised his own solo outing with the character, but felt mistreated as an Oscar winner. A source close to him even said that he feared Phoenix would eclipse everything Leto had set up.
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That’s precisely what happened. Phillips’ film arrived with thunder and lightning, and its success overshadowed whatever remained of Leto’s version, leaving it half-buried as an ancient relic under the applause for Phoenix.
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The torch had moved on, without ceremony and without hesitation, while Leto watched from the sidelines as Phoenix carried the crown. Now Barry Keoghan stands at the edge of the next chapter with The Batman sequel waiting in the wings. The franchise keeps moving as if Leto’s green-haired chapter existed only for a moment.
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Subsequently, reports surfaced that Leto wanted his Joker to fight Phoenix’s Joker in a battle of the clown princes, an idea that created a buzz for a Jokerverse movie. But no confirmations have been made on these reports.
