Suicide Squad's David Ayer says Jared Leto's Joker was 'ripped' from film, but can extra footage redeem movie?
Sigh. The call for the Ayer Cut grows louder.
We probably should have seen this coming ever since it was announced that Zack Snyder's vision (so to speak) of 'Justice League' will release on HBO Max in 2021. The theatrical cut of 'Justice League' was slammed by fans and critics alike, leading to a dismal performance at the box performance and a shift in the plans for future DCEU films. Snyder had stepped away from the film six months before the release due to a personal tragedy and Joss Whedon was hired to oversee post-production. Rumor has it that storylines were changed drastically and crucial scenes were cut out. Fans began the campaign to bring Snyder's film to light and they were successful after three years of effort. Ray Porter's Darkseid will be seen in the film and there is a hint of Green Lantern, an important member of 'Justice League', who was not there in the film. There is a lot of footage that is promised and fans are eagerly waiting.
But that's about 'Justice League', where a new director had stepped in. David Ayer's 'Suicide Squad', which had released a year before, had been slammed by critics and fans as well. However, after the success of the Snyder cut, fans have been emboldened to do the same for Ayer. 'Release The Ayer Cut' began trending on social media with Ayer stoking the fire, saying that there was a lot of cut footage. He recently tweeted that Jared Leto's Joker was 'ripped' from the film and that Leto was 'mistreated' during the film. Replying to a fan who was talking about their campaign (and noting that Leto himself had noticed their tweets), Ayer showed further support for it adding: "Jared was pretty mistreated during this. No one has seen his performance. It was ripped out of the movie."
While Ayer has never held back from sharing details on what went on in his film, his recent statements are a contradiction to what he had earlier maintained about the theatrical cut. Back in 2017, he had tweeted, "There are not endless Joker scenes under guard somewhere," but did accept that he should have made the character the big bad of the entire movie. Last month, Ayer opened up about the deleted sequence featuring Common's character and what happened in his version, saying: "It’s a long scene and Joker intimidated him into killing himself." When asked by another fan if this scene was filmed, Ayer simply replied: "Yes." And now, the 'yes' has become a full-blown acceptance into the Ayer cut.
What does Leto have to say about all this? While there have been no statements from the award-winning actor yet, Leto had spoken about the cut scenes in 2017. He told IGN that there was a lot that had been removed from the film. "Were there any that didn't get cut?" Leto said. "I'm asking you, were there any that didn't get cut? There were so many scenes that cut from the movie, I couldn't even start. I think that the Joker... we did a lot of experimentation on the set, we explored a lot. There's so much that we shot that's not in the film. If I die anytime soon, it's probably likely that it'll surface somewhere. That's the good news about the death of an actor is that all that stuff seems to come out."
There's a lot of hope pinned on Leto's Joker saving the film. Is that a possibility? If we were to go by Leto's words that there were much experimentation and exploration that was not shown in the film, there might be a chance that fans would appreciate the film more. One of the complaints about the theatrical cut had been the lack of Joker. But let's remember a film doesn't thrive exactly on one character alone, and even if it does, the character has to completely knock it out of the park to carry the film through. We might see more of Joker if the Ayer cut ever gets released, but that may still not be enough to save the film and its scrambled plotlines. The most redemption could be to make Joker the big bad, but that's a high impossibility. Well, then the whole film would have to be reworked and re-written.
So.... should we let it go? Just a thought.
