Batman: All 10 Joker actors ranked from worst to best

10. Jared Leto

Appeared in: Suicide Squad, Zack Snyder’s Justice League

When it was revealed that Jared Leto would be playing The Joker in Suicide Squad, fans applauded the decision because he had been a long-standing favorite among the potential actors to play the Clown Prince of Crime. After all, he was an Oscar-winning actor capable of making audiences feel exactly how he wanted them to. And then the first image of the film’s unique iteration of the character was revealed and, well, let’s just say that it was the beginning of a change of opinion.

The film didn’t offer up much more than what we already saw, as the character was just about as far removed from the Joker’s comic book origins as possible. With tattoos all over his body and an unusually loving relationship with Harley Quinn, this wasn’t The Joker that we had come to know and love.

Like many of the DCEU’s actors, the problem doesn’t lie in Leto’s abilities – we know how capable he is when it comes to pulling off phenomenal performances – and he did a fine job highlighting how unhinged his Joker was. The real problem was the material, which failed to give Leto anything of substance before writing him out halfway through the movie.

Despite the issues with this Joker, a stronger film may have served him (and, more importantly, Leto) better. And as the DCEU is currently in a state of unrest, we may never know what Leto would have been capable of with a more traditional Joker and a better script.