Suicide Squad didn’t turn out the way that many DC fans had hoped it would. A main focus of the criticism for David Ayer’s 2016 anti-hero team-up film was Jared Leto’s Joker, as the actor’s take on the Clown Prince of Crime as a studly mob boss with grills and tattoos everywhere didn’t exactly endear himself to longtime lovers of Batman’s nemesis. This newly-unearthed concept art, though, shows us that Suicide Squad could have featured a very different Joker.
A piece by senior concept artist Peter Mitchell Rubin has found its way online this week and reveals that he was imagining Mark Strong as the character. With a Heath Ledger-like Glasgow smile and creepy whited-out right eye, this depiction of an intimidating, sinister-looking supervillain is about as far as you can get from Leto’s twisted Romeo to Harley Quinn’s Juliet. That being said, we do kind of dig it.
We haven’t heard of Strong having been in the running to play the Joker in Suicide Squad before, so the use of his likeness here is presumably a personal choice by Rubin’s to illustrate the version of the Joker’s look he was running with at the time. If that’s the case, we can see why he picked him. The British actor has played the villain in many comic book-related films. Not least his two appearances in the DC universe – Sinestro in 2011’s Green Lantern and Dr. Sivana in 2019’s Shazam!, which will be with us in April.
If you’re interested in what else could have been in Suicide Squad – like how King Shark would have appeared – be sure to follow the link below to Peter Mitchell Rubin’s website, as he’s got a lot more concept art on there.
Published: Dec 1, 2018 06:43 pm