Zack Snyder’s Justice League will have a key Batman-Joker moment
As we inch closer to the March 18 release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Snyder is basking in the spotlight and revealing all of the things that could have been, had his vision for the movie come together back in 2017. As it stands, his four-hour masterpiece will help course-correct for the original and he’s able to do some exciting things in the new version that weren’t possible before, like including Jared Leto’s Joker in the film.
Snyder revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that he’d wanted to borrow Leto from David Ayer’s Suicide Squad franchise and bring him over to Ben Affleck’s Gotham City.
Fans know from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that Affleck’s Bruce Wayne has a graffiti-laden Robin suit in the Batcave. Wayne Manor has been burned down, and by the time fans see Affleck in Justice League he’s been doing his job for 20 years and it’s taking a toll.
Snyder wanted to take a deep dive into those little details, as it’s the Joker who turned Batman’s carefully ordered world upside down after he killed Robin and destroyed Wayne Manor.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League teases the Batman and Joker showdown that could have been
Snyder reveals that in his carefully crafted universe there had been a big battle between Batman and the Joker, and that would have been the plot for a Batman and Joker movie:
"I’d always wanted to explore the death of Robin. And if there ever was going to be a next movie, which, of course, there probably won’t be, I wanted to do a thing where in flashbacks we learn how Robin died, how Joker killed him and burned down Wayne Manor, and that whole thing that happened between he and Bruce."
As it happens, though, Snyder was able to get Leto to come back in the new Snyder Cut version of Justice League so that there was some semblance of closure after so many fans expressed frustration that Leto’s Joker never got to really shine on his own. He also never got to have a big battle with Affleck’s Batman:
"The cool thing about the scene is that it’s Joker talking directly to Batman about Batman. It’s Joker analyzing Batman about who he is and what he is. That’s the thing I also felt like fans deserved from the DC Universe. That is to say, the Jared Leto Joker and the Ben Affleck Batman, they never really got together. It seemed uncool to me that we would make it all the way through this incarnation of Batman and Joker without seeing them come together."
This information comes just as Granny Goodness makes an appearance in one of Snyder’s micro-teasers for the movie. He confirmed on social media that it was indeed New God Granny Goodness, Darkseid’s feared general and the woman who trained the Female Furies.
Given that Ava DuVernay is currently working on a New Gods movie, it would make sense that Snyder was attempting to create a link between his universe and the one DuVernay is working on. While we don’t know if this was his true intention or not, there’s no denying that Granny Goodness would have made her debut in the 2017 film and would have set the stage for DuVernay’s film in the future.
Next. Zack Snyder's Justice League teaser teases Granny Goodness. dark
It’s unlikely that fans will ever get to see the standalone Batman and Joker movie that Snyder hoped for, but knowing that the mortal enemies will show up in the movie is better than nothing.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League premieres March 18 on HBO Max.