He became The Joker, and brought The Joker to life. His performance as The Joker feels like The Joker. And if you sit there as a fan, you're like, 'Wow, ok, someone is going to reinvent The Joker? WTF?' But I'm really proud of what he did. I mean, to take on such a character that had been done so well in the past - the best-known villain in modern fiction. So by then taking the insane gangster idea, the minimal seed, the core seed of Joker, bringing him into the modern world, what would an insane gangster look like today? That's when you get the tattoos, the car, and the clothes, and the attitude.And you know, Jared, what courage. When you look at the '40s and what was going on in the world, this concept of an insane gangster begins to make sense in regards to the time. Batman the detective from the '40s had Joker as this insane gangster. I think it was 1941 or something like that, which is also coincident with the first Batman comics. I went back to the very first Joker comic.

Ayer says that the touches came from the earliest days of the DC character, explaining to me: The Joker in this story is a criminal kingpin, a lunatic with immense power who's unpredictable, and feared. I was lucky enough to speak with David Ayer during a recent press day for Suicide Squad, and we started discussing his take on The Joker, and where the inspirations came from.

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