I'm moving on, and so should you.

I shouldn't have to warn you, but this is the internet, we're nerds and there's a new Joker, so we're going to complain. A lot. Just accept it and move on. Here:

Oh...I get it. He's craaaazy.

Comi-Con: You will never find a more
wretched hive of nit-picking and slavish
devotion to source material accuracy.

Terrible, right? Don't get me wrong, it's not Jared Leto's fault and it doesn't mean the movie's going to suck, it's just that director David Ayer has his idea of what the Joker should look like and it doesn't fit with mine, or probably yours, or really anyone who's ever read a Batman comic. Sure, this is supposed an adaptation of a comic, and a director should feel free to interpret it their own way, but you'd think they know by now that fans hate anything that deviates from their expectations. In fact, we're sort of famous for getting upset about these seemingly insignificant details. 

He's also responsible for the World's Laziest
Halloween Costume, 7 years running.

Take the picture above for example. The face tattoos, the teeth, it's just off-putting. Like, that's not the Joker. He doesn't look like a clown, he just looks like someone trying very hard to assure us that he is, in fact, a lunatic. And I know it's nerd blasphemy, but Heath Ledger's Joker had the same problem. The Joker shouldn't need a Glasgow smile or tattoos to show us he's bonkers. Part of what's scary about the Joker is that if you didn't know who he was, you'd just accept him as a harmless street performer until you got a face full of Smilex gas from his boutonnière. 

Wait a minute, could it be that movies are a
business and all other concerns are secondary?

The other side of this is that the people who make these movies have to know that as fans we're going to go see it regardless. It's like we can't stand not knowing for sure whether or not we'll hate it, so against our better judgement we go. Sure, we'll almost certainly find fault and will definitely take to the internet to register our outrage, but they've already got our $11 bucks, so like, mission: accomplished, sequel: coming soon. It's like they know exactly what their doing.

I mean, really, what is David Ayer's job? To make a movie that gets people out to the theaters or to please obsessive fans? Because when you think about it, it's almost impossible to do both. The harder core you get, the fewer in number. It's got to be a difficult line to walk, balancing his own creative vision with fan expectations and mass market appeal. I respect that, I do, but seriously? The tattoos?

Above: Artist Alex Ross doing it right.