Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’ adds religious iconography to Joker

What could Joker wearing a crown of thorns mean in new ‘Justice League’ image?

February 22, 2021

Warner Brothers has revealed a new screenshot from the upcoming Snyder cut Justice League movie and it features a new look for the Joker. The new movie still reveals Joker as a Christ-like figure as he wears a crown of thorns.

Check it out below.

Listen to the latest episode of our weekly comics podcast!

The studio is clearly gearing up for the March 18th release as they dropped an official trailer on Valentine’s Day and even revealed comic book variant covers coming out by their best artists. With less than a month to go before its release, we’ll likely get new tidbits to dig into, but in this instance, something is clearly up.

Seeing religious iconography in a Zack Snyder production is nothing new. This isn’t the first time Zack Snyder has infused his films with Christian iconography. We’ve seen Superman conveyed as a savior character multiple times and he even explained at length the religious commentary in Batman v Superman.

In another instance over Instagram, Snyder wrote: “Why with all the technology at his disposal would Batman build a spear… here’s why” which was posted with the above painting of a Roman stabbing Jesus with a spear.

So the question remains, why would Joker wear a crown of thorns especially since Superman has been the Jesus figure in most of Zack Snyder’s projects? One could guess Joker is a false god of sorts and is wearing the crown of thorns as a mockery of Christ aka Superman. Or maybe there’s something deeper going on as this scene likely is part of Batman’s dream of a terrible future. Is there a lesson here for Batman to understand and possibly use to resurrect a dead Superman?

I suppose we’ll find out March 18th when the Snyder Cut is released on HBO Max.