Zack Snyder may no longer be a part of the DCU – to the chagrin of many, as has been made perfectly clear – but his fingerprints remain all over the franchise after he cast Ben Affleck, Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, and many others in roles they’re still playing to this day, regardless of whether or not they’ve got a future under James Gunn and Peter Safran.
Momoa’s story is particularly interesting, because the affable star initially auditioned for the part of Bruce Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is fascinating to imagine in and of itself. Instead, he and Snyder instead decided that he’d make for an excellent Aquaman, a thought that turned out to be right on the money when James Wan’s underwater adventure became the highest-grossing DC Comics adaptation of all-time.
It’s difficult to picture Momoa as the Dark Knight, but Fast X surprised everyone by making it a whole lot easier to envision him as the Caped Crusader’s arch-nemesis. Early reactions comparing Dante Reyes to the Clown Prince of Crime raised more than a few eyebrows, but one scene underlines, underscores, and adds several exclamation points to the reasons why it wasn’t as insane as it sounded.
Even within the context of the far-fetched Fast & Furious universe, that scene is absolutely nuts. Momoa hams it up to the cheap seats in a way that’s never anything less than dementedly entertaining, and all you’d really need to do is slap some white face-paint on his handsome visage, color his hair green, tell people he’s playing the Joker, and you’d be able to completely buy into it with no questions asked.