Alright DC superhero movie fans, a pretty cool event is on the horizon for your viewing pleasure - the release of the long-fabled Snyder Cut of the movie Justice League.
For those of you who aren’t utterly dialed in to DC comics and movie news, here’s some background.
A Little Justice League History
Back in 2017, the movie Justice League was released to, shall we say, a lukewarm reception and generally ‘meh’ reviews at best. Not to say the movie doesn’t have its fans and supporters, but by and large, it was considered to be something of a letdown since this movie was intended to have a similar impact for the DC universe as The Avengers film from 2012 had for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Clearly, when we look at the comparative status and success of the two major superhero mythologies (DC and Marvel), DC is behind.
Justice League suffered through a fair amount of disruption during production, from rewrites to the eventual departure of original director Zack Snyder during post-production to deal with a family tragedy. Warner Bros. then brought in Joss Whedon and various other writers to handle the final editing of the film, which also involved fairly extensive reshoots. So, there were strong feelings among fans and industry folks that there may have been too many cooks in the kitchen and the end product paid the price for having different creative visions pulled together into one film.
For most films, this would pretty much be the end of the story. The studio would move on with other projects and hope one of them would take off (Wonder Woman anyone?). However, rumors swirled for years that there was an unseen original director’s cut of the film that better represented Snyder’s original vision. Fans clamored and eventually, Warner Bros. not only acknowledged that the alternate version existed, but decided to have Snyder finish it up and release it to the public! It’s a pretty amazing case of a fanbase helping get a studio to release content that was never expected to see the light of day.
How Can I Watch The Snyder Cut?
The film will debut on HBO Max on March 18 as a 4-hour movie event.
How Will it be Different from the Previously Released Justice League Movie?
- Well, first off you can check out the official trailer for The Snyder Cut version and you’ll note plenty of differences.
- It’s longer - a lot longer. Snyder always had a marathon movie in mind, so the original film was expected to be quite a bit longer than the released version, although maybe not quite this long.
- The main plot will remain largely the same, but various sub-plots are expected to shift around, including the inclusion of some characters who were edited out of the released film.
- Expect cameos (at least) from Joker and Martian Manhunter, if not others.
- The general tone will be darker, probably a lot darker.
- Superman’s story may be quite a bit different.
- The main villain (Steppenwolf) gets a pretty cool CGI makeover.
- More screen time for the ultimate villain - Darkseid.
What’s Next?
Well, that’s the thing. We are told that this is something of a creative cul-de-sac in that we can see what Snyder’s vision was for this film, and the ideas he intended to carry on into future DC movies, but… There are no plans to actually carry any of this vision forward into future films. So, this is intended to be the ultimate fan service, to see what the original director envisioned, but no more.
