The Snyder Cut

On March 18th, a director’s cut of a not-so-good to begin with movie that came out in 2017 will be released and instantly become the most talked about content of a weekend that includes the return of March Madness after being canceled last year.

If that’ doesn’t make sense to you, welcome to the world of #SnyderCut. 

Who is Zack Snyder?

Zach Snyder is the American Filmmaker behind such unique movies as 300 and Watchmen (not to be confused with the excellent HBO TV series Watchmen by Damon Lindelof) who since 2013 had been the creative force behind DC Comics attempt to compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Wait, what is the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

As you probably know, Superhero movies have dominated the Box Office for the past decade.  There is one major leader- the now owned by Disney Marvel Comics, which started with the Iron Man movies and most recently includes the WandaVision Disney+ series.  The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the movies that include now iconic Marvel characters like Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and now expanding into incredibly vast stories with Dr. Strange, Captain Marvel, AntMan, and sometimes Spiderman, among a plethora of others.

But What about Superman?

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman- these iconic superheroes were created by and live in the universe of DC Comics.  DC Comics is the other big Comic book company that is now desperately trying to play catch up when it comes to the movies.  In theory, DC should be dominating the comic movie world.  For one, they have the more “classic” superheroes in the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel.   Two, successful and beloved movie versions of these characters have been made since Christopher Reeves donned the Red & Blue tights in the 70’s. All DC Movies since 1989’s Michael Keaton starring Batman have been produced by Warner Brothers.   Marvel on the other hand, started its current success by producing its own movies in-house with Marvel Studios, starting with Iron Man and the Hulk in 2008.

Obviously impacted by the success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Batman trilogy that ended in 2013,  the recent DC universe movies, thanks in part to a healthy influence of Snyder himself, have a more serious and darker mood than Marvel movies- Starting with Man Of Steel in 2013, which actually has Superman killing someone, continuing with Batman fighting Superman in, yep Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and continuing with the  Dirty Dozen/ Villains unite movie Suicide Squad, which you probably remember only for the “new take” on The Joker by Jared Leto and the introduction of Margo Robbie as Harley Quinn.   These movies have been successful (made money) despite being ripped by most critics and moviegoers alike- personally, the only one I enjoy is Wonder Woman, and the sequel to that failed to live up to all expectations. 

So while DC Comics has an ardent fanbase and arguably the more popular superheroes, the tone and quality of these movies has failed to make them stalwarts in our zeitgeist like Marvel has- just search for “Endgame Portals Reaction” to see what I’m talking about.  The movies simply aren’t enough fun for the internet to do its thing with.  And Yet that brings us to the topic at hand: Justice League. 

JUSTICE LEAGUE?

The Justice League, released in November of 2017, was DC’s answer to the AVENGERS, whose 4 movies so far (The Avengers in 2012, Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015, Infinity War in 2018 and Endgame in 2019) all rank in the top 11 grossing movies of ALL TIME, with Endgame being #1 all time.  So it was big news when DC announced its Superheroes would team up on screen in 2017. It’s hard to imagine a movie that includes Ben Affleck as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, and that hunk Jason Momoa as Aquaman teaming up alongside DC characters The Flash and Cyborg and including really good actors such as Amy Adams, Diane Lane, J.K. Simmons and Jeremy Irons could go ever be considered a failure.   And yet it is officially a BOX OFFICE BOMB, Losing Warner Brothers an estimated 60 Million dollars and hated by fans.  Why?

The story behind Justice league was fantastically written about in Vanity Fair by Anthony Breznican.  To be brief:

As Marvel was racking up box office wins, DC movies were not reaching even close to the return on investment.  The previously mentioned mood and tone of DC movies was not translating to audiences, and the Studio was starting to push back on some of Snyder’s choices during the production of Justice League.  Sometime near the end of Filming, Snyder and family suffered a tragedy- one of their daughter’s took her own life.  By his own accounts, a Grieving Snyder and his producing partner/wife decided to walk away from the movie.  Warner Brothers brought in Josh Wheedon, who previously had written and directed the first two Avenger Movies, to finish up the movie. 

There is a saying in football- If you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have one.  Having multiple leaders with their own style and ideas does not bold well for a singular vision.  Wheedon proceeded up rewrite up to 80 pages of a 120-page script, needing an additional 25 Million in reshoots, with additional CGI famously needed to digitally erase Henry Cavill’s mustache, which he grew for Mission Impossible: Fallout, which he was filming when reshoots were required.  It’s estimated that only 20-25% of what was in the Theatrical release of Justice League was what Snyder shot.  We can’t be sure, as Snyder hasn’t even seen the film himself.

Snyder’s movie when he left it was going to run 3 and a half hours.  Wheeden’s theatrical release was 2 hours.  Wheedon cut entire plotlines out, including additional comic characters and teases for future DC comic book movies.  These easter eggs of sorts are what the internet was made for, as fans love to predict what they mean and where the movies will go with them for months after a film’s release.  With such a sharp turn in direction at such a late point in the making of the film, the end product was awful.   The movie was a dud with a 28% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  And, like previously stated, losing Warner Brothers a ton of money. 

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut

Fans, as fans do, did not take their disappointment lightly. Almost immediately, a petition was created to push the movie studio to release Snyder’s cut of the movie- it received 180,000 signatures.  Hashtag Release the Snyder Cut trended across social media. Supporters of the Snyder Cut movement even bought a Times Square billboard and chartered a plane to fly a banner over Comic-Con pushing their message.   The Snyder Cut became a symbol for the frustration internet fans of cherished IP had with their disappointing portrayals on the big screen.  The funny thing is, there was no evidence a Snyder cut existed!  All fans knew was that Snyder had left the movie and Wheedon, who had done a decent enough job with the other comic movies, came in and put out his own version.  It was framed as rabid fans clamoring for something that the studio claimed didn’t even exist. 

But then came Streaming Wars.

Warner Brothers is owned by AT&T WarnerMedia, which also owns…. HBO.  And in 2020, WarnerMedia planned on launching HBO MAX, a new digital streaming service.  And like any new Streaming service, Warner need a whole slew of new content to keep subscribers.  Enter Zack Snyder.  In announcing the launch of HBO Max, it was confirmed that the Snyder Cut was a real thing, and that Snyder was working on finalizing his version of the movie which was going to be released on the service.  While fans were ecstatic- some took to YouTube to show videos of themselves burning copies of the original version, others viewed this as a sign that internet trolls have won- the studio had conceded to fan pressure, setting a bad precedent. 

Originally, the studio was only planning on spending a reported 20-30 million dollars on editing, visual effects, and scoring. Soon, however, Snyder was doing his own re-shoots raising the additional budget to 70 Million.  Snyder claims he has 5 minutes of new content from these shoots, to go along with all the previously shot but not included in the original footage.

So on March 18th, the #SnyderCut of Justice League, officially titled Zach Snyder’s Justice League, will be available on all platforms that carry HBO Max.  It’s close to Four Hours long, but I doubt the length, or even the content actually matters.  It’s lasting impression, what people will remember, is that a fan movement got a major company to spend tons of money on a movie that didn’t really work in the first place- for better or worse.