It’s been a year and a Zack Snyder cut of ‘Justice League’ still doesn’t exist and likely never has. Recently, when asked by the Wall Street Journal about this, Snyder’s spokesperson refused to discuss the matter but added that Snyder also has “never watched the version of Justice League released in theaters.”
The thing is, what those asking for a “Snyder Cut” don’t take into account is timing. ‘Justice League’ was locked in to begin production just weeks after the release of ‘Batman V Superman’, and we all remember how that went. Warner Bros was already scrambling to retool ‘Justice League’ to make it less violent, dark and heavy even before filming began. Joss Whedon was brought in to rewrite because Snyder had to focus on filming what they had. But the script was being retooled and rewritten from the start and with that being the case, Snyder was surely heavily involved. Whedon wasn’t writing in a bubble and at that time, no one knew that Snyder was going to suffer a family tragedy that would result in him leaving the project and not handling the reshoots and final editing himself.
One impression I get is that people seem to think that Snyder knew he was leaving the project and hastily went into editing mode after principal photography started in order to get “his” vision assembled. No one saw the family tragedy coming. And once again, the rewriting was happening before shooting began. Most of this mythical “Snyder Cut” was probably never even filmed. And he not only knew about it, but had a say in the changes. From the start, roughly one-third of the movie was going to have to be handled by reshoots. Snyder wouldn’t have started the final editing process with only two-thirds of the footage.
And finally, while I (and most) don’t think the “Snyder Cut” exists, for the sake of argument, ‘Justice League’ and ‘Batman V Superman’ lost Warner Brothers millions and were poorly received. They’re the albatrosses hanging around the neck of their DC superhero movie universe. Releasing a new version is going to dredge up something they want everyone to forget. People are already sneering at ‘Aquaman’ and ‘Shazam!’ because they don’t think WB has a clue what it’s doing with this property and have lost any interest.
There is some hope that there will be an announcement at SDCC. Good luck with that.
