The Story of the Snyder Cut
#ReleaseTheSnyderCut
Courtesy of LA Times
Holy Snyder Cut! Well, I officially watched the longest movie I’ve ever seen and I enjoyed it. Zack Snyder is a legend, not only because of the movie he created. What is more stunning than the movie, is the journey he and his family went through behind the scenes. The story behind the making of this movie is worthy of a movie in and of itself. This is a story of tragedy and success; two things that seemingly should never go together.
During the production of the Justice League, Snyder was already in a fight with Warner Brothers over the direction of the movie. It’s a classic movie by a studio to try to take a piece of visual art and commercialize its potential with the physical audience, who haven’t even seen the movie yet. What they should have done, was trust the process and let the work create success then capitalize on the backend of the work. Then they would’ve at least profited after the release. Then tragedy struck. During the filming and editing of the movie, in 2017 Zack Snyder and his wife lost one of theireight children to suicide. Snyder was done fighting the studio. His family needed him more than Warner Brothers needed to screw their heads on correctly. He said to the Los Angeles Times, “Literally, zero energy for that. I really think that’s the main thing,” he said. “I think there’s a different world where I stayed and kind of tried. And I’m sure I could have . . . because every movie is a fight, right? I was used to that. But … there was no fight in me. I had been beaten by what was going on in my life and I just didn’t want to, I didn’t care to . . . that was kind of where I was.” So he left the production in March 2017. After his departure, Warner Brothers hired Josh Weddon to edit and reshoot the movie for release. He finished the film under the close direction of the studio. Whedon has directed some solid movies such as; Cabin in the woods, the Avengers, and The Avengers: Age of Ultron. So to fully blame the failure on him is unfair, in my opinion. He assembled the best movie the studio would let him make and he delivered it on time. It would be hard for anyone to step into the role of directing a multi-million dollar blockbuster tent-pole film right in the middle of its filming/editing. However, Whedon and Warner Bros. butchered it like a thanksgiving Honey Baked ham. Something really interesting came out of the unfortunate first Justice League though. In the eyes of the fans, there was still hope. Whedon's unfortunately crappy movie spawned a mythical version of the movie. This movement became known as the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. All of this amounted to a cut of the Justice League that was ripe for hype.
Ben Affleck, left, Gal Gadot, and Zack Snyder on the set of “Justice League.” (Clay Enos / HBO Max)After watching the Snyder cut, it’s hard to tell if this movie would be great as a standalone film or if it is great compared to the first version released. However, the Snyder cut makes one thing very apparent. The studio should’ve let him have full control from the beginning. Snyder’s movie added context, motivation, and detail around the characters and story as a whole. For example, look at the antagonist character of Steppenwolf. In Whedon’s version, we had very little background given to us around the “why?” of Steppenwolf's plan. He was just a cut and dry evil creature who wanted to take over the earth with the mother boxes. During the Snyder cut, we get to see what’s behind the motivations for Steppenwolf. Snyder even improved on Steppenwolf's appearance, see picture below. We get a clear understanding of why he is doing what he is doing. This was one of the many clarifying aspects of the Snyder Cut.
Courtesy of CBR.com
I don’t want to accidentally spoil anything so I won’t go into too much detail on the actual movie in case some of you haven’t seen it. However, what I will say is if you’re a fan of the Justice league you should watch this movie. If you’re not a fan but looking for a long Sunday movie, where you don’t have to move, then this is a great watch.
