When director Zack Snyder stepped down from “Justice League” due to the suicide death of his daughter in March 2017, it was announced that Joss Whedon would be stepping in to take the film through the remaining post-production stage. Since the release of the film many fans have been clamoring for Warner Bros. to release Zack Snyder’s original plans for the film, sighting rumors of a 3-hour cut of the film shown to executives prior to Snyder’s exit of the project. While any such project would be unfinished (i.e. no completed CGI or visual effects), a certain element amongst the fans continues to chant, “Release the Snyder Cut”.
In an interview with Yahoo Movies UK, Henry Cavill discusses the idea of a ‘Snyder Cut’ of the “Justice League” movie, saying he doesn’t think it would make much difference.
“I don’t know if [a Snyder cut] actually exists so the only way I can look at it is as a business model, and I don’t know what difference it’s going to make,” the actor told Yahoo Movies UK during the press tour for Mission: Impossible – Fallout. “There are stories to be told, which need to be told and adjustments that can be made, but that’s not going to make any difference.
“I think it might be entertaining, for sure, and go, ‘Oh look, now I’ve scratched that itch,’ but it’s not going to change anything that I can think of, it’s not going to make huge amounts of money all of a sudden for a studio.
“They’re not going to release it into cinemas and so they’re not going to suddenly make an extra few hundred million,” Cavill added. “So it would be interesting to see what the difference is, but I’d rather focus on the future rather than what’s been.”
You can read the complete interview at Yahoo Movies UK.
The Wall Street Journal has also published an article on this topic, where a spokeswoman for Zack Snyder told them that the director wouldn’t discuss a director’s cut. Snyder never watched the version of “Justice League” released in theaters, she said.
People who worked on “Justice League” say that while Mr. Snyder did assemble a rough cut after he finished principal photography in late 2016, the director never said he intended it to be released. They add that Mr. Snyder oversaw the new scenes Mr. Whedon wrote the following winter and had planned to shoot them himself before the death of his daughter prompted him to leave.
“Who are these people who won’t stop talking about the magical Snyder cut that doesn’t exist?” lamented one person close to the film.
With San Diego Comic-Con taking place this weekend, Warner Bros. will give a presentation in Hall H on Saturday, showing off footage from “Aquaman” and “Shazam!”, but a senior executive confirmed that the studio isn’t planning to mention a Snyder cut or to release any alternate versions of “Justice League”.
I tend to agree with Henry. An entertaining endeavor similar to the Donner Cut of Superman II, sure, but ultimately changes nothing about the theatrical cut and what would have happened afterwards had it been released prior to Superman III.
Henry wants to move forward, and he’s probably right. Overall I enjoyed JL. I do wish it would have been different though. It was such a drastic shift in tone from the previous films. That’s the appeal of the supposed Snyder Cut: more consistency. I would love to even get a few more deleted scenes. For example, the version of the scene of Lois and Clark in the cornfield in the trailer was much more powerful than the one in the film.
I get it, I hoped for the same with Superman IV. At one point I was convinced that if they would just release the “Orange County Cut”, then all could be forgiven. Well, when the 2006 DVD release had some “work prints” of the deleted scenes; reality set in and I saw that it couldn’t have been saved much by what existed. The near-mythical Snyder Cut, if it exists, and if WB is willing to put tens of millions of dollars into new special effects, and if music rights can be negotiated, and if [ad nauseum] doesn’t guarantee a better… Read more »
I’d been reading articles about Justice League from the get go and I’m pretty sure I read an article that was published before Zack Snyder stepped aside saying that he had screened a rough cut of the film for studio executives. If my memory is right and the article was accurate there is a cut of some sort. The effects might be rough/unfinished though. Possibly not even started in some cases. I’d still watch it. Release the rough cut and don’t even bother to fix up the effects. I think the biggest issue Snyder fans have is that they don’t… Read more »
IMO, they should have edited in the deleted scenes into the Blu-Ray and called it a day. But they didn’t, so it must have been determined it didn’t make that huge of a difference. I would have liked to have seen those 2 Superman scenes in the film, but they were not, so all we can do is just put it behind us and move forward. And to be honest, what Henry is saying is 100% true, financially it wouldn’t make much sense to try and take what Snyder had in late 2016 and finish it. WB would have to… Read more »
It’s a pity, but I agree that it wouldn’t be justified. It wouldn’t justify the cost and it wouldn’t “fix” anything. As far as I know, Snyder was planning for Justice League to be the first part of a two-part story leading up to a confrontation with Darkseid … So even if a workable Snyder cut of JL did exist, it would only show us an unfinished story that never will be finished. Who needs that? ‘Justice League’ as we saw it was a mess, unfortunately, though there were a handful of scenes that I enjoyed. Best to leave it… Read more »
Supposedly there was a scene where Darkseid came through the Boom Tube at the end, killed Steppenwolf, and had some interaction with Superman. I’d like to see that scene and I hope we get to some day.
“CGI or visual effects” is redundant. CGI is VFX, they’re the same thing. 😉
For fear of being pedantic, CGI is a type of Visual Effect- even the predominant means of VFX in current film making- but it’s not the only visual effects. There’s also optical effects, camera effects, practical effects, and miniatures… They all fall under the VFX umbrella.
Just for fun; imagine Justice League produced with stop-motion effects optically composited with the live actors. The ghost of Ray Harryhausen just perked up.
Until ZS steps in front of a microphone and says something to the effect, there’s no credible cut of this movie that exists that could be made into watchable form, I’m not believing it. Henry himself has previously said he never expected to be brought back and have to do additional scenes as Superman because as far as he knew Zack had finished everything that was required of his Superman role. This is a ploy so we’ll move on and forget about the massive changes they made that have appeared to take the JL to a different direction other than… Read more »