I Guess I Gotta Talk About the Snyder Cut

Seriously, I would have been happy to never have to think about the "Justice League" movie ever again. However, in order to beef up their offerings, HBO Go has commissioned a new version of the "Justice League" movie, to be overseen by Zack Snyder. Snyder, if you remember, left the directing chair in order to deal with a terrible family tragedy while "Justice League" was in production, and Warners turned the film over to Joss Whedon, who obviously had very different ideas of what to do with the material. The movie came out, was widely dismissed, and the DC Cinematic Universe moved on to better things.

However, a hypothetical secret Snyder cut of "Justice League" has turned into a running joke and hashtag, but the more ardent DC fans have latched on to the idea. Some have been campaigning quite seriously for #ReleasetheSnyderCut to happen. However, a Snyder cut doesn't actually exist because Snyder left the film before any post-production or special effects could be completed. There's a rough three-and-a-half-hour assembly of footage, but that's about it. Usually, when we're talking about directors' cuts of films, we're talking about final edits of completed films - changes might include a couple of restored scenes, some technical fixes, and maybe a re-edited sequence or two. It's only the very rare project, like Steven Spielberg being asked to show the inside of the UFO mothership for a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" special edition, or Richard Donner's extensively altered "Superman II," where you have new footage created specifically for a different cut.

So to say that it was shocking when the HBO Go honchos announced that the Snyder Cut was going to premiere next year as an HBO Go exclusive, was putting it mildly. This is, frankly, something unprecedented. Warners Bros. are going to be spending millions for Snyder to make that grandiose four hour epic he originally envisioned, meaning at least an hour of new scenes and tons of expensive effects work. In addition, we'll likely see the finished product released in several installments, more like a miniseries event. There's already a very quick teaser trailer online that's essentially three shots of unused "Justice League" footage and some ominous music, segueing into clips of the Zoom watch party where the official Snyder Cut announcement was made by Snyder and Henry Cavill.

While some fans are clearly happy with this turn of events, I'm not looking forward to it. When left entirely to his own devices, Zack Snyder gave us two different, terrible cuts of "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice," one of the most god awful movies I've ever seen, and the clear low point of the DC franchise to date. Snyder's not a bad filmmaker, but an awful choice for this material from day one. Say what you will about Joss Whedon, but at least he turned in a version of "Justice League" that was narratively coherent and had a few bright spots, like Aquaman's encounter with Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth. I'd actually be okay with a more limited kind of director's cut, maybe fixing Henry Cavill's CGI upper lip, or adding some smaller scenes to clear up parts of the chaotic storyline.

What really bothers me is that I've had a hard time with the recent DC film franchise, and I place a lot of the blame on Zack Snyder's directorial choices. I feel that the movies have been progressively getting better since "Justice League," without his influence, even if they haven't been the biggest hits. "Aquaman," "Shazam!" "Joker," and "Birds of Prey" have all managed to distinguish themselves, largely by moving away from Snyder's morose, desaturated style and avoiding any ongoing storylines that might tie them too closely to the other DC movies. Dragging Snyder back into the spotlight after all this feels an awful lot like backsliding into bad habits.

The pandering to the less savory parts of the fanbase is also a problem. There have been plenty of pieces written already about the dangers of emboldening fans by giving into bullying tactics, and apparently some of the #ReleasetheSnyderCut proponents are pretty toxic. However, this doesn't strike me as Warners giving in so much as taking advantage of whatever goodwill they can still squeeze out of the Snyder fans. And if the new version of "Justice League" makes those fans so happy, why should we rain on their parade?

Still, I look at that teaser trailer, and all I feel is depressed and disappointed all over again.

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