To be brutally honest, the big screen adaptation of Justice League was a disappointment on almost every level, despite fans hoping that the epic superhero team-up would be the DCEU’s answer to The Avengers. After Zack Snyder departed the project due to a family tragedy just months before the movie was set to be released, Joss Whedon came on board in an attempt to pick up the pieces, re-writing huge amounts of the script and handling extensive reshoots.
The cost of the additional filming pushed the budget up to a massive $300 million, and when Justice League was finally released it ended up becoming the lowest-earning entry in the DCEU to date, resulting in the studio taking a huge loss on a project that should have been a guaranteed billion-dollar hit under the right circumstances.
As well as the underwhelming commercial performance, it was also incredibly noticeable that the movie had two distinct and jarring tones. Whedon’s lighter, more quip-happy style seemed ill-at-ease with the aesthetic that Snyder had established in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and ever since Justice League hit theaters, the fans have become increasingly vocal in their demands to see Snyder’s original vision for the project.
It may have been over two years since Zack Snyder stepped away from Justice League and the DCEU, but people seem to be much more interested in seeing the Snyder Cut of the movie for the first time than having to watch the theatrical version again. And while it has been confirmed that it does exist in some form, there are numerous reasons why it’s still yet to see the light of day.
In a recent social media post though, Aquaman star Jason Momoa revealed that he’s one of the lucky few to have seen the Snyder Cut of Justice League, and has gifted the filmmaker with a brand new camera as a way to say thanks for casting him as a character that would go on to headline the highest-grossing DC Comics movie ever made.
The DCEU’s upcoming slate of movies includes Wonder Woman 1984, Birds of Prey, James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, sequels to Aquaman and Shazam! and the long-gestating Flashpoint, Black Adam and The Batman, which along with the uncertainty surrounding Henry Cavill’s future as Superman, indicates that the entire franchise is quietly rebooting and taking a fresh approach to the characters.
Despite this, the speculation surrounding the Snyder Cut of Justice League doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, and it will be interesting to see if a compromise will ever be reached that allows the filmmaker to finally complete the movie he was originally hired to direct half a decade ago.
