Zack Snyder finds himself under more pressure the second time around on Justice League, with the widespread disappointment that greeted the theatrical release leading to the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign that rumbled on for two and a half years, before Warner Bros. finally announced that the filmmaker’s original vision for the DCEU’s all-star movie would be heading exclusively to HBO Max.
Fans have been destroying their copies of the theatrical cut in support of Snyder’s reworking of the famously troubled production, and the pressure facing the 300 director is bigger than ever before, with those that felt burned by Justice League the first time expecting the greatest comic book movie of all-time, and there’s every chance more than a few of them will end up disappointed by whatever Snyder has in store regardless of the critical consensus.
With up to 75% of the Snyder Cut being comprised of entirely new footage, the latest iteration of Justice League is going to be an entirely different animal, to be sure, with recent reports claiming that Snyder might end up adding so much to the story that it could be released as a miniseries instead.
Of course, Snyder is the first to admit that he’s never seen Justice League before, so he’s diving in headfirst with both eyes open in putting his own take on the material together, and in a recent interview, concept artist Jerad S. Marantz teased that the very first scene of the movie is going to make fans pretty happy.
“Zack came in, and he was just describing the opening of the film. And I could not, I couldn’t stop smiling. It was like the most, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard of.”
For those that have wiped the theatrical edition from memory in anticipation of the Snyder Cut, Justice League originally opened in pretty unspectacular fashion with Henry Cavill’s poorly-rendered face dominating the screen, before moving straight to a scene of Batman battling Parademons that let audiences know in the space of five minutes that the movie was going to feature some pretty sketchy CGI. As such, whether the Snyder Cut begins with the most amazing thing in the world or not, the bar to surpass Whedon’s version has already been set pretty low.
