Finding out exactly what replacement director Joss Whedon cut from Zack Snyder’s original version of Justice League has become like a Holy Grail quest for DC fans since the team-up movie turned out to be such a crushing disappointment when it came out last November. The fabled Snyder Cut probably won’t ever see the light of day at this point, so it’s down to those who worked with Snyder on the movie to spill the beans.
An indispensable source for info on the initial edit of Justice League is storyboard artist Jay Oliva, who’s given us some juicy reveals in the past, including how Cyborg would have been treated and the reasons Warner Bros. meddled with the project at the last minute.
Now, he’s opened up about a major difference in how Superman was presented in the third act of Whedon’s cut as opposed to the Snyder version he worked on. In particular, the artist hinted that Snyder was going to portray an “unhinged” Superman, as opposed to the wholesome, more traditional take that Whedon went for once the Man of Steel had been resurrected.
“I did from the time they arrived to the nuclear reactor all the way to the end of the fight. There’s a couple stuff that when I watched the film I was like, ‘What happened to that?’ I was really looking forward to seeing it because I’ve done some crazy stuff. I tried to top what I’ve done with Superman. When Superman comes back, I had done some really crazy stuff like Superman unhinged.”
The treatment of Superman in Whedon’s JL reshoots is perhaps the most notorious element of the film. I mean, we don’t need to remind you about Henry Cavill’s infamous CGI shaving job. While it was fun to have a classic interpretation of the Last Son of Krypton back on the big screen, the all-smiling, all-joking Supes from the third act did jar with the version we’d got to know under Snyder’s direction. So, it’s no surprise things were originally very different.
For one, it was previously explained that the League’s big fight with Superman was initially near the start of Justice League, suggesting that Cavill’s hero wouldn’t have been held off for so long in the Snyder cut. Maybe we’ll see it for ourselves one day, though, as Oliva certainly maintains that it exists.
