With talk surrounding Zack Snyder’s fabled cut of Justice League showing no signs of ceasing, it seems like this is a subject we won’t stop reporting on anytime soon. Based on the amount of changes that Joss Whedon and the studio made from the original vision, one can only assume that we’ve been witness to a modern day parallel of the situation involving Richard Donner and Richard Lester on Superman II. That said, we can only hope it doesn’t take a quarter century or so for us to see what could’ve been.
Now, I don’t mean to get too sidetracked here, but if you’re unfamiliar with the above reference, know that when Superman II was in production, director Donner was relieved of his position following the first film’s shoot, during which he shot a wealth of footage for the sequel. However, when Lester was enlisted, he largely crafted his own tale that became the movie people saw in theaters in 1981. Then, in 2006, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released at long last, and was a markedly different experience.
When it comes to Justice League, there does indeed seem to be enough footage filmed under Snyder to warrant an alternate cut, though some of his bigger action pieces were retained in the final product because they simply would’ve been too expensive to reshoot.
So, as the debate rages on, one fan over on Twitter spoke of a cut that “doesn’t and never will exist,” to which Jay Oliva replied, “it does exist.” If Oliva’s name sounds familiar to you, it should, because not only did he direct animated films such as Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, but he also served as a storyboard artist on both Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League.
And if that weren’t enough, here’s what he had to say when elaborating on all that footage lying around somewhere:
“KC (another Twitter user) you do realize that as soon as a shot is shot it goes right into the edit bay where it is placed in an assembled timeline right? So if they finished principle (photography) it’s fair to say that they have a fairly complete assembly.”
Even with this newly presented information being made available, we still have to get around the problem of finishing visual effects shots for Snyder’s cut of Justice League. Needless to say, that’d require sinking millions of more dollars into a movie that underperformed at the box office – and WB may just not want to do that at this point in time.