Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max, but you probably knew that already. It’s poised to be a monster hit for both the platform and the wider DCEU, although fans will quickly have to make peace with the fact that it’s also realistically the filmmaker’s last time at the helm of the franchise.
#RestoreTheSnyderVerse has already been trending for days in anticipation, but the director has repeatedly sought to quell any more online campaigns by admitting on a few occasions that neither he nor the studio have any plans for further adventures set in his pocket of the mythology. And after previously revealing that he envisioned his Justice League trilogy as a trio of epic fantasies cut from the same sort of cloth as Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings as opposed to the standard comic book blockbuster formula, it stings that little bit more that we’ll never see the story unfold to its full potential.
However, we should be happy enough that Darkseid is even involved in the Snyder Cut at all after the iconic villain was omitted from the theatrical release entirely, and in a new interview, Zack explained why he had to be Justice League‘s big bad, and how his motivation to conquer all life informed both the present and hypothetical future of his DCEU.
“It always been our plan that it was gonna be the big arc, the big battle, the big problem was Darkseid and he’s coming and he’s not taking no for an answer. So, he literally, he sends his uncle, Steppenwolf, to Earth. Steppenwolf, there’s been some family problems back on Apokolips, we don’t know, some things went down that puts them off on the outs, but it’s redemption story for him for Steppenwolf. He’s just trying to make it right and he finds something on earth that, whoa, if he could deliver that, maybe everything will be better.
I wanted to do this one scene like frankly that there was two things like I’ve spent, you know a lot of time thinking about you know the Knightmare world of in my version of the DCEU and frankly a lot of time looking at the landscape of a post Darkseid invaded world and what that would mean and how to fix it. I think that what I really wanted, so I had all the details like that, the cast of characters all that I really wanted to, like, I wanted to flesh it out.”
Of course, we’ll be seeing Darkseid on the big screen again should Ava DuVernay’s New Gods ever make it out of development hell, but the role will more than likely be recast and ignore Justice League‘s continuity as Warner Bros. finally draws a line under the Snyder era and moves forward without his shadow looming over the DCEU.
