Zack Snyder has always been known for revisiting his movies long after the fact and delivering longer editions that better reflect his original intentions for the project in question, dating right back to his feature directorial debut.
In fact, since Dawn of the Dead arrived on home video packaged with an unrated Director’s Cut that added ten extra minutes and dialled up the gore a notch, only 300, Man of Steel and animated family adventure Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole have remained untouched.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s Ultimate Edition ran half an hour longer and significantly improved upon the theatrical version, Watchmen got a Director’s Cut and an Ultimate Cut, while there’s also the small matter of Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max. Elsewhere, despite already receiving an Extended Edition that tacked on an extra eighteen minutes and garnered an R-rating as opposed to the PG-13 that accompanied its initial release, the filmmaker is now teasing another spin on 2011’s Sucker Punch.
“That is a movie I wrote with my friend Steve Shibuya and Steve and I had been talking about the movie for a long time actually because the movie to me is, you know, people don’t acknowledge it, but it’s a protest movie in a lot of ways. It’s a movie about genre. Like, I was asked at the time, ‘Why did you dress the girls like that?’. And I always go, ‘I didn’t dress them like that, you did’.
I always saw it as an indictment of, in some ways, popular culture. I think at the time I was criticized for it being the opposite, like some sort of sexist like, rant, but it was fun to make and I still love it to this day. That was the first time where I really faced like a true radical restructuring of the film, for it to be more commercial, and there’s a Director’s Cut of that movie that has yet to be released. I’ll say that out loud.”
The fantasy actioner initially bombed at the box office after making less than $90 million on an $82 million budget, and up until Netflix’s Army of the Dead it was also the only one of Snyder’s efforts to be based on an entirely original concept. Critics weren’t particularly enthused, either, and it holds a weak 22% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while it generated plenty of conversation about whether it was empowering or misogynistic in its depiction of the central quintet.
Snyder believes it’s the former, and he’s even voiced his surprise on occasion that people interpret Sucker Punch otherwise, but maybe another Director’s Cut would help clear things up once and for all.