JUSTICE LEAGUE: Kevin Smith Clarifies What He Knows About The Snyder Cut, Including Darkseid Plans

JUSTICE LEAGUE: Kevin Smith Clarifies What He Knows About The Snyder Cut, Including Darkseid Plans

Filmmaker Kevin Smith has revealed some specifics about the Snyder Cut of Justice League, confirming that Darkseid and Green Lantern were both set to appear before Joss Whedon took charge of the film...

By JoshWilding - May 02, 2020 04:05 AM EST
Filed Under: Justice League
Source: ComicBook.com

Kevin Smith has talked a lot about the Snyder Cut of Justice League, but he's now clarified what exactly he's heard about the film...well, the version before Joss Whedon got his hands on it. Explaining that he's spoken to members of the VFX team who worked on the DC Comics adaptation, Smith claims to have been filled in on both the visual effects and storyboards. 

Apparently, many of them were illustrated by comic book artist Jim Lee, and this VFX crew member reportedly "saw Martian Manhunter on it. He said he saw Green Lanterns and stuff like that."

"[He] broke down the script that he got to read. The movie that they shot originally, and then the movie that we saw," Smith added. "That’s where I first heard about what we would call the Snyder Cut. From people that worked on the movie, special effects people, they were like, ‘Dude, Darkseid was in it. This was in it…’ They went through everything."

This isn't overly specific, but it is interesting, and seemingly confirms those long-standing rumours that Zack Snyder's Justice League was going to bring those characters to the DCEU.

It's no secret that Darkseid was going to be the main threat in Justice League: Part 2, while there were rumblings for a while that the first movie was going to end with Hal Jordan crashing to Earth. As for Martian Manhunter, Snyder has confirmed that General Swanwick was to be outed as the alien. 

How do you guys feel about missing out on seeing these characters in Snyder's movies?

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AnthonyVonGeek
AnthonyVonGeek - 5/2/2020, 4:55 AM
So basically no new news here since Smith is saying the same things we’ve heard for years now. 😴
IronMandarin
IronMandarin - 5/2/2020, 5:07 AM
I will be real. Even I'm surprised how well a lot of the Snyder Cultists on Twitter reacted to that Harley Quinn Snyder Cut joke given how embarrassing it makes them look.
tmp3
tmp3 - 5/2/2020, 5:25 AM
WB doesn't give a [frick] about ever releasing a Snyer Cut, I don't get why its cultists are so fanatical about it ever coming out. Just [frick]ing move on.
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 5/2/2020, 6:20 AM
@tmp3 - It sort of reminds me of Terry Gilliam. (I think Gilliam is infinitely more interesting than Snyder is, for the record.) But at some point it was like being a Gilliam fan became more about commiserating over projects that fell apart and celebrating his genius that was too good for this world or something.

Not to the degree you see with Snyderbots, maybe, but that's probably more to do with demographics. Old-school Gilliam fans aren't likely to storming comment sections.
tmp3
tmp3 - 5/2/2020, 6:33 AM
@Spock0Clock - That's the same thing as being a GDT fan though. Pretty much every single cancelled project of his sounded infinitely more interesting than "Pacific Rim" or Crimson Peak.
bkmeijer2
bkmeijer2 - 5/2/2020, 5:52 AM
I got a feeling this movie would've been a three hour long mess of badly executed, but cool sounding ideas
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 5/2/2020, 6:09 AM
SFX artists doing previs and comicbook artists doing storyboards are all well and good.

But is there any evidence any of this was ever shot? Any evidence that any of this was actually developed beyond animatics? What we do know is that Snyder and WB were ramping up for filming right as Batman vs. Superman hit theaters, and the public reaction hit them like a freight train. WB rapidly scaled down the project (either immediately or possibly a few weeks ahead of time). There was something like six months of official preproduction done on "Justice League Part 1 - A Zack Snyder Joint".

All that seems to have changed in April 2016. We know they scrambled to rewrite the script as they were filming. We know that Snyder's instinct is to shoot way too much material and halfheartedly tries to trim it down in to something manageable. And we know that WB was throwing good money after bad at this project without any idea about where the endgame was.

So, did some of the expanded JL1 material get storyboarded? Absolutely. Did some of it even get shot and discarded? I'm sure it did (in all the chaos). Was that material even what we would call "the Snyder Cut" in 2020? I don't think we can honestly know, because Snyder just wants to play edgelord Willy Wonka selling his Vero followers on a world of pure imagination. He doesn't seem to make distinctions between (1) what he originally wanted to make, (2) what he would have released if he'd gotten final cut, and (3) what he now thinks would be have been cool.

L0RDbuckethead
L0RDbuckethead - 5/2/2020, 6:10 AM
I think Kevin Smith just likes to hear himself talk
Dredd97
Dredd97 - 5/2/2020, 9:12 AM
@L0RDbuckethead - This isn't just a theory, it's a fact haha
RolandD
RolandD - 5/2/2020, 1:29 PM
@L0RDbuckethead - What makes you say that? 😂🤣
GhostDog
GhostDog - 5/2/2020, 6:17 AM
You can’t believe a word he says
Tpo81
Tpo81 - 5/2/2020, 6:20 AM
This Snyder cut is definitely intriguing but considering it’s never coming out it’s crazy how much it gets talked about.But I will say that literally everything I’ve read about what was supposed to be was infinitely better than what we got?Goes to show you how clueless WB is when it comes to handling their DC properties.The first JL movie ever.......yeah let’s cut out Green Lantern & Martian Manhunter Then let’s cut out Darkseid too.As soon as I saw the first trailer I knew immediately this movie was gonna suck.If you can’t make a good trailer for the first ever Justice League movie then wtf are you doing making movies
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 5/2/2020, 6:42 AM
@Tpo81 - Possibly controversial opinion: it was incredibly stupid to do Darkseid as the Justice League's first threat.

Unlike a lot of the Avengers, each member of the Justice League operates in a fairly distinct niche and context. They're much more individuated heroes than many of the Marvel heroes. But we don't get much of their contexts at all outside of their connection to the Macguffins. And adding Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter on top of that would have just made it worse.

Marvel had two movies to ease people into the idea of a dude in a robot suit, and a whole movie about a guy who fights good getting frozen. There wasn't a whole lot of Cap and Tony left to explain before they got thrown together on a team-up.

In Contrast, WB took an established Superman (maybe not to everyone's tastes, but explored enough), and spent a whole movie tearing him down and then killing him. That same movie, they played around with deconstructing a well-known figure like Batman. And then the plan was to drop four (or more) entirely new heroes, with significantly more complicated and obscure backstories onto the audience? Okay, they got Wonder Woman well-enough, but Aquaman and Atlantis comes across as just filler material (even accepting all known Snyder-matieral).

And in all of that, they decide to drop Jack Kirby's bat-shittiest-tangential comic setting that is so larded down with psychological abstracts and symbols that it's kind of too silly to explain briefly? What a mess.

Justice League needed a smaller-bore enemy to start with and more solo movies leading into it to have a chance of working, I think. You can't get away with "THIS IS THE FLASH, HE'S GOT MY BACK. I WOULD ADVISE NOT TALKING TO HIM ABOUT BRUNCH. HE RUNS REAL FAST".
Spock0Clock
Spock0Clock - 5/2/2020, 6:49 AM
(Forgot my point there for a second.)

The point I was meaning to make was: they probably should have done a version of the Legion of Doom. You've got Lex (ghugh...), and he puts together a group of malcontents drawn from these different settings. Suddenly Atlantis isn't a filler tangent, because Manta cares about Atlantis. Suddenly, crimefighting isn't discarded because Metallo and Grodd just want to do crime. Whatever the main thrust of those other franchises are can be smoothed into the overall plan of Luthor to destroy the superheroes (who then come to each others' aid organically).
lawndart
lawndart - 5/2/2020, 8:56 AM
@Spock0Clock - not sure whether the LOD would have been the best choice but I think it would have been more suitable than going for Darkseid on the first outing. Something such as that should be gradually brought to a boil. The JLA have plenty of rogues they could have used. The direction they took seems lazy and uninspired.
Dredd97
Dredd97 - 5/2/2020, 9:16 AM
@Spock0Clock - I agree with you. You have to build up to Kirby's lore. That shit is dense. They should've kept it simple and used the moving parts they had with a Legion of Doom or maybe the White Martians. Should've been easy and simple. The Justice League cartoon's first three episodes did it perfectly
Battabing
Battabing - 5/2/2020, 11:26 AM
@Tpo81 -
Darkseid has no business being in the first JL movie. He's endgame. Also, what would J'onn and GL add? So, somebody at WB knew what they were doing pulling them all out.
Roodi
Roodi - 5/2/2020, 6:51 AM
I wonder if Smith is still forcing himself to multiple viewings of BvS to make himself "love" it.
boogiefett
boogiefett - 5/2/2020, 7:20 AM
Even before covid -19 the articles on this site have been slim - they keep beating dead horses
KingLeonidas
KingLeonidas - 5/2/2020, 8:08 AM
Snyder Cut is the QAnon of comic book movies.
Dredd97
Dredd97 - 5/2/2020, 9:14 AM
Everyone keeps talking about the stuff they'd seen for concepts, but hasn't it been confirmed that hardly any of it was actually shot?
rabid
rabid - 5/2/2020, 9:22 AM
Its obvious that it was a completely different film and experience, not just a few deleted scenes. I'd be really curious to watch it. I hope it gets released someday
JDL
JDL - 5/2/2020, 11:22 AM
@rabid - You can't release what either hasn't 1) been shot yet or 2) hasn't had its VFX done.
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