The comic book movie community was certainly divided when Zack Snyder's Justice League was officially announced, but regardless of how you happen to feel about the end result, some of the action sequences were undeniably impressive.
Several exciting moments were expanded upon or added from scratch, including the slo-mo sequence with Kiersey Clemons' Iris West, and an incredible, Flashpoint-inspired "rewind" scene towards the end of the film.
We recently had the chance to speak exclusively with Scanline VFX's Julius Lechner and Curtis Carlson about what they added to the film during their extensive edits. During our chat, Carlson geeked out about the Flash sequence, and spoke about how much work it took to incorporate the city.
"We did all of the cosmic rewind stuff with the Flash and building the city. So that was a really cool process to see through because it obviously wasn't in the 2017 version. So when we picked up the edit, it was a mixture of old post-vis of things that they had done in 2016, 2017, and then had the opportunity to run with it and design that whole beat. For the trailer back in the summer, we did four shots where the city explodes, and the Flash starts to phase. And then there was the close-up where he's running and talking to his dad and then the two close-up shots of the legs and the cosmic footsteps.
So we developed those independently before the whole city had been finalized out. Those shots got approved and were stakes in the sand of where we needed to go to fill in the rest of the edit so that as we built up the city over those next couple of months, for that one large crazy rewind, we knew what buildings had to be there. I think the effects department did a great job of having the city, destroying it, and then reversing that simulation to achieve that effect. We were chipping away at the sequence for those whole six or seven months, the largest shots. That was one of the last things that we ended up delivering because it took months and months to build out the city and develop all the simulations."
What did you guys think of the rewind scene and Zack Snyder's Justice League in general?
Hear the full conversation with Scanline VFX team members Julius Lechner and Curtis Carlson below, and be sure to share your thoughts on their comments in the usual spot!