Even though an announcement confirming Zack Snyder has indeed completed the fabled director’s cut of Justice League probably won’t be made at San Diego Comic-Con next week – which, let’s face it, has made his departure from the DCEU all the more disheartening – we can, however, at the very least, revel in his previous installment into the divisive shared cinematic universe, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Something the founding father himself, and his partner in crime, storyboard artist Jay Oliva, seem to do on the daily.
When they’re not stirring the fandom into a frenzy, what with their discourse on the Snyder cut, or expunging of DCEU minutia and alike, Snyder and Oliva can be found on social media, force-feeding the masses their spoonful of behind the scenes and alternate design content – surprisingly, the latter more often than the former, as of late.
So, in keeping with tradition, while celebrating his “favourite writer/artist combo of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo…doing a post-apocalyptic Batman story,” Oliva has shared a frame from his 2016 collaboration with Snyder, which depicts Ben Affleck’s Caped Crusader during what has colloquially been dubbed the “Knightmare sequence.”
If you’re interested, Snyder recently expunged the significance of the Knightmare vision. Long story short, The Flash is running on the cosmic treadmill to deliver the ominous warning to Bats. Having confirmed that the NetherRealm Studios video game Injustice did indeed influence the Knightmare scene, I’ll let you draw your own conclusion as to what Snyder had planned for the DCEU in the future.
Granted, it may not have the Tomatometer or ten-figure box office haul that those maniacal Marvel junkies are always bragging about, but Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice offered much, much more in the vein of theme and visual splendor. Let’s just call it, more of an acquired taste.