There are many things wrong with Justice League. The mangled storyline, the often misplaced humor, Henry Cavill’s freaky top lip…the list goes on. One of the most fundamental, though, is the underwhelming nature of its villain. In place of Darkseid, the team-up movie casts his general, Steppenwolf, as the big bad. Even if the script didn’t fail to flesh him out, it didn’t help that the CG rendering of the Apokaliptian looked half-finished and unimpressive.
If only we had something similar to the design seen in these abandoned pieces of concept art in the film itself. The three images found below give us a taste of how Steppenwolf could have appeared if JL depicted him as something much more monstrous and alien than what we got. It’s actually much closer to his cameo in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and we’re really digging it.
One image captures the moment he arrives in Themyscira and claims his first Mother Box, while the other two seem to tease an alternate version of the third act set on board his mothership, parked in Russia. See for yourself below.
As we all know by now, Justice League wasn’t meant to go down this way. When Zack Snyder’s vision was still being fulfilled, Steppenwolf was just the temporary foe for the League before Darkseid was revealed at the end of the film, teasing his major role in a planned sequel. And possibly a third movie, too, according to some sources. Due to the studio wanting to swerve direction, however, JL became something of a dead end for the franchise instead of a new beginning.
Still, at least it seemed WB has learned from their mistakes on Justice League and the future’s currently looking pretty bright for the DC franchise. Especially since we’re hearing that Shazam! is set to be another bonafide hit for them following Aquaman.