Fans were so bummed out by Joss Whedon’s theatrical edition of Justice League, that when the Snyder Cut was first officially confirmed to be heading to HBO Max, people were destroying their home video copies of the movie and posting the results online for everyone to see. While it might not have been the most cost-effective method, it certainly got the point across.
Zack Snyder has no idea how the DCEU’s team-up blockbuster turned out the first time around, because he’s never seen it, nor does he ever want to. The filmmaker has already promised that he won’t use a single frame of Whedon’s footage, and the fact that he’s still been able to assemble a four-hour epic while only shooting one additional scene just serves to illustrate how heavily the project was reworked after the 300 and Watchmen director initially departed.
In a new deep-dive piece on the long and winding road to the Snyder Cut, a Warner Bros. executive offered up their opinion of Whedon’s Justice League, and you can understand why they asked to remain anonymous after hearing what they had to say.
“When we got to see what Joss actually did, it was stupefying. The robber on the rooftop, so goofy and awful. The Russian family, so useless and pointless. Everyone knew it. It was so awkward because nobody wanted to admit what a piece of sh*t it was.”
That’s a sentiment shared by the overwhelming majority of the fanbase, and right from the first scene it was clear that Whedon’s new material was going to stick out like a sore thumb amidst Snyder’s established aesthetic. Luckily, all those wrongs are set to be imminently righted when Justice League finally arrives in its intended form, consigning the theatrical version to the history books where it’ll hopefully never be spoken of again.