In sweeping terms, you pretty much know exactly what you’re going to get when you watch a Zack Snyder movie. There will be slow motion, speed ramping, snap zooms, a color palette that’s been heavily altered in post-production, very little genuine humor, possibly an introductory montage, a dark and gritty aesthetic, lavish digital backgrounds and some stunning cinematography.
Almost all of the filmmaker’s output involves at least some of the signatures mentioned above, and there’s every chance his new cut of Justice League could feature all of them. In a lot of situations, dragging a big budget production across the finish line requires plenty of compromises between the director and the studio, but that’s not the case when it comes to the Snyder Cut. The 54 year-old has been handed complete creative freedom to finally bring his vision for the DCEU blockbuster to life, and he’s doing it all for free.
The theatrical edition of Justice League was a disaster that saw Joss Whedon reshoot almost the entire movie under the watchful eye of the studio, who should have probably been named in the credits given how heavy and obvious their input was. However, next year’s HBO Max exclusive is going to be an entirely different beast, and Snyder has teased that the miniseries could come with an R-rating.
Of course, Justice League doesn’t need to up the ante in terms of violence and profanity to succeed, so let’s hope it serves the story instead of Snyder’s own self-indulgences, which have been a problem in several of his previous efforts. In any case, here’s what the director had to share:
“Here’s one piece of information nobody knows. The movie is insane and so epic and is probably rated R, that’s one thing I think will happen, that it will be an R-rated version, for sure. We haven’t heard from the MPAA, but that’s my gut. There’s one scene where Batman drops an F-bomb. Cyborg is not too happy with what’s going on with his life before he meets the Justice League, and he tends to speak his mind. And Steppenwolf is pretty much just hacking people in half. So, violence and profanity, probably both.”
Obviously, it wouldn’t be hard to recut Whedon’s Justice League into something better, but with Snyder pulling out all of the stops, we could be in for a truly special film when it finally arrives on streaming and possibly in theaters next year.