Even though he established and spearheaded the early years of the franchise, directing three installments as well as producing Wonder Woman and Aquaman, Zack Snyder doesn’t feel as though his time at the helm of the DCEU came off as he intended. After leaving Justice League due to a family tragedy, the filmmaker saw his original vision for the movie butchered, leading to calls for the Snyder Cut to be released that are still going strong almost three years later.
There were also reports that he we was under pressure from the studio to ramp up the speed at which the shared universe was being built in an effort to catch up to the runaway success of Marvel Studios, with his originally planned five-movie arc to tell the Justice League story being severely impacted as a result.
During a recent streaming event to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder revealed a ton of new details about his original plans for the DCEU, with the plot threads from the various standalone movies set to tie a lot closer together than they did in the theatrically released versions.
The opening scene of Batman V Superman takes place during the climax of Man of Steel, and both introduces Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne into the mix and gives him a solid reason to bear a grudge against the Son of Krypton, and Snyder recently admitted that he’d love to see a supercut of the two movies that shows how closely the narratives run parallel to each other.
“I wonder if anyone’s ever done a five-hour cut, which would basically just be editing these two parts of the movie together, carefully. I’ve never seen that. I’m sure it exists online somewhere, where they match up all of these moments so that they’re happening simultaneously. I don’t know if anyone’s done that. I’d have to have a look, but it feels like a cool thing to do, because it would all… it all should match up pretty well. Because they’re right now, they’re fighting right below. It could be kind of cool.”
Zack Snyder knows more than most how difficult it can be to put together a new version of a DCEU movie, but there’s likely more than a few industrious fans who are working on it right now after hearing his comments. Of course, hosting an event based around his time in charge of the franchise is also a savvy move on his part, because it ensures that the talk surrounding the Snyder Cut of Justice League isn’t going to go away any time soon.