Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’ Cut On HBO Max Is Not ‘Bad Precedent’

Yesterday, the unthinkable happened in the entertainment world. After years of fans attempting to manifest it into existence, it was revealed that yes, the infamous Snyder Cut of Justice League will indeed be a real thing that is released next year on HBO Max.

The news was broken during a live rewatch of Man of Steel with Zack Snyder and was pushed out by WB comms and execs shortly after. This was real, this was actually happening.

The Snyder Cut has achieved practically mythical status over the last two years. Fans routinely flood social media with #ReleasetheSnyderCut, and while some are just passionate, others can go a bit overboard, attacking anyone who thinks the idea is dumb or saying that Snyder’s past two DC movies were also not great, or attacking WB execs or the sub-in director like Joss Whedon directly. But the most pressing question of all was whether or not the Snyder Cut actually existed at all.

Technically, it didn’t. Not really. Snyder was forced to leave the filming of the original Justice League when his daughter tragically died, and Joss Whedon stepped in to finish the film. The legend has it that Snyder’s original film was much darker than the more lighthearted final Whedon production. However, now we know that to truly “finish” the Snyder cut, this new project is taking an addition $20-30 million worth of budget, reassembling the old crew and maybe even some of the actors to finish the effectively new film. In other words, no, the Snyder Cut wasn’t just sitting in a locked vault at WB somewhere as many seemed to believe.

One narrative I am seeing emerge from this whole situation is that this sets a “bad precedent” for other entertainment productions, that a vocal fan movement can badger a director or cast or studio into re-doing something they hate.

We had essentially this exact same conversation in the video game world when fans rallied against the ending of Mass Effect 3, until ultimately it was added to and altered and an entirely new chapter was made and released, softening the harsh blow that was the original ending.

That too was cited as “bad precedent,” and yet ME3, like the Snyder Cut, are unique situations we are unlikely to see repeated often, if ever, in either industry. I can’t recall a single game changing an ending or even a major story element due to fan pressure in the years since Mass Effect 3 (though dev harassment is always an industry issue in other ways). And for the Snyder Cut? It’s a different scenario.

The main difference with the whole Snyder Cut concept was that it was encouraged and eventually led by Zack Snyder himself, who was really pushing for his own cut of the movie to be finished and released. Reading the story of how this came together, we can see that it was Snyder and his wife pitching WB executives on how this could happen, and ultimately the reason this is happening is because WB saw the obvious, that all these hyper-invested fans could be leveraged into easy marketing for HBO Max, their upcoming streaming service. Some may subscribe now, when the service launches in a week, ahead of the Snyder Cut next year. Some may subscribe then, but the point is, it’s driving subscriptions and interest, and this would never have happened if WB had nothing to gain from it.

This is different than say, Game of Thrones fans screaming at the showrunners for a terrible finale and demanding they and HBO re-film it. In this case, the main focus of the movement, Snyder, was 100% for the idea, and cheerleading it himself into a reality. And real-word circumstances created this situation in the first place, with Snyder’s family tragedy causing him to leave the original film. Again, all of these factors are not something that will ever come together that often.

I’ve also heard that this may inspire directors to push for their own cuts of films to be released, now that WB is letting Snyder do this. To that I say…good, fine. We probably need more director’s cuts out there anyway. But again, this seems unlikely to happen without the kind of movement that #ReleasetheSnyderCut generated. I cannot think of another film with fans demanding that X or Y cut be released, other than Twitter jokes about the famed Cats “butthole cut” (don’t’ ask).

In the end, this was a bit of a perfect storm and a potential Michael Scott win-win-win for all parties involved. WB gets a big draw for HBO Max and a PR win among fans, Snyder gets to make the cut he has clearly wanted to put out there for two years, fans get to watch that cut and it seems inevitable that many of them will automatically love it no matter what the ultimate product ends up being like (among this fanbase, many even love Snyder’s Batman V. Superman, so it’s not a crazy high bar).

Do not expect this to be repeated often, if ever in the industry. I am personally curious to see the final product, even if I don’t think it will be the holy grail of superhero films given what there was to work with in the original. But maybe it can continue DC’s win streak with the likes of Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Joker. What a strange, long ride it’s been to get here.

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