Justice League Darkseid Actor Continues to Show Support for Snyder Cut

Ray Porter, the actor and audiobook narrator who was cast in the role of Darkseid for Justice League, but never appeared in the released film, is still excited about the prospect of seeing filmmaker Zack Snyder’s fabled director’s cut of the film. For a long time, Porter has stopped just short of confirming what Snyder has made clear to the fans: that rumors Porter would have been Darkseid in his version of the movie are, in fact, true. In fact, the latest tweet from Porter resulted in fans sending him images of Darkseid from everything from video games and comics to Snyder’s own Justice League concept art and props.

Porter, who had not tweeted except to respond to fans since March 27, today tweeted out the “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” hashtag — not as popular as the “Release the Snyder Cut” tag, but something that has gained traction since the release of a logo that read “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” released earlier this year as part of a charity fundraiser with which Snyder himself was involved.

Snyder’s “director’s cut,” were it ever to be revealed, would be probably the biggest change from one cut to another of basically any major motion picture ever released. For context, it seems like about 90% of the content in Snyder’s movie never found its way to theaters, whereas even when Richard Donner did his cut of Superman II for the home video market 20 years after its original theatrical release, the difference was not huge — in part because Donner was fired from the movie early enough in the production that he did not have all of his shots yet. Snyder, it seems, had a pretty complete movie (plus or minus a few scenes that don’t seem intrinsic to the main plot).

Still, what exists is likely an assembly cut — with little in the way of finishe visual effects and pretty loose editing. This is the cut that would have been assembled (get it?) to give studio executives a chance to see what the movie they had just sunk $200 million-plus into was shaping up to be. In the time since the movie’s release, Snyder supporters, including cast and crew who worked on his films, have intimated that he may have completed some or all of the post-production work needed to make the film audience-ready.

Justice League Part One and Part Two were announced at the same time, with filmmaker Zack Snyder supposedly filming them back to back. That did not last long, though. Snyder eventually, famously, either left Justice League or was forced out shortly after the death of his daughter. But even before that, a set visit during production on the film included quotes that indicated that Part Two was not guaranteed to happen, and might not happen with Snyder even if it did. Conventional wisdom says that before he exited the movie, the plan was to build a trilogy of films, but even at its most bullish, Warner Bros. only announced the two before things started to change.

When Justice League was released in 2017, with Snyder as the sole credited director of the movie but everyone knowing that Joss Whedon had overseen significant reshoots and dramatically cut the film back from its original runtime to meet studio demands, the film was relatively well received — as long as the bar you are using for that statement is the one set by other DC movies, which up to that point had been largely hated by critics and divisive among fans.

Its poor box office performance cemented what many fans already expected: Snyder was done with DC films for the foreseeable future, and Justice League Part Two was shelved indefinitely. It seems that the best, if not only, chance to see new, Snyder-directed DC content for the foreseeable future would be if Warners releases a the Snyder cut of Justice League — regardless of how long a shot that might be.