Is Zack Snyder Hinting His Justice League Cut Is R-Rated?

A bloody new piece of art shared by Justice League director Zack Snyder raises some questions about whether or not his 3-hour-plus director's cut of the film would have been able to make a PG-13 rating. In the image, which Snyder shared on social network Vero with the caption "now [you're] understanding it," Wonder Woman uses her sword to behead Steppenwolf, the film's villain -- although the character's appearance more closely matches a deleted scene from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in which he was first teased. That take on Steppenwolf was a bit more sci-fi and Kirby-inspired, whereas the version from the final film was much more human-like.

Fans on Vero and Reddit are already wondering what this image and its caption might mean, with some speculating about the more brutal death for Steppenwolf -- an earlier rumor was that Wonder Woman would have beheaded him, and that Darkseid would have entered the film and rested his foot on the severed head. Others just wonder whether the Snyder Cut might have a different design for the villain, more in line with Batman v Superman.

You can check out the post below.

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.