‘Justice League’ Director Confirms Scene That Was Cut for Being Too Scary

Nearly a year after Justice League‘s awkward and underperforming run through theaters, we’re starting hear more and more from the film’s (original) director, Zack Snyder, about Easter eggs, deleted scenes or ideas and insight into what could’ve been. Case in point: Snyder recently revealed a scene he had planned for Justice League, which was too horrifying to survive all the rounds of cuts before the movie was released in theaters:

The scene in question is from the sequence in the movie where the fledgling Justice League ventures into the sewer system connecting Gotham and Metropolis, in order find Steppenwolf and his Parademons, who have been kidnapping people in order to either torturing them for information on the Mother Box, and/or converting into new Parademon soldiers. As you can see in the concept artwork, the main room where Steppenwolf set up shop in the sewers was originally intended to be a seen more akin to Alien than a superhero movie. The captured humans were apparently going to be cocooned in those pods, until their Apokoliptic makeover (pun) was complete. As Sndyer indicates to the inquiring fan, that approach to telling a Parademon origin story was deemed too scary to make it past the censors.

It’s ironic that this was deemed to be a hard line for Zack Snyder and his design team to pull back from, considering that some of the other scenes in Justice League fully convey the body horror aspect of the human-to-Parademon conversion. For example: the epic flashback sequence of the ancient races of Earth going to war with Steppenwolf and Apokolips revealed that the method of human/demon conversion that Snyder and company went with was a much more immediate type of transformation, akin to something like a zombie, vampire, or werewolf’s bite quickly transforming a host into that same kind of monster. The scene of a soldier on the battlefield screaming as his face erodes into the visage of a demon is a particularly striking (and potentially upsetting) visual. In fact, it seems like much more a disturbing image than a room that’s simply filled with gooey-looking pods. But then, there’s no accounting for the tastes of movie censors…

Snyder has been something of a tear recently, opening the valve on Justice League discussion with fans, and seeming to hold little back when it comes to giving definitive answers on what could’ve been, or almost was. He’s confirmed a line of dialogue meant to set up Darkseid for a sequel film; he continues to share some impressive images from his own photo sessions during filming; and he’s even revealed some of the DC Comics characters he originally wanted to use.

Upcoming DC Extended Universe films include Aquaman on December 21st, Shazam on April 5, 2019, and Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019.