What Does Justice League's Snyder Cut Victory Mean, Going Forward?

When news broke that Justice League's Snyder Cut is coming to HBO Max, we got pretty heated over the topic on the ComicBook Nation Podcast, with hosts Kofi Outlaw and Matthew Aguilar offering opposing degrees of opinion about the Snyder Cut and what's going on with it. With more developments having been revealed since then, we had to revisit the topic and open it up beyond our opinions to this kind of larger discussion, about what fans' Snyder Cut victor means, going forward, for the industry, and the various fandoms that each want their own "true" versions of recent blockbuster films.

"We gotta talk about the next stage of this," host Kofi Outlaw states, "Which is people have already moved on to other cuts they would like to see. One that was worth acknowledging at least in this discussion is the Suicide Squad Ayer cut. Suicide Squad, it made money. Started of spin-off franchises and established some characters and it had a hit soundtrack, it got an Oscar, but it was by all accounts, not a really great movie and people didn't really like it. But it was also a case where, now as we get further and further away from this and directors are a little bit freer to talk, more and more we begin to hear or just get inferences from Zack Snyder, from David Ayer, about how much the studio kind of stepped in and meddled with their vision and what we got in theaters was this. And David Ayer... He came out and said, 'it exists, it's not hard. I filmed a movie, they basically didn't like it and reshot a bunch of stuff on top of it. All we need to do is go back and they can just literally open the vault, pull out mine, dust up a few things and put it out like it's not hard.' So, this is a real thing, we're not speculating. Do you guys think that this deserves to happen with a "Suicide Squad" Ayer Cut? and do you think doing this and the Snyder cut is a slippery slope or do you think this is just kind of fixing something that was broken by the studio and kind of bringing resolution to it?

Janell Wheeler wants to see more things like Suicide Squad's "Ayer Cut" happen, telling ComicBook Nation: "It could just be like a DC exclusive because DC seems to be the one that wanted to keep having this happen. But I would love more, I want more content, I always do, I don't get tired of this. I want to see it, I'm really excited, everyone. Most of everyone knows that I love Jared Leto... I was so excited to see his take on the Joker... Anything that can express Joker in a new way is fun for me and the more the better, that's how I see it. But yes, it is a slippery slope that you keep having, having to do this. Maybe trust in your original films a little bit more to begin with and you won't have this problem,"

This reminds us of one big point: In the cases of Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad and Justice League, the real culprits for why the films' theatrical cuts went bad, was none other than the studio. As Kofi Outlaw recalls: "It wasn't Zack Snyder and David Ayer who started saying, 'Oh, we're gonna release all these movies. We're coming for Marvel. We have all this stuff in the gate. We got it all... DC movie universe is gonna be crazy. We've got dates. We're dropping dates for Justice League 1. Dates for Justice League 2, Man of Steel 2, Cyborg, Flash. Oh, we got a Flash/Green Lantern movie at one point... Once they got the filmmakers in, the actors, the crew, who were all settled on a vision and went after that vision, it was the studio...that said said, 'nah, nah, nah, we're taking this in and we're cutting it up and we're gonna put out 'Batman v Superman' and that's what we're putting out.' And that wasn't Snyder's movie... and so, I don't think you should have to feel harsh about saying the studio screwed up, because that's the thing that's true about all this. We keep beating up filmmakers, actors, like all this stuff, but if you hate "Batman v Superman" or "Justice League", you hate what Warner Bros. did to those films, first and foremost."

While it's true that Warner Bros. did meddle in the creative vision of the "Snyderverse" era DC movies, Matt Aguilar raises the concern of many fans, who don't believe these new director's cut do-overs will change opinion on the films:

"I'm just torn on how I feel about things being reverted and changed. Whether it was a studio or what. I'm kind of more that person that's just ready to move on to something else. Would I be curious to see "Suicide Squad" on TNT one day, 'cause I'm bored? Sure, am I gonna go to a theater or cue up a streaming thing to watch it? No, I've not watched it since I saw it in the theater and that was good, I'm done. And that's just kinda how I am. The Snyder cut is such a different beast, that yes, I'm just morbidly curious now to see what this Ten Commandments-like epic that Snyder keeps saying he made. I'm curious now, because this movie evidently is eight hours long, I don't know what he was thinking. But as far as the "Suicide Squad" cut, I do feel like sometimes it gets construed as automatically this is going to be better. And I don't necessarily know that in every case that it's gonna be better just because it's the complete vision..."

It's a fair point: Once the Snyder Cut is here, it then has to hold up to all the usual standards of movie criticism. We'll see how that goes. Who knows? could all hold in opposing positions by this time next year, once we've seen it.

Zack Snyder's Justice League streams on HBO Max in 2021.