On March 18th, 2021, the seemingly impossible happened. Four years after Justice League saw its Frankenstein’s monster theatrical cut disappoint audiences all over the world, Zack Snyder’s true vision for it received a much better reaction on HBO Max. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is four straight hours of amazing visuals, captivating action sequences, and, best of all, narrative coherence. Though, as just the middle point of Snyder’s five film plan, it ends up leaving fans wishing it could have continued, considering it clearly hinted that Batman’s Knightmare was going to come true. Like Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Darkseid was going to devastate the world. And, after doing so, heroes and villains alike were going to do all they could to give him is just desserts.
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As we’ve neared this five-year anniversary, Snyder has been hopping on Instagram dropping images of the film’s team: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and The Flash. And, with those images, there’s been a final few choice words here and there that both fit with the tone of his post and arguably serve as a tease for a follow-up.
What Have Snyder’s Social Media Posts Said & Could We Ever Actually Get the Final Two Chapters of His Saga?
Back when Netflix was very much in the running to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, fans of the DCEU were begging the heavens that the streamer would end up funding the final two chapters of Snyder’s quintology. That fell through of course but, let’s face it, even if Netflix had acquired Warner Bros, it was still a pipe dream at best.
Let’s look at the budget of the first Justice League film. After reshoots it came out to a massive $300 million. Naturally, the creative retooling behind-the-scenes elevated the budget to its final figure, but that would be a fair expected price of a Justice League Part II even if the production was a smooth sailing situation. Actors’ quotes typically go up with each subsequent franchise film, after all.
Even still, to this day fans are still hoping for more of this take on DC cinema. We’re in the throes of the rebooted DCU, and it’s going well, but it’s tough to get invested in a film or television IP and then have it all go away without a sense of finality.
The question is, could that itch every be scratched in any way? Snyder’s recent posts ended with phrases like “looking toward what comes next” and “moving forward as one, toward destiny.” Some fans have been dissecting every potential meaning of these words. Are they hints that something is coming in the future, are they intentional teases that will never come to fruition, or are they just in line with the images, which show the team either looking out forward or charging in unison towards battle.
The cold hard truth is that it’s the third of those options. They’re just captions lined up with the contents of the picture. But there is one avenue to a continuation to Zack Snyder’s Justice League that actually makes a lot of sense. Will we receive a pair of $300 million high-risk movies? No. But a comic book sequel? An on-page display of what Snyder had in store for fans could work quite well. He already had the events planned out in detail, so he could certainly collaborate with DC on creating two runs, one for each movie.
Just look at the limited series Batman ’89, which was written by Batman and Batman Returns screenwriter Sam Hamm. That was a far more satisfying itch scratch for fans of the Tim Burton era than Michael Keaton’s appearance in The Flash. It may not have fully made up for the franchise being taken away from Burton and given to Joel Schumacher, but at least it gave devotees a gist of where a third movie from the Edward Scissorhands director could have gone.
At the very least, at least we did get a corrected version of the torn apart theatrical version of this one particular movie. It was hugely disappointing at the time, a clear mess that had its true form hovering somewhere out there yet to be assembled. Even if it’s never followed up, Zack Snyder’s Justice League goes to show that fans’ dreams sometimes come true, and it can work out when they’re listened to.
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