Zack Snyder: The Justice League Snyder Cut Was “Always a Cyborg Movie”

Cyborg (Ray Fisher) is part man, part machine, but all heart in the Snyder Cut of Justice League — which director Zack Snyder says “was always a Cyborg movie in a lot of ways.” After a cameo appearance in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where S.T.A.R. Labs scientist Silas Stone (Joe Morton) uses an alien Mother Box to turn his gravely injured son Victor (Fisher) into a living machine, Cyborg upgrades to a starring superhero when Fisher’s pared-down role from the 2017 theatrical version is restored in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Snyder has long described Cyborg’s story as “the heart of the movie,” which beats through Victor’s connection to parents Silas and Elinore Stone (Karen Bryson).

“I think the most important thing to get right [in the Snyder Cut] was just the honesty of the movie, and to be honest, with the stuff I wanted to do and my sort of vision for the movie,” Snyder told Entertainment Tonight. “I really wanted to make it as much as uncompromised as I could, and that was the real work we did, was to get back to that January 2017 cut that I had prepared and that now you get to see however many years later.”

In the four-hour director’s cut, Cyborg uses his ability to interact with and manipulate technology to secretly gift a hard-working single mother (Amanda Maud) with a life-changing amount of money. When he unites with the Justice League to save Earth from alien invader Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), Cyborg overcomes his traumatic past when he proudly declares he’s not a man-made monster: “I’m not broken. And I’m not alone.”

Like Cyborg’s previously minimized backstory, these scenes did not appear in the theatrical cut of Justice League completed by Joss Whedon and released into theaters in 2017.

“When [screenwriter] Chris Terrio and I, even from the beginning when we talked about what Justice League would be, it was always a Cyborg movie in a lot of ways because we felt like he’s an incredibly important DC character,” Snyder said. “We knew we had Ray, so we knew we had a solid and amazing actor to flesh out these big, ambitious dreams we had for what Cyborg would do. We were definitely not surprised but overwhelmed by how great he is and how great the character does come out.”

Snyder added: “I couldn’t be happier with his arc and the completion of his story in the movie. It’s really quite satisfying.”

Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Ciarán Hinds, Ray Porter, Joe Manganiello, and Jared Leto, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.