For years now, Snyder has claimed that Marvel veteran Joss Whedon and the suits over at Warner Bros. are to blame for the lousy cut of Justice League that we saw in theaters and collector’s editions. And while we can neither confirm nor deny this is a truth or falsehood, all the blunders of the DCEU reek of Snyder’s stink all over it (along with David Ayer and his version of Suicide Squad, but we will talk about that in a moment). Now, Snyder is taking a card from Ayer’s deck and bringing in Jared Leto’s Joker into the reshoots coming exclusively to the HBO Max streaming service.
THR is reporting that Leto is coming back to some reshoots of the “Snyder Cut”, which doesn’t really make sense considering that the reshoots completely contradict an already existing cut, but I digress. This whole thing leaves us confused as Leto’s role in Suicide Squad was not only controversial, but one of the many critical aspects of the otherwise panned and shunned movie. It was so bad, in fact, that James Gunn had to step in and literally reboot the movie, which has lead to director David Ayer claiming now as well that the version of the Suicide Squad we saw back in 2016 was not his original cut either. So, okay. When you make a movie and it bombs, I guess you get to just crap all over the studios and executives who financed the movie and demand to remake the whole thing. Makes sense.
Not too long ago Snyder released a trailer showing the progress so far for his new cut of the 2017 DC cinematic failure and it looks… just as Snyder-ified as the original and doesn’t really show any sort of nuance or groundbreaking improvement as Snyder is trying to make it seem. Honestly, I don’t know who was asking for this movie, or who is waiting to sign up for HBO Max when the movie is done, but there really seems to be a lot of bank going toward financing these reshoots with reports claiming anywhere from $30m – to $70m, which is about a quarter of the budget as the original movie. I am not sure how he can claim that this is the Snyder Cut when he is literally reshooting such a massive chunk of the movie and bringing in actors and characters that were literally never in the original. More like Snyder Remaking Snyder but what do I know.
Most of the cast of Justice League is returning for reshoots with a handful of new faces and villains (like Darkseid and Joker), and even heroes with the teaser that Martian Manhunter will be appearing in it. Again, this isn’t exactly a cut so much it is as an entire reboot after Synder failed to impress fans the first time. That said, what I would like to add, if I could give any advice to Zack Snyder, is this; if you want to remake your movie, you certainly have no way to go but up. However, you probably don’t want Jared Leto’s Joker in any sort of role unless you intentionally want to bring it back down again.
Zack Snyder’s “Snyder Cut”, or more officially titled “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is coming exclusively to HBO Max on September 5, 2021. Again, even that name bothers me considering that Snyder’s name is all over the original movie posters and marketing material with Joss Whedon pretty much left off of all of it. On the other hand, you can’t blame Joss for trying to distance himself from such a massive dumpster fire of a movie. Now all we have to do is wait and see if the Snyder Remake is any better than the original, but we aren’t holding our breath. We just hope that HBO doesn’t throw millions at David Ayer to remake the Suicide Squad. No amount of money is worth reliving that nightmare.
