The Justice League Director’s Cut is coming next month and Zack Snyder is ensuring that the hype levels are as high as is humanly possible. Over the course of the week, he’s been tweeting images from the movie, including a trio of posters that revealed the release date and stills of Ray Fisher’s Cyborg and Jared Leto’s Joker. His latest landed yesterday and is an intriguing and moody black and white image of the Knightmare Batman (see below).
This version of the Caped Crusader appeared in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice during Bruce Wayne’s extended premonition/dream of the future. Here the world is in ruins, with a trench-coated and desperate Dark Knight one of the last heroes standing against a corrupted Man of Steel. There are strong hints that this is Earth in the grip of Apokalyptian New God Darkseid, too, and the scenes provide the motivation for Batman to fight Superman to prevent this dark reality from happening.
So, is Snyder posting this image now an indication that we’re going to return to the Knightmare in the Snyder Cut? Perhaps, and fans are theorizing that this is where we meet Leto’s Joker, who appears to have longer hair in the fuzzy image the director previously shared.
We’re promised a full-on R-rated DC comics epic with the Justice League Director’s Cut and at a colossal four hours long, it’s going to take us to some weird and wonderful places. Perhaps the only thing we can be certain of is that it’ll be vastly different from the awful theatrical cut, which reportedly only contained about 20% of Snyder’s original footage. The director is sure to post more pictures over the next few weeks, too, so keep an eye on his social media pages for clues as to what’s being served up next month.
Justice League Director’s Cut will release on HBO Max on March 18th, 2021.