Throughout the buildup to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the filmmaker made it clear that he wasn’t going to use a single frame of footage shot by Joss Whedon after The Avengers director replaced him at the helm of the DCEU’s all-star epic. In fact, Snyder even admitted that he’d never seen the theatrical edition of the movie, and having been warned against it by both wife and producing partner Deborah and executive producer Christopher Nolan, that didn’t appear as if it would ever change.
Despite the reports that up to 75% of Justice League had been reshot by Whedon under the watchful eye of the Warner Bros. hierarchy, though, there’s a surprisingly large amount of shared footage in the Snyder Cut. Naturally, that’s to be expected when the HBO Max exclusive runs twice as long and hits many of the same plot beats, but it does make you wonder about just how heavily the project was reworked by the studio when Snyder can deliver a sprawling four-hour blockbuster comprised almost entirely of scenes he’d filmed before he left the director’s chair.
Now that his definitive version of Justice League is available for the world to see, drawing much more enthusiastic reviews from critics and dominating the cultural conversation for the last week, the filmmaker admitted in a new interview that he might actually get around to watching the theatrical release one day.
“Because I haven’t seen the theatrical version of the movie, and how it ended up, I was never sure, and I’m sure not, maybe at some point I’ll take a look at it, but I’m still not exactly sure what roles were maybe diminished or removed. I think, of course, number one on the list is Ray Fisher’s Cyborg story being really central to the sort of entire movie.”
Having gained a sense of closure by finally unleashing his unfiltered take on Justice League to the masses, it could be a hugely cathartic experience for Snyder to sit back, watch how the first attempt at the movie played out, and laugh to himself about how it pales in comparison to his.