#We’veseenthesnydercut (kind of)
As clamour grows for Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League, empire’s chris Hewitt’s on-set experience hints at what it might look like
I don’t know if the Snyder Cut — the great white whale of superhero movies — exists. But if it does, I know of at least one scene that could feature in it.
It was August 2016, and I was in Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire to watch Zack Snyder and his amazing friends shoot a scene for Justice League, the mega-money follow-up to Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which was all set to introduce dc’s answer to The Avengers and the biggest supergroup since Fleetwood Mac recruited neil Finn.
the scene was a playful one, in which the members of the League (Ben Affleck’s Batman, Gal Gadot’s wonder woman, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, Ezra Miller’s the Flash and Ray Fisher’s Cyborg) returned to the Batcave — dark, gothy, coalmine chic — via elevator and were greeted by Jeremy Irons’ Alfred. over the course of the day, I watched as Snyder and his cast shaped and evolved the scene. By the end, there were bits of business for everyone: Irons tried out a variety of lines about making tea; Momoa called Alfred a “badass”; and Miller, the spiky comic relief of the group, described the Batcave as “luxury spelunking”.
Just over a year later, in november 2017,
I sat down to watch Justice League. Much had changed since my day on set. Snyder, following the tragic death of his 20-year-old daughter Autumn, had departed the project, to be replaced by Joss whedon. Snyder retained directorial credit on the finished movie, but rumours were rife that huge chunks of the film had been reshot. which certainly seemed to have been the case. the Justice League still returned to the Batcave, but it had been rewritten, reshot, restructured beyond all recognition. there was still a bit where the Flash gads about, but otherwise it was a stilted, stagey affair set against a digital rendering of the Batcave that made it look like an Amazon warehouse. there was no spelunking here, luxury or otherwise. Alfred was conspicuous by his absence.
whedon has remained tightlipped about the film, so his reasons for completely reworking that scene, and, presumably, many others, are open to speculation. As does the existence of the Snyder Cut. Even as the film opened, rumours buzzed about — mainly propagated by hardcore Snyder fans — of an epic Snyderauthored edit. one that deviated substantially from the film warner Bros. released. one that included a cameo from Green Lantern. one that was 214 minutes long.
whether it actually existed or not, the #Releasethesnydercut fan-driven campaign doing the rounds on social media gained ground. things bubbled along until early november of this year when, in the space of a few hours, Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa and
Ben Affleck all tweeted the hashtag. And suddenly the supercat had been set among the superpigeons.
warner Bros., for their part, have poured cold water on any potential release. does it exist? I’m now convinced that it does, but to what degree remains to be seen. the film’s credited cinematographer, Fabian wagner, claimed in a recent Q&A that the theatrical release was “10 per cent of what we shot; everything else is a reshoot”. would even a 90-per-cent-finished Snyder Cut be a better movie than the released version, and more of a piece with the DCEU? Perhaps one day we’ll find out. And I’ll be more interested than most, if only to see which Jeremy Irons one-liner made the cut.