WHY WE NEED A SNYDER CUT OF Justice League ？ By Ramit （Ice Bear）

When Zack Snyder was asked to direct Man of Steel, he was hesitant. He knew how big of an icon Superman is and that it wouldn’t be easy to do him justice, but he eventually signed on. Snyder, with a script from David Goyer gave us a beautiful, complex and comic-book accurate take on Superman. Man of Steel is now acclaimed as one of the best comic-book movies of all time, with a fresh yet faithful take on Superman, who struggles and questions himself, and is tested to his limits by the film’s villain – General Zod.
The plan was to do another Superman movie after 2013’s Man of Steel, but Warner Bros. wanted to establish a DC Cinematic Universe, which led to 2016’s Batman v Superman instead.
When Snyder decided to do a movie with Batman and Superman, bringing the world’s most iconic superheroes together on-screen for the first time, he wanted to make an epic saga so that the introduction of these iconic DC characters would feel more fleshed out. He centered his trilogy around Superman (Man of Steel – Batman v Superman – Justice League), revolving around the birth, death and rebirth of the Last Son of Krypton.
As BvS neared it’s release, WB executives felt that a 3 hour film would turn off the audience and would decrease the number of daily screenings, resulting in a smaller box-office profit, and 30 minutes from the film were cut. The scenes were essential to the story as they showed Clark Kent’s life as a reporter, finding his place in the world, understanding that every action he takes as Superman will have consequences, trying to prove that the pen is mightier than the sword, investigating the “Bat-vigilante” of Gotham. These scenes helped in understanding the conflict between the film’s titular characters and were essential to the plot. The film opened to negative critical response, although a major portion of the fanbase loved it, and has been defending the film since it’s release. An Ultimate Cut was announced, which included the scenes initially cut from the film. The UC had a better reception, as many critics said they now loved the film and some even apologised to Snyder. The film is still occasionally ridiculed online, but is slowly becoming a cult-classic, much like Snyder’s 2009 film Watchmen.
What fans loved about BvS was how the characters were relatable, that the characters were beaten down but eventually rose to the occasion, and how the universe revolved around Superman. The filmed showed a Bruce Wayne/Batman who had lost his ways, feeling powerless amidst Gods and monsters. To paraphrase Alfred’s quote, the feeling of powerlessness had turned him cruel. Superman’s sacrifice made Bruce see the world in a new light, and Justice League was supposed to be the character’s redemption.
Unfortunately, during the production of JL, Zack Snyder went through a family tragedy. He tried to bury himself in work to ease the pain but eventually decided to leave the film to spend some time with his family. By this time, principal photography for JL was over, and the film was in post-production. WB handed the film over to Joss Whedon, director of Marvel’s The Avengers. Fans were ensured that Joss would strictly follow Zack’s vision for the film, and that the reshoots were minimal. In reality, WB saw this as an opportunity to copy Marvel’s success with their Cinematic Universe. In March 2016, Chris Terrio, the writer of BvS stated that JL would be lighter in tone than BvS, as implied by the film’s sub-title “Dawn of Justice”. But in an attempt to completely rip-off Marvel’s formula, the film was over-injected with forced humour by reshoots, which were ridiculously easy to point out. Apparently the entire third act of the film was changed during reshoots, and Superman was just present there to punch the bad guy, say a couple of cheesy lines and smile. Lois Lane, who had heavy involvement in both Man of Steel and BvS, was reduced to a mere contingency against a rogue Superman and Wonder Woman went through a scene in which The Flash falls face-first on her breasts, similar to what Joss Whedon did in Avengers : Age of Ultron with Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff, and faced backflash for it. Batman, one of DC’s most serious characters was turned into a joke machine, throwing quips left and right. Instead of addressing his killings in BvS, Batman was sorry for not “bringing a sword”. Batman, a man dressed as a bat, with no superpowers, found the time to say “Jesus, he is tall” when Steppenwolf, a New God from the hellish planet Apokolips landed on top of his Knight-crawler. WB tried appealing to fans’ nostalgia when they fired the film’s composer Tom Holkenborg a.k.a. Junkie XL, and hired Danny Elfman, the man responsible for the legendary Batman theme from Batman (1989) and the animated Batman series. Elfman decided to reuse his Batman theme from 1989 and John WIlliams’ theme from the Richard Donner Superman films, instead of using the Superman theme composed by Hans ZImmer for Man of Steel. In an interview, Elfman said he had very little time to work on the film’s score and often had to use storyboards to compose as the film was going through reshoots. This resulted in a mediocre and forgettable score.
Furthermore, the film was reduced to a 2 hour runtime to meet the demands of WB President Kevin Tsujihara, who wanted to squeeze in more screenings to turn a higher profit. Superman’s character arc was significantly reduced, which was one of the main purposes of this film, and something Snyder was very passionate and excited for. Lois and Clark’s engagement was supposed to be addressed, as seen in the film’s final trailer, but that dialogue was changed to Clark feeling “itchy”. Barry Allen/ The Flash and Arthur Curry/Aquaman also suffered as their development  scenes were also cut.  Apparently we were supposed to get a glimpse of Darkseid, but even that ended up getting cut from the film. According to Snyder, Cyborg was supposed to be the heart of the film, depicting the struggle of being half-man half-machine and never really fitting in. Both Snyder and Ray FIsher were very excited about this. Many of Cyborg’s character developing scenes were cut and were later leaked online.
Zack Snyder was robbed of a beautiful and memorable end to his trilogy, just to pander to critics. One thing you can take away whenever you watch a Zack Snyder interview is how passionate he is about his films and these characters. He and the fans were excited to see Superman’s journey, which began with Man of Steel, come to fruition. Drastically changing his film behind his back is both professionally and personally disrespectful. We can only hope that WB listens to the fans and does the right thing. After all, the whole point of Zack’s trilogy is to keep hope alive.
– Ramit