In building the DCEU, Zack Snyder laid the foundation for significant cosmic elements that would have really kicked off in his original version of Justice League. Following Snyder’s departure from the film in the wake of a family tragedy, Justice League went through significant reshoots, with the version of that was released into theaters massively diverging from what Snyder had intended. With the two-year anniversary of the movie’s theatrical debut arriving this Sunday, the push for the release of the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League shows every indication of continuing for the foreseeable future.
In fact, the past few weeks have seen a massive jump in mainstream attention for the idea of a completely different version of Justice League existing. Specifically, a recent series of interviews with Jesse Eisenberg, Junkie XL, and Jason Momoa revealed new details about Snyder’s cut of the movie and gavethe campaign for its release a major boost in media coverage. The issue continued to snowball from there as Snyder himself, along with other cast and crew members, began dropping more never-before-seen images from the Snyder Cut online, with Jason Momoa’s in particular making a huge impact with what it revealed of the original ending for Justice League.
As interest in the Snyder Cut being released continues to grow, it has also brought significant attention to not only how different Snyder’s original version of Justice League was from the theatrical cut, but also of what his further plans for the franchise consisted of. As it turns out, Zack Snyder’s vision for the DCEU was meant to make extensive use of cosmic adversaries and world-ending threats in the aftermath of Justice League. Not only is this something which can be clearly inferred from what is factually known about the Snyder Cut, but a look back on Snyder’s previous DC films, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, also makes clear that he was planting the seeds of the cosmic bedrock of the DCEU from day one.
The DCEU’s Origin Was Cosmic
While Batman v Superman marks the point where the shared cinematic universe aspect of the DCEU truly began, Man of Steel was nevertheless the first chapter of the franchise, and demonstrates that the DCEU was heavily cosmic from the beginning, while proving controversial in aspects of its third act. In its opening prologue, Man of Steel focuses on General Zod’s failed military coup of Krypton as the planet faces impending destruction. It also introduces the plot device of the codex, which Jor-El bonds with his son’s DNA in order for the Kryptonian race to live on after their home planet’s destruction. With General Zod and his followers banished to the Phantom Zone, Krypton’s doom is sealed with the planet exploding, while Kal-El’s ship rockets the infant Kryptonian to Smallville.
From there, Man of Steel follows the Last Son of Krypton’s journey of discovering his extraterrestrial origins, before progressing into an alien invasion film. General Zod and the surviving Kryptonian warriors arrive on Earth in pursuit of the codex that Kal-El carries, with the goal of terraforming Earth into a New Krypton and repopulating their race with the Kryptonian DNA held within the codex. After Superman stops General Zod’s plan (with the latter’s death by Superman’s hands being hotly debated to this day), the world now exists in a new status quo, one where an alien with the power of a god lives among mankind. With Man of Steel leaning so heavily into the cosmic aspect of the DC Universe, the subsequent movies Zack Snyder had planned would expound upon that in a major way.
The DCEU’s Biggest Threats Were All Cosmic
While Man of Steel had introduced humanity to the existence of aliens in a singular world-changing event, Batman v Superman would do the inverse, placing its focus on the ramifications of the Kryptonian invasion and Superman’s presence on Earth. The major conflict would center on a much darker version of Bruce Wayne than audiences had seen before, brought to his lowest point by twenty years of tragedy and hardship as Batman, who immediately suspects the worst of the Kryptonian refugee and takes steps to destroy him. Ultimately, Superman sacrificing his life to stop the rampaging Kryptonian monster Doomsday would lead Batman to realize the error of his ways and reawaken his own stalwart heroism, along with spurring him to form the Justice League with Wonder Woman after discovering the existence of other metahumans.
However, Batman v Superman still worked in a considerable amount of cosmic elements into its story. The film’s Knightmare sequence foretold a coming invasion from Apokolips, with Darkseid’s Omega symbol emblazoned in the desert floor clearly establishing him as the major force of evil threatening Earth, along with Superman having joined forces with Apokolips in this reality. Lex Luthor would also create Doomsday in the Kryptonian scout ship from the corpse of General Zod, while his later meeting with Steppenwolf in the scout ship (removed from the theatrical version but included in the Ultimate Edition) and his warning that “He’s hungry, he’s found us, and he’s coming!” would set up the Apokolips invasion as the major conflict to come. While these story points were still built upon in the theatrical cut of Justice League, it is now abundantly clearly that Zack Snyder’s version of the film utilized cosmic elements much more extensively, and set up the DCEU to continue to do so in the future.
How Cosmic Did Snyder Plan For The Justice League Sequels To Be?
Zack Snyder had big plans for the DCEU to tell a cosmic-scale story post-Justice League, which can be seen upon analysis of his prior DC films and what is currently known about the Snyder Cut. The theatrical cut of Justice League retained Steppenwolf, Parademons, and Mother Boxes, with the latter feeding directly into the origin of Cyborg himself (described by Snyder as the “heart” of his version of the film.) Meanwhile, Snyder’s cut also included Darkseid in a role akin to that of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, along with an appearance by his master torturer Desaad, the two respectively played by Ray Porter and Peter Guinness. Taken in its totality, Snyder’s vision for the movie would serve to set up the DCEU to further explore the New Gods and the Fourth World in the future. Additionally, Snyder’s version of Justice League would have also primed the team to expand in Justice League 2, and done so with characters of a cosmic nature.
Specifically, the recent news that Snyder intended for General Swanwick, played in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman by Harry Lennix, to be revealed as a disguised Martian Manhunter in his cut of the movie would doubtlessly have set him up to join the Justice League in the sequel. Additionally, the history lesson features the Green Lantern Yalan Gur being killed by Steppenwolf, with his Power Ring then flying off to find a successor. This would definitively establish the Green Lantern Corps as existing within Snyder’s DCEU, which in turn would immediately open the door for Hal Jordan or John Stewart to join the Justice League as the franchise progressed (with a Green Lantern Corps movie having also been announced as part of the DCEU slate at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con.) Although the story of Snyder’s planned Justice League follow-ups would have been Earth-based, all of these story points make clear that Snyder had not only injected major cosmic DNA into the early days of the DCEU, but that he intended to take a deep dive into them with Justice League and its planned follow-ups.
With the surge in media coverage the Snyder Cut has begun seeing, the issue has grown into much more of a mainstream topic as more and more people directly connected to the movie have begun vocally supporting its release. With even Ray Fisher adding to the conversation by releasing a new image of Victor Stone this past weekend, the overall explosion of chatter surrounding the Snyder Cut demonstrates that public interest in its release is unambiguously increasing. However, as the demand for Snyder’s original cut of the superhero ensemble continues to steadily rise, even a cursory reading of his past DC films and confirmed information about his version of Justice League illustrates that he had major plans for the cosmic side of the DCEU.
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