The time has come for the DCU to pick a version of Justice League as the official cut of the movie. After considerable re-shuffling behind the scenes at the merged Warner Bros. Discovery, DC Studios has been formed to oversee future DCU movies, with James Gunn and Peter Safran heading the studio. While plans for the DCU's future are being formed, something that has not changed is that the DCU has a huge Justice League problem.
The reshooting of Justice League dealt the DCU a near-fatal blow with its theatrical failure in 2017. The later release of the film's original cut, titled Zack Snyder's Justice League, only made that damage more obvious along with reviving major interest in Snyder's planned Justice League sequels. As DC Studios outlines the franchise's roadmap, the elephant in the room around the Justice League has left one significant imperative, the DCU must unequivocally make clear which version of the movie the franchise will build from.
WB's DC Indecisiveness Has Been A Big Problem
Warner Bros. going back and forth so much on their DC plans has been the bane of the franchise for years. In Justice League, Henry Cavill's poorly hidden mustache made the extent of the reshoots and studio meddling plainly visible, but the problem continued with the post-Justice League DCU drifting from film to film without any overarching plan. This was an issue that not even the release of the Snyder Cut was able to change at the time, with WB dismissing the movie as “a storytelling cul-de-sac”.
The studio offered no comparable plan in its place, with even Superman being left by the wayside until The Rock’s last-minute efforts were able to secure a Henry Cavill cameo in Black Adam. Even DC movies outside of the DCU like Todd Phillips Joker have seen WB reticent to put significant support behind them, despite Joker going on to become a $1 billion hit. Henry Cavill returning as Superman and the mapping of a DC Bible by DC Studios indicates this issue is finally subsiding, but there are other loose ends.
The Justice League Mistake Continues To Haunt DC
Belying the dead-end WB’s previous regime claimed the Snyder Cut was, the story of both it and the theatrical cut continue to linger over the DCU as a franchise. In the case of the latter, the toxic work environment of the reshoots would also become just one of many claims of abusive behind-the-scenes practices at Warner Bros. prior to the Discovery merger.
Ray Fisher’s assertions of abusive conduct by Joss Whedon during the reshoots resurfaced in Whedon’s first public comments on the matter in an early 2022 interview with Vulture. Joss Whedon’s very negatively received responses to the allegations leveled by Fisher, Gal Gadot, and other individuals only served to bring the topic of 2017’s Justice League debacle back into the public eye nearly five years after the reshoots took place. Fisher’s dismissal as the DCU’s Cyborg (due to his dispute with former DC Films head Walter Hamada) also remains unresolved, and further highlights how long the fallout of 2017’s Justice League has continued to rain on WB.
The Snyder Cut Highlights WB's Old Problems With DC
When Zack Snyder’s Justice League was released in 2021, it was greeted with a far more positive response than its 2017 counterpart. The cliffhanger ending of Zack Snyder's Justice League and Snyder’s revealed plans for his Justice League sequels also won significant support for his story to be concluded, even drawing 1.5 million #RestoreTheSnyderVerse tweets in one day. Even outside of the drive for Snyder’s arc to be seen through, the Snyder Cut’s existence is a monument to the mishandling of the DC IP by Warner Bros. old regime.
The general assessment of the Snyder Cut is that it is the superior version of Justice League, which leaves WB’s hurried attempt at course correcting from Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as looking like a bigger mistake than ever. With the added PR problem of the abusive behind-the-scenes conditions on the Justice League reshoots, the 2017 version of the film betrays a slew of bad decision-making on the part of Warner Bros. Moreover, WB's efforts to escape the Snyder Cut's impact immediately after its release did not help public perception of the situation, and it is a problem that the newly formed DC Studios can finally put to bed.
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DC Studios has a lot of work to do in streamlining the path of the DCU after the studio’s past mishandling. The return of Henry Cavill’s Superman along with the growing rumors of a return for Ben Affleck’s Batman seems to be starting things off on the right foot. Even still, DC Studios must also finally shed the storyline ambiguity the DCU has waded through for years, itself a direct result of the mistake of abandoning Zack Snyder's vision through the retooling of Justice League.
The positive reception to and world-building of Zack Snyder’s Justice League alone make it the best choice for selecting the version to be considered canon, while the behind-the-scenes problems on the 2017 Justice League add more weight to that. The theatrical cut of Justice League came to be through what is widely regarded as sordid circumstances with nothing but terrible stories endured by the cast and crew. All of these factors significantly dis-incentivizes DC Studios from adhering to Justice League’s theatrical cut, and actively declaring Zack Snyder’s Justice League as taking its place in the DCU Bible would re-instill significant public goodwill.
Though the DCU is recovering from Whedon's Justice League, it took a half-decade to get to that point. While DC Studios is showing exciting potential for the DCU's future, the vague foundation of the Justice League being nebulously formed in the past simply cannot be sustained any longer. It is time for the DCU to settle at last which version of Justice League it is going to canonize, and everything favors Zack Snyder's Justice League being the choice to go with.
