Zack Snyder's Justice League actor Joe Morton is in favor of more Snyder Cut-style fan campaigns for other films. The long-awaited four-hour cut of the 2017 film hit HBO Max last week amidst a fervor of anticipation, but it wasn't always a guarantee. Prior to the confirmation of its impending release in May 2020, the Snyder Cut had been only whispered about on social media. Stars from Justice League stoked the flames, confirming that a different cut than the theatrical version did, in fact, exist.
Eventually, Warner Bros. began paying attention and decided to let Snyder finish what he started in 2013 with Man of Steel and complete the version of Justice League he had intended to bring to the big screen. The Snyder Cut was originally going to be released as an episodic event, but it was eventually decided that all four hours of the film would be delivered in one long opus that would bring to a conclusion some of the various threads Snyder had been sowing since his early years in the DCEU.
An unprecedented fan campaign like the one that spurred on the Snyder Cut has never happened before, but Morton, who plays Dr. Silas Stone in the film, believes it should be happening more often. The actor tells THR that he thinks studios should take into consideration what fans want to see and use that to guide their filmmaking decisions. Morton compares the process to voting, going on to say that if fans really want to see something, studios should oblige.
The fact that it engendered so much interest that people really pushed on social media to see it, I think that’s how a lot of it should actually work. If the audience says, ‘We really, really, really have heard about this, we really want to see it,’ so much so that the studio says, ‘Alright, I guess we have to put it together and put it out there,’ then I think that’s a great thing. It’s kind of like voting.
While director's cuts themselves aren't unprecedented in the slightest, the Snyder Cut, in particular, represents something wholly unique in that category when considering the various behind-the-scenes problems that plagued the original 2017 Justice League. What sort of precedent the Snyder Cut sets going forward will be determined as time goes on, but Warner Bros. has already said they have no interest in repeating what they did with the Snyder Cut.
Another DCEU film, Suicide Squad, is purported to have an Ayer Cut (named after director David Ayer), but the studio has said that they will not be releasing such a thing. Morton's comments raise an interesting question, though, in terms of how involved fans should be in the process of what studios bring to the big screen. At a time when social media brings fans and creators closer than ever, fans' roles in shaping content have grown in some ways, but, ultimately, it's hard to determine how much they should truly be involved. Zack Snyder's Justice League is a wholly unique event, but how much it will affect the industry going forward remains unclear.
Source: THR
