About

Zack Snyder's Justice League, commonly referred to as the Snyder Cut, is the 2021 director's cut of the 2017 American superhero film Justice League. Based on the DC Comics superhero team of the same name, the film follows the efforts of the Justice League as they oppose supervillains Darkseid and Steppenwolf. The announcement and release of Zack Snyder's Justice League followed a massive fan campaign known as "Release the Snyder Cut."

History

Justice League (2017)

In December 2016, principle photography for the then-upcoming film Justice League, initially directed by Zack Snyder, was completed.^[1] Several months later, cuts of the film were shown to Warner Bros. executives, who were unhappy with the result, with insider reports mentioning that Warner Bros. considered the cut "unwatchable."^[2]

On May 27th, 2017, news outlets reported that Zack Snyder decided to step away from the film after his daughter committed suicide, with filmmaker Joss Whedon stepping in.^[3]

On November 17th, 2017, Justice League was released to generally negative reviews and became a box office bomb^[4] despite grossing over $212 million in the first 25 days of domestic release.

Release the Snyder Cut

On November 11th, 2017, Roberto Mata started a Change.org^[5] petition addressed to Warner Bros. to release a Zack Snyder cut of the film. The petition also included a plea to release the original score by Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL), which was replaced by composer Tim Burton ahead of release. Within one week, the petition had received more than 62,000 signatures of 75,000 signature goal, with that number later growing to over 179,100 signatures.

The petition inspired a massive Release the Snyder Cut campaign that continued through 2017 and 2018, spawning multiple viral memes and posts.

On March 25th, 2019, Twitter^[6] user @Woke_master posted a video of Zack Snyder confirming the existence of multiple alternate versions of Justice League). He said, "All I can say is … sure there’s a cut … it’s done. I have a cut. I have a bunch of them. So, it’s not like … that’s up to them [Warner Bros.]" The video received more than 575 retweets and 1,200 likes in less than one week (shown below).

@ZackSnyder confirms that the Snyder Cut is DONE! It was an honor to meet him 🐐 SPREAD THE WORD! #Releasethesnydercut pic.twitter.com/8MtNeR1fXM

— Devin A. Fuerte (@Devin_AF) March 25, 2019

On May 20th, 2020, Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League was officially announced for a future release on HBO Max.^[7]

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

On March 18th, 2021, Zack Snyder's Justice League premiered on HBO Max.^[8] The cut has a running time of 242 minutes (over four hours) and, while keeping the framework of the theatrical version, features dozens of additional scenes, introducing backstories for some characters and other worldbuilding elements. Many CGI effects were replaced, and the film's color palette is less saturated compared to Whedon's version.

Reception

Zack Snyder's Justice League received mixed reviews from critics and a very positive response from the audiences. Within one week from its release, the film has a 73 percent critic rating with over 240 reviews and a 96 percent audience rating with over 25,000 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.^[9] On Metacritic,^[10] the film had a 54 critic rating with 44 reviews and a 9.0 audience rating with over 3,000 reviews. On IMDb,^[11] the film had an average score of 8.3 with over 187,000 votes.

Fandom

After the release, Zack Snyder's Justice League gained significant presence in memes on Twitter and other social media. The main villain Steppenwolf gained particular popularity in memes (examples shown below), with some fans defending his actions, akin to the Thanos Did Nothing Wrong meme.

Search Interest

External References