The Snyder Cut of Justice League was supposed to change everything — but it still stands alone

Five years ago, the Snyder Cut felt like a movement. Now, it's just a memory.

The road to Zack Snyder’s Justice League begins with a tragedy. In the aftermath of his daughter’s death by suicide, DC Extended Universe architect Zack Snyder relinquished his directing duties on the crossover tentpole. Warner Bros. tapped Avengers director Joss Whedon to finish the job; he delivered a glossy, quippy superhero movie that was a far cry from the moody, visually striking DCEU films that had preceded it. When Justice League debuted in 2017 to brutal reviews and a relatively modest box office haul, Snyder fans almost immediately began to demand a new version of the movie as its original director intended.

And so, a hashtag was born. For the next few years, Snyder’s supporters (and, as we later learned, a lot of Twitter bots) bombarded the internet with demands that Hollywood #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. Those fans did more than just tweet. They purchased billboards in Times Square and at Comic Con, and raised over $500,000 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. However, they also harassed a lot of people online. Anyone brazen enough to criticize the Snyder Cut movement was met with endless, anonymous vitriol.

When Zack Snyder’s Justice League was finally announced in May 2020 as a streaming exclusive for the newly launched HBO Max, fans were overjoyed. A little less than a year later, Snyder delivered a mostly satisfying director’s cut.

Was it overly long and indulgent? Sure. But the addition of a Darkseid to replace the lackluster villain Steppenwolf was a definite improvement. And new footage filmed to create an epilogue in a dystopian future where Batman and the Joker team up against a tyrannical Superman gave audiences a taste of where Snyder once envisioned his story was headed.

In the immediate wake of the Snyder Cut’s long-anticipated release, two things seemed possible, if not downright probable. First, the director would return to the franchise he created and #FinishTheSnyderVerse, as fans soon began to demand. And second, this was just the beginning of a wave of director’s cuts from filmmakers who had been chewed up and spit out by the superhero-movie-industrial complex.

Neither of those possibilities became reality. Snyder was sidelined when Warner chose James Gunn to reshape the DC Universe, recasting the original Justice League heroes in the process as a final nail in the SnyderVerse coffin. Somewhat more surprisingly, the Snyder Cut never launched a movement of similar releases. Even Suicide Squad director David Ayer’s extremely public efforts to get his own director’s cut never amounted to anything. (Personally, I’m still waiting for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to release their cut of Solo: A Star Wars Story, although the duo has clearly moved on.)

Five years after Zack Snyder’s Justice League landed on HBO Max at the height of a global pandemic, Hollywood has mostly moved on, too. (Even if Snyder himself can’t help but fuel the flames with the occasional social media post or interview soundbite.) Reboots and legacy sequels continue to dominate the industry, while director’s cuts have resumed their old perch as a curiosity reserved for cinephiles and physical media collectors.

The Snyder Cut’s legacy, if it has one at all, is that it remains one of a kind. Hopefully, it stays that way.