Justice League VFX artist douses hopes for a secret Snyder cut: Its “1,000% bulls#$!”

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A fan petition for a re-cut version (opens in new tab) of Justice League (opens in new tab) hewing to original director Zach Snyder’s vision has gathered nearly 150,000 votes, but a visual effects artist who worked on the film says – hold your horses – no such cut exists. The anonymous VFX artist, whose identity was verified by moderators of the DC Cinematic Universe Reddit forum (opens in new tab), explained the big problem behind that idea.

“[T]he film is found in the edit process, rarely does a director start shooting with the entire film plotted out,” the artist wrote. “Some things work, some things don’t. There is no Snyder cut – obviously he had a rough edit in process when he left in February [note: Snyder officially stepped back in May after a family tragedy in March], but the reshoots were done 6 months after that, he had no final version of the film.

“Yes, Zach would’ve probably done things differently to how the film turned out, but that’s it. There isn’t a secret Zach version hidden somewhere. It doesn’t exist.”

In other words, releasing a “Zach Snyder cut” of Justice League would mean starting over from the beginning to navigate the mix of old and new footage, and any rumors to the contrary are – as the VFX artist wrote in a later post (opens in new tab) – “1,000% bullshit”. Granted, one VFX artist isn’t going to be privy to all the top-level decisions at Warner Bros., but their insight here makes sense.

This doesn’t mean all hope is lost for the petition; down in the FAQ section it calls for a “Richard Donner cut” (referencing the remade version of Superman 2 that was released back in 1980) to be made for Justice League. It could use the existing selection of shot footage to make a different film, all guided by the ideal of releasing a more Snyder-like version. That would be quite a lot of work, though, especially to bring old footage in line from a VFX perspective, making the potential profit margin for WB pretty questionable.

At least they wouldn’t have to worry about removing Superman’s mustache in the old footage (opens in new tab). For more on the plight of DC’s heroes, check out 9 questions we have after watching Justice League (opens in new tab).

Image: Warner Bros.