An Honest Trailer for a Director’s Cut that none of us have ever seen? Yes. And it’s perfect.
This may have been an April Fools’ Day joke on Honest Trailers’ part, but they did an excellent job. In less than five minutes, they’ve managed to explain—and poke many, many holes—in some fans’ obsession with “the Snyder cut” of Justice League. They do this in a light-hearted fashion that had me laughing out loud throughout.
As a dedicated, and oft-disappointed fan of many things, I understand the motivation behind #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, even if I have no investment in this particular cause. People were rightfully disappointed with the Justice League that made it to the big screen. So if you’re a fan of the Justice League in DC Comics and other adaptations, I get wanting to keep the hope alive that somehow, somewhere, there is an awesome version of Justice League that exists. And if you’re also a fan of director Zack Snyder’s prior work in the DCEU, this is doubly the case.
It must’ve been the meddling of Warner Bros. and Joss Whedon (who was brought on to punch up the dialogue and finish the reshoots and post-production after Snyder stepped aside due to family tragedy) that turned Snyder’s original vision into what we received onscreen. Otherwise Justice League surely would have featured the storytelling chops of Man of Steel (56% on Rotten Tomatoes) and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (28% on Rotten Tomatoes) before it. That last point is, unfortunately, where “Snyder cut” momentum falls apart for me.
There is a full-blown Snyder Cut Movement at this point, still so active that Zack Snyder commented on its efforts just yesterday. The movement in and of itself is a positive force, raising money for suicide prevention and banding folks together towards a common goal. But there’s no denying that “the Snyder cut” has attained a sort of mythical status at this point. It’s difficult to imagine that any movie could meet the expectations that have been placed on this theoretical film.
“The Snyder cut” is an unobtainable ideal onto which fans project hopes and dreams. Chances are that we likely will get to see the Snyder cut eventually, whatever its true form may be. But until then, we have Honest Trailers’ entertaining April Fools’ Day entry into the fray.
Honest Trailers does an incredible job in regards to the mythologized cut, ribbing its outsize expectations. “From the studio who’s so cheap they won’t even pay off critics like Marvel clearly does,” Honest Trailers begins, “and the director single-handedly keeping Vero relevant, comes the most incredible alternate version of a film since Colin Trevorrow’s Star Wars. Jodorowsky’s Dune, and the butthole cut of Cats, COMBINED, Justice League: The Snyder Cut.”
They continue, “But when [Justice League] wasn’t great, fans knew the version they saw was the watered-down result of a vast conspiracy … Now, this righteous crusade has borne fruit into a cut that doesn’t just make Justice League into a good movie, it transforms it into THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE.”
“Settle in for a film that fixes every plothole in the theatrical release, by having all of the possible plots at once: adding in a young Darkseid origin story, a B-story where Cyborg travels to our past to save the future, an extended role for Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, another Batfleck CrossFit scene—in fact, everyone gets a CrossFit scene!”
And perhaps my favorite line of the whole bit: “Also featuring the restoration of Wonder Woman’s original mustache, Black Suit Superman, Black Steel Superman, a heartfelt apology from the cast of Ghostbusters 2016, and Alfred reading his favorite parts of Atlas Shrugged to the team over their communicators.”
Where would this leave us, in the end? “All resulting in a film longer than Titanic, but is so definitive it shuts the door on comic book movies forever. Sorry, Disney. That’s a wrap on the whole genre. We’re done here.”
Honest Trailers goes on to point out that the Snyder cut hubbub “showed an entire generation that you could gang-tweet your dreams into existence” to the point where Justice League stars are also tweeting out the hashtag. The power of the Internet really is something.
While I enjoyed this fun trailer for an as-yet nonexistent film, my gentle suggestion to the Snyder cut faithful would be to venture into the world of fan-made works. Many of us have spent decades creating fanfiction, fan art, and fan videos of our own with the spin or result we wish we’d seen from a disappointing primary work. That’s the only way I know for sure to make your dreams of what a movie should have been a reality.
(via Honest Trailers, image: Warner Bros.)
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Published: Apr 14, 2020 04:14 pm