Earlier on Saturday (Aug. 22), director Zack Snyder beefed with Forbes film critic Scott Mendelson after the latter apparently saw a leaked copy of the trailer for the Snyder Cut of Justice League, ahead of its premiere at the DC FanDome event (a copy of the trailer made its way online that morning).
Mendelson opined on Twitter, “So, that trailer for the Snyder Cut of Justice League looks like… the same movie? Lots of deleted scenes from the marketing campaign but otherwise it looks like alternate takes of existing scenes.”
Snyder, apparently referring to remarks Mendelson had made about the original theatrical cut of the movie — significant portions of which were written and directed by Joss Whedon — came at Mendelson immediately, tweeting, “You said you enjoyed the theatrical cut of Justice League like you enjoy your Saturday morning cartoons… Well this is made for grownups, so you’re not in the demographic. Also, cool of you to comment on a leaked teaser.”
To which Mendelson shot back, “All due respect why do you keep presuming I’m your enemy? Not every comment is ‘thing good’ or ‘thing bad.’”
The exchange unleashed the floodgates for a firestorm of tweets alternately supporting and criticizing both men, along with the yet-to-be-seen Snyder cut. The director himself has alluded that the film will be a darker experience along the lines of his two previous films in the DC universe, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Snyder stepped away from Justice League during the latter stages of production due to a family tragedy, with Warner Bros. Pictures enlisting Whedon to rewrite and reshoot swaths of the movie in addition to completing its editing and post-production. Speculation runs rampant to this day whether the studio used Snyder’s departure as a way to take the film off his hands and retool it to compete with the lighter, more humorous fare of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Either way, a cult of fans convinced that a Snyder cut of the film existed began to campaign for its release not long after the theatrical cut’s disappointing run on theaters, despite the fact that fans all along were mixed in their responses to Snyder’s previous DC efforts.
While the “Snyder Cut” didn’t officially exist, the clamor and Snyder’s own campaigning on social media finally prompted Warner Bros. to give him a reported $30 million to recreate his version of the film, which is scheduled to debut on HBO Max next summer.