Zack Snyder is the director we remember from Man of Steel. His status as a visual storyteller is legendary in the online geek community. He has shown great movie making with movies like 300. This was the reason the fandom was so excited when he made his way into the DC extended universe. People expected a great overarching story that would have blown their minds. This is what we got with Man of Steel. Zack started to flex his world-building muscles with the first movie in the DC extended universe and then created a lot of hype with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. The second movie, however, did not do that much to please the studio executives who thought that Zack was taking things to a place where they did not want the franchise to go. At this point, Zack’s plans for the DC extended universe were rolled over by the studio in favor of the lighter tone. But with the advent of the Snyder Cut, we get more information every day about what the DC extended universe could have been.
The DC multiverse is a place where Grimm realities come face to face with the world of fantasy. Powerful god-like heroes serves to protect us while also trying to deal with their personal lives. Zack Snyder had a vision of how to create this world and how to engage the audience with it. He wanted the first hero to be developed to be Superman. He has said it before that the original superman movies are some of his favorites and Snyder wanted to create a story that even Superman could be proud of. To do this he originally planned to develop the character of Clark Kent into Superman over the course of five movies. Man of Steel was supposedly only the first step on the journey. Superman’s status as the savior of this world is well developed at the end of the movie but real fans know that the classic Superman has always been much more about than just saving the world. Snyder wanted Clark to have a reason to be that virtuous, to be Superman.
He originally planned to introduce us to the potential of the character in the first movie and then develop from thereon. It was the idea that Superman would only be Superman when he has sufficient reason. The original road to classic Superman was 5 movies long, starting with Man of Steel, then BvS, then Justice League (Snyder Cut), then Man of Steel 2, and Justice League 2. This ensemble of movies would have given us the Superman we can trust. A Superman who has saved us more times than we can count and who does what he does because he is a good person.
The substantiated core values of the character were imperative to his world-building. But the studio had other plans and they railroaded Zack Snyder and threw him out of the studio. It was a big mistake because, without Zack Snyder, the entire project came out as a chimera of what it was supposed to be and what the executives wanted it to be. Ultimately, serving neither side whatsoever.
With the announcement of the Snyder Cut and editing underway, we are now getting more and more information about what the Snyder Cut could have been. Even with #savethesnyderverse trending on Twitter it has still been impossible for the audience to change the minds of those at Warner Bros. Although Zack Snyder himself has not been shy enough to share his Vision. Recently, he had this to say:-
“In the end, the idea is that or what I had planned is that, you know, the sort of final step of Superman is his real return or his real sort of coming into the classic Superman. We don’t really get it in [Justice League].”
It would have been quite endearing to see Henry Cavill take the mantle of classic Superman, who was ready to save all of us at the drop of a hat. It would have been amazing to see him realize his true potential. Alas! This would never happen now.
