“Man of Steel” filmmaker Zack Snyder appeared on “Avengers: Endgame” helmer Anthony and Joe Russo’s Pizza Film School podcast and a variety of topics came up between the trio over the course of the chat.
One big topic of discussion was “Justice League” and how, in the wake of the release of “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice” just as “Justice League” began production, there was behind-the-scenes drama with the studio pushing to include more humor due to the success of the Marvel Studios films.
The Snyder-verse is officially over but Snyder released his own version of that DC hero team-up film with “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” which was considerably darker than the theatrical cut that Joss Whedon took over.
Snyder has now spoken about how his and Chris Terrio’s script was originally actually darker than even his own cut of the film that was released:
“What happened with ‘Justice League,’ because we had a very… the original script was much darker and weirder, and then ‘Batman Vs. Superman’ came out, and the studio was like, ‘It’s not funny enough, people want funnier movies, they want funny stuff in it.’
We did go back and did a… lightened the movie overall. I would say my cut of ‘Justice League’ is a sort of in-between… I always preserved some of the more intense stuff that I shot anyway, I thought they would, in retrospect, maybe want anyhow – making sure, of course, I got what was on the page – but we had this other script.”
Snyder says the original script was more centered around Amy Adams’ Lois Lane character and in one iteration she had become intimate with Batman in the wake of Superman’s death – leading to something of a love triangle. Snyder compared it to a movie when the husband goes off to war and is thought dead so the wife moves on and then the husband suddenly re-appears.
However that idea fell away early as the studio notes came in and says both he and “Argo” screenwriter Terrio aren’t maybe the best writers to make things funnier:
“So we had done the changes for the studio and I’ll be frank, Chris [Terrio] and I are not the funniest guys in the world, we’re not like awesome joke writers – I’m just 100% honest about that [laughs] – and we had Ezra and he’s pretty funny, that was kind of his role, to be the Flash, and be young, and be a little irreverent and in awe of Batman and Superman. He did a great job, and that part was great, but I do think the process – and it’s classic studio Hollywood process – and in their defense, they can only react to what they react to.”
He also spoke about how television rather than movies has been the avenue for far more adventurous storytelling for years now.
Since the rise of the golden age of TV, cable and streaming platforms have been able to develop the kind of long form storytelling films can only dream about, in addition to not having to pander to a wide audience to get their money back in the way films do. Snyder days:
“I think we’re in a real golden age of TV in the sense that TV shows are much better at showing you something that you’ve never seen before, or catching you off balance or making a turn that you didn’t see coming.
‘Euphoria,’ for instance, I was just watching the show [and] it’s just unbelievable. That show shouldn’t exist; it’s so good. And that’s the kind of thing… I watch that show and go, ‘This movie would never get made; this movie can’t exist.’
You could imagine ‘Squid Game’ coming here as a movie; it would be an arthouse [film], maybe. ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Squid Game’ take you to places where you have no idea where you are going or what’s happening, and I think that’s what people want.”
Co-host Joe Russo then interjected with his own take, agreeing with Snyder’s sentiment and adding that it also comes down to a time spent issue:
“Why I think you’re saying TV is now in a golden age is that it is disrupting from a format standpoint. It’s 10 hours of content; it’s eight hours of content. You get a different emotional impact killing a character five hours into a ten-hour story because you’ve spent five hours with that character versus an hour. It’s just different. You’ve assigned more of your time, you have more investment, and when that character goes, you feel it because of that investment.”
The Russo Brothers are getting into television storytelling with their upcoming Amazon Prime series “Citadel” debuting next week, whilst Snyder has his two-part Netflix space opera movies “Rebel Moon” with the first part to release in December.
