There was a lot of talk for many years about Darkseid appearing in Zack Snyder's Justice League, but that proved to all be gossip by the version of the movie that hit theaters in November 2017. While the legendary DC villain was mentioned by name once in the dialogue, he did not actually appear on screen, and instead simply had his bidding performed by Ciarán Hinds' Steppenwolf. Of course, we all know that there are many elements of that blockbuster that never made it to release, and now its director has revealed a big one: young Darkseid, a.k.a. Uxas.
from r/DC_Cinematic
This post comes from the social media service Vero, which Zack Snyder has used frequently to reveal certain details from behind the scenes of his movies. Naturally, this has included discussion about unused aspects of Justice League, and Darkseid specifically. Previously the director has spoken about the actor he would have chosen to play the evil, tyrannical ruler of the planet Apokolips, namely Ray Porter from ER and Justified - but this is the first time he has posted an image of what the character would have looked like on the big screen.
At this point I imagine some of you may be confused by the mention of Uxas and how it relates to Darkseid, so I will clear that up quickly. Uxas was the name that Darkseid was given at birth, living his life as a member of the Apokolips royal family. He was ambitious from a young age, wanting to eventually rule as king, but this was a problematic goal given that his older brother, Drax, preceded him in the line of succession. After years of desiring to kill his sibling, Uxas finally got his chance when Drax was engaged with a connection to the Omega Realm, and he wound up taking power from the extra-dimensional reality instead. After breaking out of a chrysalis that formed around him after this process, he gave himself the "god-name" Darkseid, and began his iron fist rule of his home planet.
"Anti-life" is another term used by Zack Snyder in the post that may be unfamiliar to those who don't know the comics, but it basically sums up Darkseid's ultimate goal. A ridiculously over-the-top control freak, his mission in life to have every being in existence bow to him and follow his every command, and he believes that the key to achieving this is by controlling what is called the Anti-Life Equation - which works by negating will.
Do we wish that this image had Darkseid a little closer up so that we could get a more detailed look? Obviously. It's also hard to say without more information how this might have fit into an alternate version of Justice League that we never got to see, and it's worth noting that the character's appearance may have changed over the course of the movie. At the same time, though, we currently live in an era where we mostly have to take what we can get from behind the scenes due to studio secrecy, so we're not looking the gift horse in the mouth.
Justice League is currently available for consumption in many forms - including Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital - and those ever more curious about what happened during the making of the movie should stay tuned here on CinemaBlend, as we seem to learn new things about it just about every week.
