More than two years after its release, Justice League continues to be discussed with much fervor among various DC Comics fans, namely for how the theatrical cut differs from director Zack Snyder’s original vision for the movie, i.e. The Snyder Cut. One of the more recent topics of discussion on that front concerns the size of Batman’s iconic lair, The Batcave. Take a look:
We first ventured into the DC Extended Universe’s Batcave in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and since Bruce Wayne kicked off the efforts to form the Justice League, naturally his hideout was revisited for the superhero team’s 2017 movie. However, as noted by Instagram user thejackaldream, the Batcave in Justice League is much bigger than Zack Snyder intended it to be.
Per one of Zack Snyder’s many Vero posts talking about in time on Justice League, he had the Batcave and the abandoned Wayne aerospace hangar being two separate locations, as there’s no room in the former location to place Batman’s newest aircraft, The Flying Fox. Evidently Joss Whedon decided to ignore that architectural aspect, because as you can see while Barry Allen, a.k.a. The Flash, is zooming around and geeking out about Batman’s tech, the Batcave and hangar are connected.
Evidently Bruce made more use of the land on the Wayne Manor estate for their crimefighting endeavors in Joss Whedon’s cut of Justice League. It’s one thing to fit the Batcave underground, but an entire aircraft hangar?! And if you look at the part where the heroes are within the hangar itself, the only thing indicating it and the Batcave are next to each other is Barry operating at super speed. If that we didn’t see that blue streak, then you can easily envision that the hangar is in an entirely different location.
This is just one of the many changes made to Justice League when Joss Whedon (who had already come aboard to rewrite some scenes) was overseeing reshoots. It was reported that Whedon and the postproduction team shot approximately 80 script pages worth of new material, and when the theatrical cut was finally assembled, only around 10% of Zack Snyder’s footage was still in there, according to Fabian Wagner, the director of photography.
Justice League ended up underperforming both critically and commercially, resulting in not only Zack Snyder’s sequel plans being set aside, but the entire creative direction of the DCEU shifting to focus more on individual stories rather than interconnectivity like the MCU has been doing.
This also ended up being the final appearance of Ben Affleck’s Batman, because while The Batman was originally intended to be a platform for that version of the Caped Crusader, Affleck officially hung up the cape and cowl at the start of 2019. Taking his place is Robert Pattinson, who will play a brand-new iteration of Batman rather than be a younger version of Affleck’s Bruce Wayne.
With a new Batman mythology comes new ways of interpreting the source material, and which means that just like how we’ll be seeing a new Bat-Signal, presumably we’ll also venture into a new Batcave as well. However, since Robert Pattinson’s Batman is still early into his crimefighting career, we can reasonably assume that he doesn’t have his own hangar set up next door.
Robert Pattinson will be joined in The Batman by Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as Riddler, Colin Farrell as Penguin, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gil Colson and Jayme Lawson as Bella Reál. Matt Reeves is directing the feature and he co-wrote the script with Mattson Tomlin.
As for The Snyder Cut, while the fan demand to see Zack Snyder’s original vision of Justice League is higher than ever since the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement launched shortly after the movie’s release, Warner Bros still has no plans to release this version on home media, the forthcoming HBO Max, etc. Snyder Cut fans have also raised a lot of money for charity in their efforts to persuade Warner Bros to give the masses access to this alternate Justice League.
While the theatrical cut of Justice League came in at exactly two hours, The Snyder Cut clocks in at 214 minutes, i.e. almost three and a half hours. It would take a long time to detail all the ways these two versions differ from one another, but among the notable features of the Snyder Cut include Wonder Woman killing Steppenwolf, Harry Lennix’s General Swanwick being revealed as Martian Manhunter and Steppenwolf’s master Darkseid actually getting some screen time rather than only being mentioned once.
It’s also been mentioned numerous times that when Zack Snyder boarded the DCEU, he had a five-movie saga in mind, so there were two movies left to complete that goal. Had the Justice League sequels moved forward, among the things we reportedly would have seen were Batman dying, one of the Green Lanterns becoming an important player and Bruce Wayne’s Knightmare being re-explored, with Justice League 3 specifically being set in that post-apocalyptic reality.
Perhaps Warner Bros will eventually change its mind and release the Snyder Cut, but as mentioned earlier, the course of the DCEU has already shifted. Along with a new Batman, there are no immediate plans (if any at all) for Henry Cavill and Ray Fisher to reprise Superman and Cyborg, respectively. Where the Man of Steel is concerned, there have been rumblings that he could be rebooted again.
And while Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman are still trudging along, with Ezra Miller’s Flash soon following, they’re off doing their own thing rather than setting the pieces in place for another team-up. It’s even unclear if the New Gods movie being helmed by Ava DuVernay will tie back to the Fourth World mythology from Justice League or start from scratch again. All this being said, there’s no shortage of DC movies on the way in the coming years, it’s just that the DCEU is going down a new path.
Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more DC movie news, and find out what’s in development on that front with our handy guide besides The Batman, which swoops into theaters on June 25, 2021. You can also plan out what to see this year with our 2020 release schedule.
