Warner Bros. has a long history of production with the DC Comics superheroes. After starting with on-screen interpretations of Superman and Batman, DC and WB are now at a point where they have visual representation of a wide range of heroes and villains, including Aquaman (Jason Moma), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and multiple Jokers. The studio appears to want to honor its DC legacy with a gigantic display on the side of its new Studio Tour Building in Burbank, California. But it’s the selection of heroes that the studio has chosen that has some Justice League fans upset.
The photo of the new building was captured by L.A. reporter Erick Weber, who shared it on his Twitter feed with the knowledge that the Harry Potter star trio was joining the DC legends. That includes Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman. But because WB chose to include Michael Keaton’s Batman and Christopher Reeve’s Superman, fans of Zack Snyder’s DC choices, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill, saw it as a slight.
This led to online complaints about Warner Bros. actively trying to erase Cavill and Affleck from existence, as if they were Marty McFly’s siblings in a Back to the Future photograph:
This likely isn’t the case. As mentioned above, Warner Bros. has a rich history with the DC characters, and they’re paying tribute to the actors who helped blaze a trail by carrying film franchises in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Without Christopher Reeve and Michael Keaton, DC might not even be where it is today. But Snyder fans didn’t quite see it that way.
And still others took the side of lament, feeling bad for the movies that Zack Snyder will never get a chance to see, merely because Warner Bros. has chosen to go in a different direction than the one that Snyder teased at the end of his Justice League, now streaming on HBO Max.
The SnyderVerse will always go down in the minds of several DC fans as the “What could have been?” if just a few more things broke Snyder’s way. Mainstream fans didn’t love his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice when it was in theaters, but almost everyone concedes that the Ultimate Edition of that movie is superior, and probably deserved a theatrical release. Then there was the debacle on the set of Snyder’s Justice League (which I actually document in a book titled Release the Snyder Cut), and while Snyder got to deliver his ultimate vision, it might be as far as Henry Cavill gets to go.
Ben Affleck, on the other hand, is expected to play Bruce Wayne at least one more time, appearing in The Flash alongside Ezra Miller. That movie just teased Keaton’s return, which is yet another reason for WB to feature the actor on the side of its building. But the SnyderVerse thrives on conflict, and this is today’s controversy.
