Zack Snyder’s Justice League may have released over a month ago, but fan discussions over the HBO Max movie show no signs of dying down.
With the Snyder Cut out in the world, the director has been free to discuss more elements of the film that, for whatever reason, did or didn’t make it into the superhero flick.
The latest big reveal, which was made by Snyder at a recent Justice Con virtual panel, confirmed that there was supposed to be another big cameo at the end of the movie.
At the 6:55 mark in the video below (h/t Collider) Snyder is asked about “this guy who wears a green suit” before a piece of Green Lantern concept art is shown to the director.
It’s here that Snyder reveals that the John Stewart iteration of the superhero was supposed to appear in Justice League. Actor Wayne T. Carr, who Snyder had met through Cyborg actor Ray Fisher, had been cast as Green Lantern and even filmed scenes for his cameo appearance – though Snyder was aware that the sequence might not make the final cut.
“I said ‘Look, there’s a chance that this doesn’t make it in the movie’,” Snyder explained. “I’m not sure he thought it was 100% real. But, I was talking to him the other day and he said he loved the movie [the Snyder Cut] and the reception it had gotten.”
In a separate interview with CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast, Snyder elaborated on why Carr’s Green Lantern was eventually removed from the final cut.
“We did have a Green Lantern scene in the movie that the studio asked me to take out that,” he explained. “I did also shoot here in the driveway with an amazing actor [Carr] who was going to play John Stewart. Then the studio, when they saw the movie, and they saw that I had done every single thing that they had asked me not to do, we had come to a bit of a loggerhead.”
You can watch Snyder’s full answer, which includes the quote above, from the 8:40 mark in the video below:
Bruce Wayne’s Martian Manhunter scene was supposed to be with Green Lantern
Given Snyder’s comments on the matter, it seems that Warner Bros. was keen to avoid bringing Green Lantern into the story, here. According to Snyder, the studio had told him not to film extra scenes for fear that fans would see Zack Snyder’s Justice League as the canon movie in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).
Snyder elected to shoot extra footage anyway and, after executives saw the film, further discussions were had about what would make it into the finished product. As a compromise, Snyder explained that the studio allowed him to keep the Knightmare sequence, as seen in the movie’s epilogue, and to repurpose the Green Lantern scene using Martian Manhunter instead. What was the reason for the latter agreement? Snyder’s adamance that, in a push for greater representation on screen, he didn’t want to cut two Black actors – in Carr and Harry Lennix – from his version.
As it turns out, then, the scene where Martian Manhunter and Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne meet was supposed to be an interaction between Batman and Carr’s Green Lantern. Snyder revealed that his team had to digitally remove green light from that scene, too, as the glow from Green Lantern wasn’t necessary for Martian Manhunter’s scene.
It’s another fascinating peek behind-the-scenes on the movie, and one that will only increase fans’ desire for Warner Bros. to change its mind and let Snyder make his two Justice League sequels.
Of course, that idea is all but dead, and Snyder seems to know it. Warner Bros. has already released a trailer that confirms Snyder’s Justice League as the final entry in his DCEU trilogy. Still, if nothing else, it’s interesting to get this extra insight into Snyder’s ambitions for his take on the DC Universe.
