Why the Snyder Cut Exposes Old Hollywood

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is nearly upon us.

Predictably, the critics and bloggers that just don’t know when to quit their hot takes are citing it as a dangerous precedent for Hollywood to follow, because in their eyes a studio was “bullied” and pressured into giving a group of toxic fans exactly what they wanted.

We’re going to thoroughly dissect, analyze and destroy that “logic” right now. Buckle up.

Let us begin with the obvious: Yes, there are toxic Snyder Cut fans. They exist, they’ve been very loud over the past few years on social media, they’ve harassed critics and bloggers many times, and there is no denying their abhorrent behavior. Any rational Snyder Cut fan will tell you this, and more than likely has almost all of them blocked for various reasons.

Let’s move past the fact that these toxic fans do not and never have represented the entire fanbase. Let’s also move past the fact that as recently as the Anthony Breznican piece in Vanity Fair, Zack Snyder himself has denounced them. Those two things ordinarily should be enough, but we’re going to go deeper here.

Let’s talk about whether or not these toxic fans really got what they wanted when the Snyder Cut was announced. The answer is almost definitively no, believe it or not.

Think about what it takes for a fan to be truly toxic. Is it really just getting a demand fulfilled? Or is it more for the energy of being miserable about something? Needing to pick a fight? Always looking for a “them” to pit against their “us?”

Anyone paying even a sliver of attention to the toxic Snyder Cut fans knows it’s the latter, and it started last year not long after the announcement was made. It wasn’t enough for them. They had to pick fights about whether or not it was supposed to be a movie or a series, or which details they were certain were true just so they could be right, or who deserved to get interviews with cast and crew on YouTube shows and be invited to the virtual premiere and early fan showings.

What should have been a peaceful celebration of the confirmed existence of the project just turned into more fights for the toxic elements, because that was always their true goal. They were never interested in the Snyder Cut seeing the light of day nearly as much as they were interested in fighting about it. All they ever wanted was a “villain'“ to aim their barbs, insults and threats at.

So are those people truly “rewarded” right now? Are they seriously sitting at home proud of themselves for pushing a multi-billion dollar studio to cave into them, and ultimately planning their next set of demands? Or are they really just trolling Twitter looking for the next fight to be enraged about? One scan of those accounts will give you the correct answer, and no it’s not #ReleaseTheAyerCut, another movement that has been around for about a year now.

Now let’s look at this claim of WB being “bullied.”

How exactly do you bully a bully? Is it really as easy as harassing them online, sending letters, making phone calls and flying banners over their studio? Is that really how you make an executive on a six-figure salary run home and crawl under his bed? The same executives that work for an industry that has enabled and ignored generations of morally bankrupt practices that range from general abuse to racism to sexual assault in a number of horrible cases?

You really think banging on the window of the guys that called Ray Fisher’s character in Justice League “an angry black man that they can’t have at the center of their movie” is going to get things done? Are those six-figure salaries and cushy chairs in the boardrooms, virtual or otherwise, really in danger because of #RestoreTheSnyderVerse?

Well, what if they ARE in danger because of that, and that’s why the critics and bloggers are taking aim at the fanbase?

It’s an old record by now that you’ve heard me play with respect to Old Hollywood and its patriarchal ways needing to go the way of the dinosaur in order for true progressive change to happen in the industry. For things to get better with diversity, representation, accountability and creative freedom, the old ways of doing business at the big studios has to end, because they are steeped in bigotry, misogyny and corruption in too many places.

If you’re an old school Hollywood executive, that’s the last thing you want to hear, that change is needed and the way you’ve been working your whole life is about to be a lot less cushy and inappropriate than you had gotten used to over the years. If you’re at WB, you’ve probably been clutching those pearls even tighter in the past year or two since AT&T bought your parent company and started cleaning house en masse. Now not only are you hearing that the party could be over, but that it’s the tech guys who are more interested in content creation and streaming services that are going to end it for you.

Imagine how much that terrifies an old school WB executive or producer. Suddenly the power you had for a very long time over everyone below you, whether it was directors, actors or other key positions on staff, is about to be given away to people who believe in subscription services from home more than buying a ticket at the theater, when they’re safely open of course. Your entire way of life and standard of living is in jeopardy because the audience has been demanding a choice you’ve been refusing to give them for a few years, and now it’s out of your hands because your new bosses are listening to them instead of sticking with you 100%.

So what do you do? Knowing that in the next 3 to 5 years, your job could be rendered obsolete as the market moves to the Internet? You stand your ground and try to remind people who is really is charge here and why they shouldn’t forget it. Tell them how bad change actually is and why they shouldn’t want it, because it will destroy everything they’ve ever loved about Hollywood itself. If you get enough people believing that, then maybe you have a chance to survive this evolution.

Critics and bloggers, who have worked under the Old Hollywood system, know a lot of the Old Hollywood people and are entrenched in it enough to be more than a bit dependent on it, are going to react the same way as those frightened executives and producers that hear the streaming train bearing down on them. The same streaming train that listens to the audience, believes in content creation for its subscribers, and just recently spent $70 million on a Zack Snyder project WB grossly overpaid for in a weak-willed bid to make it just like an Avengers movie, in failed hopes of Avengers box office.

It was bad enough that the fans wouldn’t stop poking at their massive failure. Now the new bosses were spending money to put a permanent spotlight on the mistakes they made. If that could happen to a studio, what would happen to the critics and bloggers who have known the traditional Hollywood system for so long as well? Where would they fall in an equation that includes a media company listening to fans and audiences instead of their reviews, to restore projects for a new streaming service that allows the audience to watch whatever they want from home without needing to check Rotten Tomatoes first?

This is really why you’re seeing the “dangerous precedent” and “slippery slope” articles about the Snyder Cut. Traditional Hollywood, from the executives in charge to the critics who still believe they are the backbone of the industry, is afraid of you, the audience, dictating any terms whatsoever. They don’t want WarnerMedia or AT&T to give you what you want, they want you to take whatever the traditional studios have always given you, and you’ll just have to accept it. That’s how it’s always been up to now, and that’s how they all want it to stay, so that they’ll remain relevant going forward.

The reality of the situation is that the truly dangerous precedent the Snyder Cut represents is the eventual end of Old Hollywood practices and beliefs as we know it. If you’re someone that wants abuse, racism and misogyny among other things, out of Hollywood, then you want Old Hollywood to lose.

If however, you’re someone that defends a multi-billion dollar studio against “bullying by toxic bloggers” instead of focusing more attention on the Ray Fishers, Nadria Tuckers, Charisma Carpenters and Zack Snyders of the industry, whose stories of abuse, racism, misogyny and betrayal have yet to be told, then clearly you want the skeletons in Old Hollywood’s closet to stay right where they are, sadly.