The Truth About The "SnyderVerse"
Alright, let’s seriously clear up some things about #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, because honestly Twitter and social media isn’t the place to get it done.
I mean don’t get me wrong, you likely found this piece through the Twitter account, but we need more than 240 characters a pop to break this one down.
A lot of people are missing the forest and focusing on their own selfish trees when it comes to the SnyderVerse itself, and it’s real easy to do when trolls and fanboys across the board are hitting the easy button just to make themselves feel better, or to anger you, which in turn makes them feel better in an insecure way.
Let’s take this time to refocus on the forest and see what’s actually going on here, no lazy conspiracy theories or mental gymnastics in sight.
The first thing to understand is this:
THE DCEU IS THE SNYDERVERSE, WHETHER WARNERMEDIA LIKES IT OR NOT
Nine years ago, Zack Snyder cast Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Superman. Three years later he cast Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. The year after that, Snyder cast Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman, Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash and Ray Fisher as Victor Stone/Cyborg.
Of those six actors all cast by Zack Snyder, three of them, Gadot, Momoa and Miller, have either all had solo movies, are currently filming solo movies(allegedly) or have been contracted to continue playing their characters going forward.
As long as the actors that Snyder cast are still making movies in the DCEU, the SnyderVerse exists, no matter what amount of retconning MIGHT happen in the solo Flash film due out in November 2022.
Not only that, but the other six movies currently in the DCEU all make direct reference, and/or contain enough connective tissue to Snyder’s “trilogy”. Task Force X in Suicide Squad is literally created because of Superman’s death. Wonder Woman literally tells the story of why Diana “walked away from mankind.” The ending of Zack Snyder’s Justice League when Arthur tells Vulko and Mera he’s got to go see his dad, leads directly into Aquaman, even with nitpicky aesthetic changes and a fuzzy line about Mera’s parents. Shazam references the Black Zero attack by Zod and uses Batfleck’s Batarang as a prop, Birds of Prey is a near direct sequel to Suicide Squad, and Wonder Woman 1984 adds further context to Diana’s general attitude toward mankind that was changed when she met Batman and Superman.
So until a FULL reboot happens and the DCEU actually ends, it’s always going to be “SnyderVerse,” no matter what the haters, critics and egotistical executives want to believe.
So now that the haters and butthurt WB apologists think they have all the ammo they need, let’s bring them back down to Earth with this next point:
RESTORE THE SNYDERVERSE IS ABOUT THE STORYLINE, NOT THE FRANCHISE
There are two ways the term SnyderVerse is applied. First there’s the universe itself, which is inherently the DCEU, and then there’s the storyline that Zack Snyder created on the whiteboards with Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and others for Justice League sequels.
#RestoreTheSnyderVerse is a campaign to demonstrate an audience for those sequels. Plain and simple.
The problem is, this gets twisted by both sides on social media. All the people whose lives are seemingly disrupted by a hashtag they fail to mute and ignore because it doesn’t affect them, think that the campaign is all about Snyder taking over the franchise, making every movie in it one of his own, and scrapping everything else in the process.
That’s stupid. Clearest way to describe that one. No rational person supporting that hashtag wants Snyder to take over the DCEU. Hell, after some Army of the Dead press started dropping, you’ve got fans that are ready for him to sign an exclusive deal with Netflix just because he’s seemingly more appreciated there than he’s ever been at WarnerMedia. They just want to see the “armada” Darkseid told Desaad to get ready, and what happens when Superman asks Martian Manhunter why he didn’t help him fight Zod OR Doomsday when he was watching the whole thing from a command center, or why the hell Bruce keeps having dreams about the Knightmare world.
The flipside is when the really immature and inane parts of the SnyderVerse start using the term “HamadaVerse” to describe the current slate of DCEU films being guided by DC Films chief Walter Hamada, who still hasn’t apologized to Ray Fisher or the Justice League investigation participants as far as we know. Those fans look at James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, The Batman(non-DCEU), Black Adam, The Flash, Aquaman 2 and Shazam: Fury of the Gods as this other universe that flies directly in the face of Snyder’s films and represents the WarnerMedia principle of “disrespecting” his work.
That’s ALSO stupid. Momoa is still Aquaman, Miller is still The Flash, who by the way is set to be joined by Affleck’s Batman and Kiersey Clemons’ Iris West from ZSJL, and The Suicide Squad features FOUR returning Task Force X characters from Suicide Squad, INCLUDING Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, who will be making her THIRD appearance in the DCEU in five years.
On top of that, WarnerMedia has made no indication that they’re looking to erase Snyder’s movies. They’ve only made it clear that they wish to move on from them and do “other things.” Now, while it’s pretty clear that their “plan” is far less organized and cohesive than Snyder’s original intentions, the only people making assumptions about them erasing anything from before are the fans themselves.
Stop doing that, seriously. Or don’t. It’s up to you, but as long as the DCEU exists, the only thing keeping the next slate of movies from not being in the same universe as the Snyder Trilogy is how we treat them. Even if they go full multiverse with it, it’s still a “pre-Crisis/post-Crisis” situation. It’s not like Crisis on Infinite Earths erased all the previous seasons of the CW shows from our memories, is it? No, because plenty of you still complain about how the first two seasons of Arrow or The Flash were great and everything since then has sucked, in your subjective opinion.
What also complicates this discussion is the other “SnyderVerse” projects implicated that wouldn’t be directed by Snyder himself, like Joe Mangianello’s Deathstroke project he simply won’t stop pushing for HBO Max, or a Black Canary HBO Series with Jurnee Smollett, and the fantastic idea that Snyder himself suggested that would spinoff from ZSJL and see Ryan Choi become The Atom with an all Chinese cast. These ideas among others, are NOT things that Zack Snyder himself would oversee, but would in fact spinoff from the storyline of his Justice League sequels, hence why they get rolled into #RestoreTheSnyderVerse.
Same goes for the Batfleck film too, or the Cyborg solo movie. Again, not projects that Snyder would oversee, but things that would directly spring from his storyline plans. Ambitious? No question. Practical? Well, that’s another thing to understand about all of this:
WARNERMEDIA LIKELY DOESN’T WANT THE PRODUCTION HASSLE OF JUSTICE LEAGUE SEQUELS
Let’s put aside the ego thing for a moment, which IS there with WarnerMedia as far as I’m concerned, and just look at the order of operations for what it would take to make the two sequels to Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
First you figure out if Snyder is directing them or not. Not a guarantee just because it sprang from his genius. Then you figure out who else is on board to come back. Now some of the big players, like Affleck, will command many millions, but you can negotiate with the others on salaries to a point, but then you’ve got to figure out scheduling. These actors are all active in the business, including Fisher, who’s recently been working on an ABC series. It was one thing to balance all of this in 2016, but how different is that scheduling landscape now? Especially in COVID times?
This is a reality that many of us who support the hashtag need to understand a bit better. There’s a lot of logistics that go into the idea of doing these sequels and not only would it take a great deal of planning and organization, which WB hasn’t had much of at all, but it would also take time to put together. It CAN be done and WarnerMedia is more than capable of making it happen if they really wanted to, but they clearly don’t want to. Especially after the previous regime blew $300 million on the 2017 disaster.
I’m not making excuses for WB, they made this mess all by themselves. I’m just saying I understand what they might be thinking from a production standpoint.
Thing is, I also understand this:
RESTORE THE SNYDERVERSE DOESN’T MEAN CANCEL THE CURRENT DCEU SLATE
I don’t want any of the current DCEU projects cancelled. At all. Make them. Follow through, give your creatives the freedom they need, and MAKE THEM HAPPEN. I’d love to see them.
Everything else we’re talking about with #RestoreTheSnyderVerse can be ADDED to that, specifically on your streaming service HBO Max. Honestly, it doesn’t even need massive theatrical release. You need original content for your service, right? Something to drum up and build big hype for more subscribers? Well, why not have the best of both worlds and bring in new fans with your forward “plan” on the movies, while keeping your Snyder Cut fans on board and keeping more critics and checkmarks that really dug ZSJL on board by continuing that storyline? It’s not an either/or proposition as far as the audience is concerned. It’s literally Maxwell Lord from Wonder Woman 1984: “The DCEU is good, but it can be better.”
Ultimately though, there’s one BIG thing that people are missing with this whole campaign against #RestoreTheSnyderVerse that everyone REALLY needs to understand:
OLD HOLLYWOOD DOESN’T WANT THE SNYDERVERSE RESTORED
Right now, Hollywood producers and executives that have been in the business for decades are at minimum on edge about the future of the industry. The past decade has seen a sharp rise in the number of cord cutters, streaming apps and digital domain with respect to content, and you’re now seeing debates about how the art of cinema is being lost to the business of “content creation.”
This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is real. I’ve seen it up close and personal from my own experience working in news TV for nine years. The conversation about the future of content creation was constant, up to and through all the pandemic changes, and business decisions are now being made because of audience influence on the marketplace and how consumers are migrating from the traditional market share to the streaming market place, which is still very much undefined and raw in a business and advertising sense.
So the worst thing that could have happened for a lot of the old school WB and traditional market brass was a three and a half year old fan campaign for a movie they royally screwed up on, to be completed and released on their streaming service. It was a public declaration and admission of how the power of the audience has grown and is growing, and how the tech companies that are investing in studios now for content creation, listened to them.
Toby Emmerich, Ann Sarnoff and Walter Hamada don’t want the audience to dictate terms. Not on that scale. They want the audience ready to pack theaters en masse again the second the CDC tells us all we don’t have to wear masks anymore and the chains that are left can fully reopen. The idea that these streaming apps could actually take over the industry, and that the audience itself would dictate what kind of content would be made, is frightening to anyone from the old school that doesn’t want a single thing to change.
The Snyder Cut has always represented that change in the industry, and that’s why so many critics, bloggers and defenders of Old Hollywood have forwarded the “slippery slope, give a mouse a cookie” narrative. They don’t want people thinking that the audience having a say in what content gets made is a good idea. They want you to think it’s dangerous, selfish, counterproductive and toxic, which is all the more reason you should trust them and their boardrooms, because they always know what’s right for the customer, don’t they?
Like in 2016, when they knew they had to cut 30 minutes from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, mangling the pacing and the storyline to get more showtimes in.
Like in the same year when they knew they had to drastically order six weeks of reshoots on Suicide Squad and have it recut by a trailer company, mangling David Ayer’s original vision so badly that it’s a wonder it still made nearly three quarters of a billion at the box office, without China.
Like in 2017 when they knew they had to hire the Avengers director to reshoot 70% of Snyder’s Justice League film while he dealt with a family tragedy, whitewashing and bastardizing that film into a two-hour mandated borefest that impressed no more than the lowest common denominator.
Like in 2019 when they were so hesitant and reluctant to do anything with an R-rated Joker film that they split the profits with two other companies in order to hedge their bets, meaning they couldn’t solely keep the more than a billion it made at the box office as a smash hit.
But Old Hollywood knows better than we do, right? Smartest guys in the room? They understand audiences better than audiences understand themselves, don’t they?
No. They don’t. Probably never did and certainly don’t now.
But they don’t want you to know or think about this, so it’s important you buy into what they’re saying. The last thing they want is for you, a member of the audience, to change how the entire industry behaves going forward, no matter how inevitable and already happening all of it is.
If there’s nothing else you take from all of this in understanding, take this one for sure, because as streaming gets bigger and the voice of the audience gets stronger, old school executives at WB and others will be clutching their pearls, ready to do whatever they feel is necessary to make you think streaming is the worst thing ever, and audiences should just shut up and trust the studios to make as much non-inclusive, copycat schlock as they’ve been making for the past several decades.
Of course as they’re doing this, the parent companies that own them will continue moving into the streaming age, and the industry will fully transition anyway. It’s just studios like WB who have decided they’ll do it kicking and screaming.
So there you have it with respect to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, a situation that on the surface seems straightforward, but in reality is far more complex and complicated than most people are willing to admit on social media. Everyone has an angle and a narrative when it comes to this situation. It’s ultimately up to YOU, the AUDIENCE, as to which narrative will be the one that informs your own position.