Why Zack Snyder Fans Can’t ‘Move On’ From The SnyderVerse – & Shouldn’t Be Asked To

Fans of Zack Snyder’s DCEU have shown little to no sign of moving on from wanting to see his DC story arc fulfilled, and looking at the situation of DC on film in its totality, they’re quite justified in not letting go of the SnyderVerse. Jump onto YouTube or virtually any social media platform, and chatter of #RestoreTheSnyderVerse or #SellSnyderVerseNetflix likely won’t be hard to find. Reactions to the persistence of Zack Snyder’s fan base are, unsurprisingly, split, with some being on board with Zack Snyder fans and others taking the angle that the SnyderVerse is over, James Gunn’s DCU is on the way, and Snyder fans should simply “move on”.

However, as with talk about the #SellSnyderVerseToNetflix proposal itself, the conversation about Snyder’s fanbase pushing to see his five-movie Justice League story completed frequently overlooks some very crucial context for why it’s still hanging around even as James Gunn’s Superman is in post-production. When examining the period of DC on film from 2016 to the present day with that context in mind, it’s actually quite easy to see why Zack Snyder fans aren’t moving on from the SnyderVerse – and, for that matter, why insisting that they do so is a non-starter.

Warner Bros. Made One Horrible DC Decision After Another After Batman v Superman

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice will probably go down in history as the most polarizing superhero movie ever made. The divisive reception it drew gave way to some of the worst reactionary studio decision-making in modern times. In the midst of WB’s internal panic that Batman v Superman did not enjoy the kind of universally positive reception of The Avengers, WB imposed last-minute reshoots and retooling upon David Ayer’s Suicide Squad and later on Justice League.

Unfortunately, this did nothing to win over the DCEU’s detractors, with both movies being panned just as harshly as Batman v Superman, and, in the case of Justice League, turning what should have been DC’s ultimate event movie into a box office bomb. On top of that, WB all but completely abandoned not only Snyder’s DCEU roadmap, but any roadmap at all, with subsequent DCEU movies rolled out as standalone islands in a cinematic universe that no longer had any clear forward direction, much to the franchise’s detriment. Furthermore, the final product of what 2017’s Justice League came to be is only half of why it became so controversial.

Justice League’s Production Is Full Of Behind-The-Scenes Horror Stories

In July 2020, Ray Fisher took to social media to blow the whistle on how ugly the Justice League reshoots had been, with Fisher describing replacement director Joss Whedon’s behaviour towards the cast and crew as “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.” Gal Gadot similarly shined the spotlight on Whedon’s conduct (with her body double doing a lot of the reshoots), and Ben Affleck has been quite clear that the reshoots were a decisive factor in his Batman departure.

Whedon subsequently experienced a near-total career downfall when numerous cast members from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (particularly Charisma Carpenter) described decades of bullying on Whedon’s part. In the end, Whedon and WB’s then-leadership being held accountable for their misconduct following WarnerMedia’s investigation, and the Snyder Cut finally being released would seemingly be enough to quell the discontentment within DC fandom stemming from the Justice League debacle. At least, in theory.

Warner Bros. Covered Up, & Then Undermined, The Snyder Cut

On just about every front, WB’s then-leadership had been dishonest at best about the making of Justice League, from the studio’s claims that Whedon was merely completing Snyder’s movie, to the studio’s steadfast mantra that the Snyder Cut didn’t exist at all. Add in Whedon’s misconduct during the Justice League reshoots, and the fact that Snyder’s movie was being torn to shreds while he was mourning the death of his daughter, Zack Snyder fans could hardly be blamed for perceiving the situation in a thoroughly disgusting light.

That all seemed to change once the Snyder Cut was greenlit and Warner Bros. heavily pushed the concept of all DC movies and TV shows co-existing in a multiverse. By the time of 2020’s DC FanDome, it seemed hard not to be excited for the future as a DC fan – Zack Snyder fans had the Snyder Cut on the way, while the multiverse opened the door for his plans being completed in a way that could also co-exist with other DC projects like Matt Reeves’ The Batman, the Joker franchise, and the Arrowverse. By the end of 2020, all seemed well in the DC multiverse.

That is, until WB’s leadership began making transparent attempts to undercut the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League in the lead-up and aftermath of its release. Described as a “storytelling cul-de-sac” in a New York Times interview with then-DC Films head Walter Hamada before its release, former WB CEO Ann Sarnoff subsequently described Zack Snyder’s Snyder Cut as the end of the line for the SnyderVerse in a Variety interview just days after the movie’s well-received debut, while also stating that the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad would see no future release. Just a few days later, excitement for the rest of Snyder’s story to be finished rose to gargantuan levels with #RestoreTheSnyderVerse hitting 1.5 million tweets in a day on March 25, 2021, and WB still ignored what had clearly become a mainstream push for Snyder’s JL story to be finished. Even after the Warner Bros. Discovery merger led to virtually all of WB’s leadership who had stonewalled the Snyder Cut being let go, the studio still had one more heartbreaking announcement in store fans of Zack Snyder’s DCEU.

Henry Cavill’s Superman Comeback Being Cancelled Crushed Fans

As an off-shoot of the push for the Snyder Cut, fans had also been campaigning since late 2018 for Henry Cavill to be brought back as the DCEU’s Superman. WB’s split with Cavill at that time led to Superman cameos in Shazam! and Peacemaker being carried out with body doubles with their faces hidden, and it became increasingly clear that WB’s insistence that they had plans for the Man of Steel and the DCEU, in general, was little more than hot air. Fortunately, fans had a lot more to be excited about with what The Rock was cooking with 2022’s Black Adam.

With a new WB regime in place, The Rock had finally pulled off what the previous regime hadn’t budged on for years, with Henry Cavill donning the cape again for an end-credits cameo in Black Adam, and Cavill subsequently making his return as Superman official along with setting up The Rock’s long-teased Black Adam-Superman showdown. However, WBD’s formation of DC Studios and hiring of James Gunn and Peter Safran coincided with the release of Black Adam, and a mere two months later, Gunn officially announced that Cavill’s Superman would not be included in his and Safran’s plans under DC Studios.

Needless to say, the announcement was hardly greeted with joy, with many fans launching a new campaign of #SellSnyderVerseToNetflix due to Snyder’s working relationship with the platform. In any case, the cancellation of Henry Cavill’s Superman return arrived after over half a decade of franchise mishandling, lack of direction, behind-the-scenes abuse stories, and studio dishonesty about all of the above that Zack Snyder’s fans had to watch unfold.

James Gunn’s Guardians 3 Comeback & DC Studios Gig Is A Huge Contrast To Zack Snyder’s Media Coverage

It’s safe to say that Zack Snyder is a polarizing filmmaker – some people love his work, some people loath it, and that in itself is hardly an issue. What is noticeable, however, is the extent to which Snyder is frequently demonized in the media and within geek fandoms. A quick glance at Snyder-focused editorials, media commentary, and social media posts will quickly show Snyder being condemned as a raving misogynist, a fascist who hates everything Superman stands for, and a Machiavellian mastermind manipulating his own fandom and collaborators like Ray Fisher to carry out his bidding. It isn’t unreasonable to suggest that such portrayals of Snyder online probably had more than a little to do with WB’s decision to push him out of Justice League and replace him with Joss Whedon. However, that is also a marked contrast to James Gunn’s own coverage by the media.

James Gunn was infamously fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 over social media posts in which Gunn told some quite poor-taste jokes. That didn’t sit well with Gunn’s own fanbase or the Guardians of the Galaxy cast, who rallied in support of him and eventually got him re-hired for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. That on its own isn’t a problem, but the coverage of Gunn’s firing and the efforts of his fanbase to get him his job back took an undeniably more sympathetic and supportive angle compared to the coverage of Snyder’s firing from Justice League and the frequent press sneering towards the Snyder Cut campaign, with the media often insisting that the movie didn’t exist just as emphatically as WB themselves.

James Gunn nabbing The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker gigs, along with his subsequent appointment as head of DC Studios, in a vacuum, wouldn’t be enough to ruffle many feathers, although considering that The Suicide Squad earned less than half of Black Adam’s box office total, it probably adds more than a little sting to Henry Cavill’s dismissal as Superman if the justification being given is that Black Adam wasn’t a big enough hit. At any rate, it’s hard to argue that Snyder and Gunn’s coverage and the media don’t carry a night and day difference, and let’s not kid ourselves that Snyder would have been granted anything resembling the support Gunn received over similar jokes on social media. Ultimately, it’s another piece in the puzzle of why the SnyderVerse is such a sore topic for Zack Snyder’s fan base.

Who WOULDN’T Be Mad Being In The Shoes Of Zack Snyder Fans?

Whatever counterpoints one might make about toxic fans or social media bot accusations, the truth of the matter is that Snyder’s fanbase not only has a lot to be angry about but plenty of justification for feeling that way. The situation of Gunn’s firing and re-hiring from Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 3 in particular highlights that. From the perspective of James Gunn fans, a filmmaker they admired and whose franchise they were emotionally invested in had been the subject of a witch hunt and kicked to the curb by the studio employing him.

In the end, it ultimately had a happy ending with Gunn fans getting him back, which begs the very pertinent question of why Snyder’s situation and the efforts of his fans to see what he started with the DCEU finished is viewed with such hostility. And if the answer is a personal bias towards James Gunn over Zack Snyder, the question of why Zack Snyder fans aren’t moving on from the DC SnyderVerse answers itself. 

When all’s said and done, the Snyder Cut being released shined a light on how much abuse, mistreatment, and cruelty had happened behind the scenes, all stemming from the fact that Zack Snyder made some superhero movies that some people liked and some people didn’t. Between that and WB’s epic mishandling of DC on film leading to everything Snyder fans were excited for (which, it bears repeating, would have been over years ago had WB simply left Snyder to complete it) being led to ruin, Snyder’s fanbase frankly has as much right as any to be angry about the situation and as determined to find avenues to see Snyder’s franchise completed as Gunn’s fan were for him. That, in a nutshell, encapsulates why Zack Snyder’s fanbase has largely ignored insistent calls that they “move on”. Until there’s a more widespread understanding of the context for that, there’s little, if any, chance that DC will ever escape the looming shadow of the SnyderVerse.

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What do you think? Should Zack Snyder fans move on from the SnyderVerse?