After numerous small teases, a trailer for the popular Justice League fan edit project Justice League: Black Suit Edition is finally here. The trailer shows altered Justice League footage mixed in with a variety of other resources, from original effects by creator Chris Dawson and his small team to snippets of other movies mixed in to create something that looks and feels entirely new.
After Zack Snyder was replaced by Joss Whedon as director of Justice League, the movie infamously went through substantial reshoots, drastically altering the film into a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie. Taking a page out of the Warner Bros. playbook, many fans immediately started attempting to re-edit the movie into something more enjoyable, often with the aim of creating a product closer to Snyder’s original vision.
Unfortunately, with over 2 hours of footage missing, including many scenes not even glimpsed in trailers, it’s hard for fans to recreate Snyder’s original Justice League, but the Black Suit Edition takes an entirely different approach and appears to have virtually repurposed vast chunks of Justice League to make it into an entirely different movie.
In addition to changing the score and meticulously altering the movie’s color grade, Dawson appears to have radically altered the story, inserting a Darkseid subplot, changing how Superman is resurrected, giving him a black suit like the comics, and more.
While much of the footage may look familiar, a number of key changes are sure to excite fans of the franchise, such as the shot of The Flash running and dodging Omega beams, suggesting Dawson may have found a way to include an even larger role for Darkseid in the 3rd act. The trailer gives a release date of August 30th, so fans can only wonder what changes await until it’s released.
While many fans are still clamoring for a Snyder Cut of Justice League, it’s impressive to see not just how much the material could have been elevated without the behind the scenes nightmare that was Justice League’s production, but also how many missed opportunities there were in the theatrical release of Justice League. If a fan can put something like this together in his spare time, Warner Bros. surely could have done better on Justice League (or still could, since Snyder confirmed his cut of the movie exists).
