Justice League’s Snyder Cut has better-looking CGI than the version released in theaters. Much has been made about the Snyder Cut’s status in terms of VFX completion, yet when comparing the two cuts, it’s clear Zack Snyder’s version is visually far superior.
It’s been well chronicled that the VFX of Justice League is not 100% done, but some of it is complete (or close to complete) and a number of screenshots of the film released by Zack Snyder on the social media platform Vero, outshine the garish and unpolished visuals of Joss Whedon’s theatrical cut. When diving deeper and comparing the reshot versions of the same scenes, it is clear that the Snyder Cut has a higher VFX quality than what audiences got in the final film.
The truly shining spot to prove how far long the Snyder Cut got along before Zack left the project is the new images of Aquaman, Mera, and Vulko. In March of 2017, Zack Snyder tweeted a video of him actively working on the Atlantean scenes of the Justice League during his birthday. Clearly, a lot of this scene was completed as the short video Zack tweeted was labeled “review for final” with a date of February 2017 listed in the beginning. The scene had Aquaman returning to an Atlantean outpost, with VFX much further along than most realize. Some of the most recent images Snyder posted on Vero prove they got even further along than that. The four images focused on a meeting between Vulko and Arthur, a plea to get Arthur in the battle to save Earth and to give him the armor he wears throughout the film. While the shots are in black and white, the first thing noticed is how complete each shot looks. Water effects, backgrounds, textures and lighting all look polished as fans get a true feel for what Snyder’s vision was for these scenes.
Comparing the Snyder Cut scenes to their theatrical counterparts makes the cutting of the original shots even more confusing. The reshoots removed Vulko from the film, significantly cut the screen time of Mera and reduced the Atlantean battle sequences. Joss Whedon reshot dialogue between Arthur and Mera, with Mera taking Vulko’s role in the film to frantically reduce runtime and add humor to the story. When looking at the VFX of this sequence, everything from lighting to VFX looks significantly worse, the quality giving off more of a network television feel than a cinematic one. Even more confounding than the cut story is the time and money invested in fully completing VFX for a scene that was removed from the theatrical cut. Given the under-water nature of the scene, and the heavy VFX required, this could account for millions of wasted dollars.
The CGI in the theatrical cut of Justice League has visual problems far beyond just the Atlantean sequences, though. A quick look at any sequence with mustache-gate Superman makes it apparent the studio had their hands off the steering wheel in the final stages of reshoots. All reshot sequences felt rushed as they flew in the cast to shoot nearly 80 pages of new script only a few months before release, leaving most of the original film (including lots of comple or nearly completed VFX) on the cutting room floor after Zack handed in his version. Lighting, color grading all clearly look altered from their intended version, and some shots, such as the parademons attacking Steppenwolf in the reshot ending, were so rushed they didn’t even get fully textured.
What suffered most was the final product. With a ballooned budget, Justice League came off looking like a much older, much cheaper film than what is expected from today’s superhero blockbusters. When comparing the theatrical cut to the images that Snyder has teased on Vero and the original trailers of the film, the difference is palpable and striking. No wonder Snyder is telling his fans not to lose hope.
Regardless of how much VFX needs to be polished in the Snyder Cut, one thing is clear, the CGI that was done and completed by Zack Snyder was far superior to the theatrical cut of Justice League. It may cost millions to finish the cut, but with the economics and high content demand of the streaming wars, HBO Max makes the cost more than worthwhile. Regardless, when the Snyder Cut eventually sees the light of day, audiences will surely wonder as to why the theatrical cut was released in its condition the first place.
