Snyder movie trope is the Jesus figure. The trifecta of 2007’s Watchmen, 2016’s Batman v Superman, and 2017’s Justice League share another similarity that goes beyond the stylistic or symbolic, and the clues lie in the director’s cut versions of each DC movie.
With exception to a handful of independent auteurs, directors have a lot of people to answer to, and the theatrical version of their movies often end up being a filtered interpretation of their original vision. That’s where the director’s cut comes in, and Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, Batman v Superman, and Justice League are notable specifically for the critical reception the director’s cut versions received versus the original theatrical releases. Justice League is by far the most prominent example, given the sequence of events that took place for Justice League’s Snyder Cut to be released in 2021, but all three DC movies received a more positive reception from the director's cut editions than the theatrical versions. Each director's cut fixed an exhausting storytelling problem, and that’s great. However, this also means each movie's theatrical version suffered because of that same problem.
Simply put, Watchmen, Batman v Superman, and Justice League were too ambitious. Watchmen was a bit different because it was a film adaptation of an incredibly complex graphic novel. However, Batman v Superman and Justice League were hampered by Warner Bros.' flawed DCEU roap. Either way, that ambition revealed itself through overstuffed story arcs that began with Watchmen and only continued to grow in Zack Snyder's comic book movies during the DCEU’s formative years.
All Three DC Movies Suffered From The Same Issue
A number of Watchmen film adaptations were attempted since the late 1980s, but they all failed until Zack Snyder came along after Warner Bros. was impressed with his film adaptation of 300. Snyder would make a valiant effort to fit the entirety of Watchmen's intricate story and its numerous characters into one feature film, but it would prove to be too much content even for the theatrical release's runtime of 163 minutes. Alan Moore would later state in 2008 that certain elements of Watchmen "could only work in a comic and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't."
Two other Zack Snyder DC movies, Batman v Superman and Justice League, faced a similar problem with having too much content to work with. However, those two movies weren't bogged down by their source material. Instead, Warner Bros. made the inexplicable decision to try and play a game of catchup with the MCU by releasing movies that pushed too much content and too many characters at the same time. Batman v Superman and Justice League didn't have room to breathe, and it's telling their director's cuts were better received despite being much longer than their theatrical counterparts.
The lesson here isn't that Zack Snyder should be given complete creative freedom; Justice League's Snyder Cut was so spectacular it somehow Rebel Moon is already rumored to be Zack Snyder's longest movie ever, so only time will tell if other aspects of Zack Snyder's filmmaking history repeat themselves.
