Justice League's Synder Cut might deserve a chance but the 'Ayer Cut' of 'Suicide Squad' does not, here's why
For three years, fans were drumming up support for 'The Snyder Cut' of the 2017 debacle 'Justice League'. Their blood, sweat, tears and Twitter campaigning paid off, as the DC gods were kind. Zack Snyder announced that his cut of the film would release on HBO Max in 2021.
The sordid story of 'Justice League' and why fans were eager for Snyder's cut is this. Six months before the film released, Snyder had to exit the project, due to a personal tragedy, and Warner Bros hired Joss Whedon, who apparently made extensive changes to the film. He did the reshoots and seemingly overhauled the film. 'Justice League' was cut down to two hours from its initial runtime of three and many storylines were altered. The film's release was met with harsh reception from critics and fans alike, changing the future of DC films. 'The Flash' film was indefinitely delayed and DC focused more on other projects like 'Joker' and 'Birds Of Prey'.
Fans were sure that the real Snyder vision was out there. Snyder began to add fuel to the fire by sharing unseen images from the film. The campaign for #ReleaseTheSnyder cut grew louder, and finally, their wish came true. Well, it's time to see whether the hullaballoo was worth it, or not.
Yet, it deserves a chance, as for starters, we see that Ray Porter's Darkseid will be in this cut of the film. In the theatrical release, Steppenwolf just mentions his name, but we don't get to see Darkseid. We were supposed to see him in the film, including the flashback to the Mother Boxes, but sadly, none of that didn't make it to the theatrical cut. So perhaps, the Snyder Cut of 'Justice League' does deserve a chance. But now, a call is beginning for David Ayer's 'Suicide Squad', another film that was thrashed and bashed back in 2016.
Ayer is stoking the fire and released an image of a partially burned Joker (Jared Leto). Since 2016, both Ayer and Leto have spoken about the cut scenes of the Joker and how there wasn't enough of Leto in the film. Recently, Ayer said that most of Leto's work 'remains unseen'. He said that there was a cut scene following a helicopter crash, that initially seemed to kill the Joker. In the theatrical release, Joker appears, right after breaking Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) out of prison. In 2018, Ayer revealed there was a missing scene where the Joker made a deal with The Enchantress after which Harley stood up to him and 'refused to betray her friends'.
This information is important yes, but will it really savage the rest of the film? The film wasn't dependent on just the Joker.
In an earlier interview, Ayer told Collider, "We have a chunk, there’s definitely over 10 minutes of material on there. But this cut of the movie is my cut, there’s no sort of parallel universe version of the movie, the released movie is my cut. And that’s one of the toughest things about writing, shooting, and directing a film, is you end up with these orphans and you f---ing love them and you think they’d be amazing scenes and do these amazing things but the film is a dictatorship, not a democracy, and just because something’s cool and charismatic doesn’t mean it gets to survive in the final cut. The flow of the movie is the highest master.”
To be fair to Snyder, he had an hour's worth of stuff that didn't make it to the film and another director had stepped in. This was Ayer's cut of 'Suicide Squad' and he actually makes sense, just because some scenes might look cool and charismatic, it might just add nothing to the film. The storyline itself was rather wavering and the editing was blotchy, and had a complete lack of character development. Unless, you can change that around.
So...let's not go for the cut of every film that didn't please us.