Understanding zack Snyder Reveals He Never Watched Justice League’s Theatrical Cut After Dire Warning From Wife

Zack Snyder has been one of the most controversial directors of modern times. He broke into fandom circles with a string of successful films in the 2000s, including the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004), as well as the comic book adaptations 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009). After that, though, things got rocky for Snyder: His Superman reboot, Man of Steel (2013), started a string of divisive DC movies from the filmmaker; Batman v Superman got so much backlash that Warner Bros. decided to pull Snyder off of his third DC film, Justice League, during production.

The story is now infamous: WB brought in Avengers director Joss Whedon to direct the 2017 Justice League theatrical film, and the result was a mess that got panned by critics and fans. Justice League left such a stain on the DCEU franchise and its legacy that Warner Bros. eventually conceded to massive fan pressure and brought Snyder back to direct Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a four-hour epic released directly to streaming.

Now, Snyder is talking more about the Justice League situation. He made the surprising reveal that he still hasn’t seen Whedon’s cut of the film, nearly ten years later.

Zack Snyder Explains Why He Hasn’t Watched “Josstice League”

Zack Snyder sat down with Variety to talk about his latest film, The Last Photograph, which is (shocker!) making waves with critics. During the interview, the question of how Snyder has navigated the challenges of being a director came up, including his experience working in the DCEU. When asked directly if he’s ever seen Joss Whedon’s version of Justice League, Snyder had a pretty clear and direct answer: Nope. Too much trauma still lingering there.

“I’ve never seen it. There was a point when the movie was released that was a low point for me because the pile-on effect was so insane. Not only did I lose my daughter, but they also released this version of the movie that I had nothing to do with, and my name is on a movie that I didn’t make.”

Snyder may not have gone to see Justice League, but his wife and longtime filmmaking partner, Deborah Snyder, certainly wanted eyes on it. After she had seen what Warner Bros. and Whedon had done to their original vision, she seconded the notion that her husband should avoid it. “Debbie went and watched the Joss [Whedon] version of the movie, and to have her come back to me and say, ‘You can never see that movie,’ and to realize then that it was 60 pages of rewrites that they did for it… I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t know.”

To be fair, no one really needs to sit down and watch Justice League (2017). We say now what we said then: the jarring shift from Snyder’s vision of the DC Universe to an Avengers clone with DC characters was worse than whatever criticisms fans had of Snyder’s films. At least Man of Steel, Batman v Superman (Ultimate Edition), and Zack Snyder’s Justice League tell one cohesive story, on a grand epic scale few comic book movie franchises achieve. With every year that goes by, Justice League (2017) looks more and more like one of the craziest knee-jerk missteps a studio has ever made with a blockbuster franchise.

You can stream both versions of Justice League on HBO Max.