Zack Snyder Threatened to Quit Snyder Cut After Studio Pulled New Green Lantern Scene
It turns out “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is not the definitive version of “Justice League” after all. If that was the case, then the final scene of the four-hour comic book epic would’ve featured the Green Lantern John Stewart and not the Martian Manhunter. As Snyder recently told Esquire magazine, “The last scene with Martian Manhunter, originally, I had shot it in England. And the dialogue was very similar, but it was supposed to be one of the Lanterns.”
“And then the studio had told me I wasn’t allowed to shoot anything,” Snyder continued. “That there would be no film made of any kind. During production, that was a thing they insisted on. And I shot stuff anyway, of course, in my yard. And one of the things I shot was the Green Lantern scene.”
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Snyder told the ReelBlend podcast this week he filmed the new Green Lantern scene in his driveway last year during the pandemic with “an amazing actor” playing John Stewart. Snyder did not reveal the actor’s name. John Stewart is notable for being the first African-American superhero to appear in DC Comics, making his Green Lantern debut in December 1971.
“And then they asked me, when they saw the movie and saw that I put it in there, they’d take it out,” Snyder told Esquire about the studio. “And I said that I would quit if they tried to take it out. And I felt bad. The truth is I didn’t want the fans to not have a movie, just based on that one stand that I was going to take.”
Snyder concluded, “The Green Lantern was John Stewart. And that was part of it too. I was like, I don’t want to take a person of color out of this movie. I’m not going to do it. But I felt like having Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter at the end was, that was okay.”
Martian Manhunter appears at the end of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” in a scene where he meets Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne outside the latter’s lake house. Martian Manhunter tells Bruce he’s going to join the Justice League in the fight against Darkseid.
“Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is now streaming on HBO Max.
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