For what feels like ages, comic-book fans have been clamouring for the “Snyder cut” of Justice League: the version of the 2017 film intended to be released before director Zack Snyder had to leave the project due to a personal tragedy – and before Warner Bros realised that not everyone wanted to spend four hours subjecting themselves to the cinematic equivalent of an emo haircut.
Now it’s happening. After Joss Whedon’s forgettably piecemeal version of Justice League came and went to utter silence, HBO Max has granted Snyder between $20-$30m to finish his film the way he intended.
What an opportunity this is. The release of the Snyder cut, in 2021, effectively gives directors the opportunity to be their true selves – releasing a commercial version of their film theatrically while serving up a dish of pure id designed solely to appeal to a hardcore of obsessive fans on a streaming site. With that in mind, here’s a list of films that should be given this treatment next.
Fantastic Four
Much like Justice League, Josh Trank’s dark update of Fantastic Four felt like watching the indiscriminate dilution of a creative vision. Trank claimed on Twitter: “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews.” Now is the time to see that vision through to completion. A Cronenberg-style body horror, shot with a deadening lack of wit, where everyone staggers through their own personal hell-cycle of grief and the Human Torch ends up addicted to heroin.
Knight of Cups
Some have said that 2015’s Knight of Cups marked the nadir of Terrence Malick’s freeform, quasi-meditative film-making style. But some might say it wasn’t freeform or quasi-meditative enough. According to actor Thomas Lennon, his minute-long appearance in the film was the result of 11 hours of continuous shooting on multiple cameras. There might be a version of this out there that’s four or five days long! Surely Netflix would jump at that.
Transformers 4
Michael Bay’s film-making style is so chaotic and incomprehensible that it borders on arthouse. Let’s allow him to lean into that tendency with a version of his most mindless film. Let’s just make it a nonstop, full-volume collage of shapes and noises and explosions and cleavages that never changes in rhythm or tone, slowly hypnotising its audience into a completely blank fugue state. It could be the Metal Music Machine of film-making. Or it could be indistinguishable from the film that was released into cinemas. There’s only one way to find out.
Mother!
My sincere belief is that Darren Aronofsky held back when he made Mother! Yes, it contains sexual and physical violence, nightmarish imagery, nudity, torture, suicide, gunplay, murder, human organs being flushed down a toilet, burning, dismembering and – of course – a baby being killed and eaten by a mob of people. But ask yourself this: is there a scene where a little boy soils his underwear, then places his soiled underwear on his head and marches around in circles singing I’m a Little Teapot? No there is, and it is an opportunity wasted. Hopefully a rerelease on, say, Quibi, will remedy this.
The Irishman
My one complaint about The Irishman is that it wasn’t long enough. I wanted to see Robert De Niro’s life from start to finish, Boyhood-style but in real time. True, that film would have been 76 years long, but at least we wouldn’t have had to watch any more of those creepy de-ageing effects.
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