Moviegoers can be fickle beasts. Seriously, you need only look at the batch of fans calling for George Lucas to return to the Star Wars franchise — and these were often the same fans yelling loudest for him to step away back when the Prequel Trilogy was underway. As fans, we often want the best of everything, and when in a moment of crisis regarding a franchise, it’s easy to look back at other films we once hated with rose-tinted goggles.

But is this always the case? I’m specifically talking about Zack Snyder and his DC movies. Man of Steel was a divisive film at best, and to this day, perhaps one of Snyder’s most derided films is Batman v Superman. Even the Ultimate Cut, which I think is absolutely amazing, there are many fans who see it as a failure in filmmaking, and it never really stopped the Snyder critics from complaining. But after Justice League came out, things changed.

It became clear that the studio had heavily tampered with the movie, as it tied up virtually none of the loose ends from previous movies. And so, the cries for the “Snyder Cut” began, and they haven’t really stopped since. Now, there seems to be this contradictory idea that somehow, the man who made the maligned Batman v Superman, could have a superior cut to Justice League. Sounds like a pretty cut-and-dry instance of hypocrisy, here, right?

RELATED – Zack Snyder Responds To Criticism Of His Batman Being A Killer — Proving He Doesn’t Understand The Character

For, let me start out by assuming that everyone who is calling for a Snyder cut are the same people who yelled the loudest about how much they hated Batman v Superman and Man of Steel. While I know that’s not true, since those are the people most tend to complain about, I don’t think I’m weakening my argument at all by assuming this. A lot of those complaints revolved around the characterization of the heroes, and remained relatively consistent.

So, how is it not hypocritical? Well, let’s look at Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. To me, they chronicle one continuous arc of Superman. The first film is about him discovering himself, but the overarching narrative Snyder seemed to be going for is the discovery of his love of mankind. Batman v Superman asked the question of whether or not humanity was worth saving, and it seemed like an arc that, while a bit unfulfilled in the first two movies, was set to pay off in the third Justice League movie. That never happened.

Then, there was the Knightmare sequence. This was a scene that is still grossly out of place in Batman v Superman, even after Justice League. It never paid off, and was understandably criticized when the former movie hit. As with the Superman arc, this was a setup that was never paid off. And before anyone argues that we don’t know for sure these elements would have been referenced or fixed, it’s worth mentioning that at a recent director’s cut Q&A for Batman v Snyder, Zack Snyder confirmed two things: that they didn’t even shoot their script, and that loose ends he’d hoped to tie up remained unfulfilled.

“When this movie came out, understand that Chris Terrio and I had finished the script to Justice League before BvS came out. Some people didn’t like the movie. A vocal minority. So they said ‘there’s a lot of stuff we don’t want you to do’ so we did a rewrite from that script.”

“So the original Justice League script, we didn’t even shoot. The really scary version. Because we were really nervous after the response.”

“The truth is that the Knightmare sequence in this movie is always something that I intended to explain and we end up in an future Earth where Superman has succumbed to the Anti-Life equation and there’s a few surviving members of the Justice League, and a broken Cyborg was working with Batman to send Flash back to warn Bruce. There was a scene in the trailer, apparently it didn’t make it into the movie, where Bruce says Flash came to him and warned him that “Lois was the key” and something darker was coming.”

Okay, so why does this matter? Well, those first two movies he did were a bit unfulfilling because a lot of it was setting things up for Justice League…and by the time we got to that movie, the studio came in and neutered it out of fear, essentially making those last two movies worse in retrospect. So, with that in mind, it’s not completely hypocritical for fans who hated those first two movies to still want it all brought together in a satisfying way.

Even if they were critical of what Snyder did, many seemed open to the idea of their opinions being swayed had it all paid off down the line. But alas, with Warner Bros. overhauling the DCEU as a whole, that’s a future we will never know. The Zack Snyder Superman trilogy will always be an incomplete part of film history.

But what do you think of all this? Are you sad to see the way this movie turned out, and do you think Snyder could have been better? Let us know down below!

Don’t forget to share this post on your Facebook and Twitter using the buttons at the top! Or you can react to the post down below!

SOURCE: Stephen M. Colbert (1), (2)