With the release of the Justice League movie being controversial due to Joss Whedon having to finish the movie, fans have been petitioning Warner Bros. for the full Zack Snyder release.
Now a reported VFX artist that worked on the Justice League movie took to Reddit a few days ago to answer questions which includes letting it be known that Iris West will be recast for Flashpoint.
Here are the details revealed:
- There won’t be a Snyder cut.
- There won’t be further vfx work done.
- There was (sadly) never a black Superman suit.
- Alfred’s “let’s hope your not too late” cut scene from the trailer is addressing Superman. No one else. It’s funny because it was cut a few weeks before the trailer came out so we were like “ugh” when it was in the trailer.
- The cut hologram scene is also Superman Not Supergirl, or any bullsh-t like that.
- The cut scene of Flash breaking through the glass is from a scene where he’s rushing to save Iris from a Car Crash with a hot dog van. It was cut fairly early on when Famuyiwa bailed on Flash as Kiersey Clemons was cast due to his involvement. It’s currently being worked on again to remove Clemons and replace her with a random woman for the home release. Whether that means an extended version or just for deleted scenes, I don’t know. I expect Clemons will be recast.
- The original after credit scene that was shot in principal photography was Bruce being woken in the night in his lake house by a green light and being visited by Tomar Re and Kilowog. It was cut fairly early on during post.
- My friends all worked on the beard removal shots. Now, nobody was happy about these having to be done in the first place – it’s a ludicrous notion and had to be done in only 3 months over 4 vfx companies. A massive task, and Warner Bros were thoughtless not to push the film back based on this alone. The initial idea was to shave Henry’s beard, and then WB would foot the bill for the VFX of adding the beard back in for Paramount’s MI6. This was tested on existing shots from Zack’s principal photography and very successful – adding a beard as opposed to removing one is a walk in the park. It’s essentially body track, groom/fur SIM and lighting/comp as opposed to rebuilding a man’s entire f–king face. Despite the success, Paramount said f–k off and beard removal was the only option. Why they couldn’t just stick a false tache on him in MI6, we’ll never know.
What is your personal opinion on the film?
I saw it with the crew and then again today. Our team did a lot of the beard removal/face replacement on Superman and we were proud of our shots and that general audiences wouldn’t notice too much.
I’m not sure which other studio did that opening shot on the cell phone but its dreadful. It shouldn’t have been approved internally let alone gone all the way to make it into the film. That shocked me a bit. We were all looking at each other when the film started like “wtf is this?!”
Second viewing I enjoyed it more.
I’m curious about your process. As far as quality of rendering CG and building models – does it solely depend on budget, time and the VFX house or does the director also have an influence on quality of CG? As in one director can get better CG shot done than another. Thanks!
Director has final say on everything. So shots can be approved by the vfx supervisor at the vfx studio, then approved by the director’s vfx supervisor, then get to the director and they can say “change this” or “yeah that’s good.” There’s a lot of stages in between.
Did you work on anything that didn’t make the final cut?
There was a lot of cyborg that got cut, which you’ve all seen a bit of by now, but there’s even more. A whole hacking sequence with a hologram bull fighting a hologram bear, more stuff with Silas and Star Labs etc…
How much scenes where cut
A lot, but that’s the same with every film. Honestly.
Do you think that given more time, Henry’s CGI would’ve looked better? Would you have done it another way given more time?
Yes, vfx is based around time and effort. If you give us ridiculously hard shots to do 4 months before the film comes out, they’re not gonna be the best they could be.
Do you know if you will be working on future DC films.
Yes, Aquaman.
What was your team’s reaction when you heard you had to CGI the moustache?
A mix – to some people it’s a cool little project to get stuck in to and another problem to solve, which is what a lot of VFX is about. Challenging. To me, as a fan, I was annoyed haha Paramount should’ve shaved him and stuck a fake one on for MI6. Ridiculously petty of them. We did tests on already shot footage of Superman to add a beard as well to show the MI6 team at Paramount it was loads easier, and Warner Bros offered to pay for all the beard adding shots in MI6. They said no.
In your honest opinion and I don’t mean it as a way for you to to throw the special effects artists under the bus but, had Justice League be push back to say spring of 2018 or the summer of 2018 and you guys had a lot more time to fix Cavill’s face, would the result be a lot better and unnoticeable than it currently has in theaters?
It would’ve been seamless.
Was Superman ever supposed to be evil in the whole film like some people say
No
I noticed that there were some awesome cgi done and there were some dodgy ones like the intro where aquaman talks to Bruce in the water. Why is there a difference in quality at different moments?
Because the closeups of Aquaman are from reshoots, they’re 14 months apart
Did u ever see the original Kent farm scene?
Yeah it’s not much different, don’t worry.
What can you say about deleted scenes involving Apokolips/New Gods. Was Darkseid going to show up at any point?
Desaad was in there originally, I’m not sure how far that got though. He looked grim reapery, skull like with a big cloak. Never saw Darkseid.
It seems like the VFX for certain scenes and characters (Opening scene in Gotham, anything involving the Flash, etc) was absolutely perfect but other things weren’t as polished. Time constraints are understandably a huge factor in regards to this issue. But are there any other reasons you can point to for this?
I thought half the Flash scenes looked crappy, and the CG Batman at the start even worse.
Okay you’ve made it clear, no ‘Snyder cut’ but what about an extended cut with more footage from both directors visions? Any chance of that?
I’ve said before, based on the fact we were asked to finish the Iris scene 8 months after they cut it, I would’ve said yes, a possible extended version – but because Ascendant leaked it online, that jeapordizes any chance of that happening.
Why would it jeopardize the chance of having the extended cut?
I’ve said before, we were replacing Clemons with a digital woman in the shot – Clemons was brought on because of Famuyiwa, when he bailed, it meant WB could recast her. That’s around the time the shot was cut.
Now it’s been leaked online with her in it, they’ll probably stop all the work being done on it to replace her to stop fan backlash.
Is there any possibility that some VFX will be touched up on for a home release?
I said in my original post that the Barry saving Iris scene was being finished for home release, but potentially removing Clemons and replacing her with a random digital woman incase they wanted to re-cast her in flashpoint. But now that Ascendant leaked the unfinished scene online, I don’t know if it’ll be finished.
What were the original Superman scenes like? Any Kent farm that got cut because it felt like that sequence was heavily cut down.
Nope, that was it. The reshoots for it were just to be a bit cheerier.
Btw I love that every internet critic gave the vfx sh-t but didn’t notice the corn field was CG.
What’s the benefit to CGing a cornfield? Would it not be cheaper & look better to shoot on location? I could be totally wrong but one of the common criticisms with the DCEU is a lot of the scenes are very artificial looking, which I agree with. Unnecessary CGI etc.
They did shoot it on location, in a cornfield, but then they reshot it in august, and we had to create the cornfield. As well as replace Superman’s face and tidy up Lois’ wig haha
Was there more to superman’s resurrection than what was shown in the theater? It felt so rushed and underwhelming but I have to ask, was there more to it before being cut?
I’m not sure, we weren’t the team that worked on that sequence. I was disappointed there was no black suit etc but I actually liked it – Supermans eye following Flash is my favourite bit of the film.
how much do you think does the final cut that is in theatres differ from the initial snyder cut
There is no “Snyder cut” – directors constantly change the edit as they’re going along, hence why some shots get half finished then scrapped – like some of the leaked ones.
For instance in the Barry saves Iris scene, there’s a load of unfinished hot dogs but some fairly far-ahead explosion and environment work. He’s barefoot btw because the shot where he turns around and the floor ripples was supposed to have his sneakers rip apart from how fast he turned. We were in the middle of working on them when the shot was omitted (cut) last year.
So the petition is useless
100%
Did you ever see or hear anything about a second Flash suit?
No, I read about it in the set reports during shooting before we started work on it but I never saw it once.
Will Superman’s mustache be impoved for Blu-Ray/DVD release?
Lol nope
Any scenes involving darkseid were cut from the movie?
Not that I know of, never saw Darkseid personally
Were there any cool deleted scenes involving Batman?
I’ve already mentioned the scene of Tomar Re and Kilowog visiting Bruce at the lake house as the after credit scene but that wasn’t even started, almost no work was done on that sequence before they cut it and told us to stop working on it.
Who was cast as Tomar Re and Kilowog?
No one, they were CG, it was all just a concept with a plate that was shot.
What did Tomar-Re and Kilowog look like? What did Vulko do?
They weren’t finished being sculpted before the scene was cut – the artists were using their GL (2011) designs as reference.
In your opinion do you think that, if they included some of the scens for character building, would the film be even better??. What about snyder scenes?, were they good?? Did jods whedon really mess the plot??
Imo there should’ve been more Cyborg, and they should’ve just taken his story from Justice League: WAR.
What’s the chances a zack Snyder cut can happen ?
0%
I literally explained it – the film is found in the edit process, rarely does a director start shooting with the entire film plotted out. Some things work, some things don’t. There is no Snyder cut – obviously he had a rough edit in process hen he left in February, but the reshoots were done 6 months after that, he had no final version of the film.
Yes, Zack would’ve probably done things differently to how the film turned out, but thats it. There isn’t a secret Zack version hidden somewhere. It doesn’t exist.
Is it whedons fault that sh-t looked kinda bad?
Not at all, it’s WB’s. They should’ve pushed the film back.
Did you get to hear any of Junkie XL’s original score?
No, score is only added in the edit, vfx is done with no sound
Hey this guy says there is a Snyder cut https://twitter.com/SherazFarooqi_/status/934185241639563264
Any truth to this?
1000% bullsh-t. As I’ve said, of course there is an assembly cut Zack had going before he left, but that was 9 months ago.
He himself said he hasn’t touched or interfered or been a part of the process since March. There is no cut. People like this guy are the worst, perpetuating rumours of processes they don’t understand.
how come there was never a black suit if Cavill uploaded a picture of it?
Black and white phone filter
