“I Told You So!”
Hindsight is 20/20, I thought it’d be funny to look back at a “leak” claiming to describe the Snyder Cut from November 18, 2017.
With the release and reception of Zack Snyder’s Justice League there is much cause for celebration, gratitude, and congratulations. There’s also a baser instinct to go after those who didn’t believe along the way; An incredible temptation to unleash a torrent of “I told you so!” For my part, I’ve recommend amnesty because they can only add to our support. If there’s a message in the movie, the movement, and the marketing, it’s “Us United.”
And yet, I still have to say, “I told you so” not to detractors, but to adherents who had bought into a rumor spread wide around the web during the early days of the Snyder Cut; before it had become a hashtag! In December 1, 2017, I published the provocatively titled Don’t Be As Gullible As Kevin Smith. The contents actually praise Smith’s support of DC and only mildly chastise him for multiplying the reach of a rumor, the contents of which were where my grievance actually was. Dubbed “Differences”, it was supposedly a bulleted list of 21 differences between the theatrical Justice League and Snyder’s unseen film; posted anonymously to Reddit by an alleged insider.
To me, it was immediately obviously a fake, filled with contradictions and lacking the ring of truth… but it spread to mainstream pop-culture sites and two-weeks later Kevin Smith was reading from the list on his podcast reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers. The post was imploring people to ask for the real thing, not this fabrication. Thank goodness the movement was bigger than this and never adopted it as true (though there continued to be those here and there that would insist upon its truth) and so the integrity of what we were asking for was preserved.
With the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the surrounding promotional interviews, it’s clear what the film is, what it was, and what it was not during the grueling 7-month process to finish the film for release, $70M and 2656 visual-effects-shots later. This is a reminder to be humble in what we think we know, before we attack and ask for heads to roll.
Again, thank goodness this didn’t develop real traction otherwise it would have given executives every excuse to say, “Look, the fans don’t want the Snyder Cut, they want this thing… and this proves they don’t know what they’re talking about because this thing isn’t the Snyder Cut!”; discrediting the cut and the fans. But perfection is the enemy of good and fortunately we had the benefit of Smith’s support which extended to the premiere of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
“Snyder’s vision asks us to examine our contributions to the stories we engage with . . . Stand. Fight. Discover. Heal. Love. Win.”
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