Zack Snyder's Justice League will restore the director's original vision for the DC Extended Universe crossover, rounding out a trilogy that began with Snyder's Man of Steel in 2013 and continued three years later in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. And yet, it's commonly accepted the Snyder Cut won't replace Joss Whedon's theatrical version of the film as canon so far as future DCEU movies are concerned. Then again, it doesn't exactly need to, given the relatively loose continuity of the franchise.

Snyder once again acknowledged (or, rather, lamented) that his version of Justice League isn't canon in Warner Bros.' eyes during a recent interview on the DC Cinematic Cast. “It’s interesting, sort of, in the DCEU, or whatever it’s become, that that trilogy […] insulates itself in some ways, because it’s its own thing now," the director noted. "I famously said, and it’s true -- this isn’t controversial -- this film, my Justice League, is not canon. Canon, for Warner Bros., is the Joss Whedon version of Justice League. That’s, in their mind, canon, and what I’m doing is not. Everything I’m doing is not. And I’m fine with it, because I feel like the only way I could’ve made this film with autonomy is because of me admitting and agreeing that it is not canon."

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Zack Snyder's Justice League - Aquaman, Cyborg and Wonder Woman

Whedon's Justice League might be canon on paper but it's a different story in application. In Sept. 2017, less than two months before Whedon's film hit theaters, DC Entertainment's now-former President Diane Nelson announced the DCEU would no longer abide by a rigid continuity. “Our intention, certainly, moving forward is using the continuity to help make sure nothing is diverging in a way that doesn’t make sense," Nelson said, "but there’s no insistence upon an overall storyline or interconnectivity in that universe." In a way, however, the franchise had already started moving in that direction with 2017's Wonder Woman, which only connected to Batman v Superman through the photo of Diana, Steve Trevor and their allies in WWI during the movie's framing sequence.

Aquaman, which was the first DCEU movie to release after Justice League, made an equally concerted effort to avoid references to Whedon's film, save for Mera (briefly) name-dropping Steppenwolf and acknowledging Arthur Curry had been increasingly active helping people from the surface world. Even Shazam!, the DCEU film arguably most connected to others, only tacitly alluded to Superman's revival in Justice League by having the Man of Steel cameo during its final scene. Other DCEU references, like the Daily Planet front page heralding Superman's return in Freddie Freeman's superhero memorabilia collection, are similarly vague in the way they nod to Whedon's movie. By comparison, Freddie's collection includes a far more overt allusion to Man of Steel in the form of a Time Magazine cover dedicated to the film's Kryptonian invasion.

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Justice League Snyder Cut Assembled

This pattern of casually ignoring Whedon's Justice League as much as possible continued with Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), a film that nods to 2016's Suicide Squad but doesn't even mention the DCEU's big crossover movie. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins later went so far as to, in essence, disown Whedon's Justice League while promoting Wonder Woman 1984, saying "I think that all of us DC directors tossed that out just as much as the fans did." And while the Wonder Woman sequel was perhaps guilty of undermining Snyder's DCEU films by having Diana operate in the open too much, Jenkins said she made a conscious effort to avoid blatantly contradicting Snyder's vision. This is apparent in a scene where Wonder Woman 1984 explicitly shows Diana taking out security cameras at a mall, in an effort to stay off the public's radar.

Considering Whedon's Justice League cut was a critical and commercial disappointment, it's not surprising the film has -- for all practical purposes -- faded from memory in the DCEU since it came out. Comparatively, Snyder's Man of Steel and Batman v Superman remain as polarizing as ever, yet both have loyal fanbases that Whedon's movie doesn't. That likewise explains why the franchise continues to honor them and even Suicide Squad (messily, at times) as canon in a way it hasn't with 2017's Justice League. Now, with Snyder's cut on the way, viewers will have a new version of the DCEU's crossover to embrace instead -- if they're so inclined.

Zack Snyder's Justice League stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Ray Porter as Darkseid, Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. The film arrives on HBO Max March 18.

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