Zack Snyder has given the DCU a little over ten years of his life. From Watchmen (2009) to Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) , the actor brought his distinct style of filmmaking to the superhero universe, the style that is absolutely adored by his fans. However, there was regret the filmmaker always had and no we are not talking about not getting to make Man of Steel 2 with Henry Cavill.
Over the years that he served as a DC director, Zack Snyder never had one of the most iconic superheroes fighting with the most iconic supervillains – Batman and Joker. This is why, when he was making his version of Justice League, Zack Snyder went out of his way to incorporate a scene in the film for Ben Affleck’s Batman and Jared Leto’s Joker, especially.
Also Read: Zack Snyder Did Not Want His Favorite Superhero Movie To Get Released For The Most Bizarre Reason
Zack Snyder Talks about Batman Meeting Joker
In the epilogue of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, we see a different version of the Justice League squad that consists of Batman, Flash, Cyborg, Mera, Deathrstoke, and surprisingly, the Joker himself. Now, while this scene might feel a little out of place for the film, Zack Snyder revealed why the scene was important, at least to him.
In a conversation with GQ, Snyder was asked if filming this “grand scope” made him feel a little bittersweet as he won’t be there to expand this particular story in the future. And just like he is used to winning the fans’ hearts, Snyder’s reply did so once again. He stated that while he did feel a little bittersweet, Batman and Joker’s story was more important to him than himself.
“A little bit, but I felt it was ruder to have finished this entire 10 years of DC and never had Batman and Joker meet. I was like, ‘That’s a tough one to swallow when we have a Batman and a Joker in the universe, and somehow they’ve never had a discussion?’ That doesn’t make sense.”
And so, Snyder went out of his way to unite Ben Affleck’s Batman and Jared Leto’s Joker in the epilogue for the film. While we never got to see the duo reunite, the few moments we got were enough to understand the potential and the chemistry between Affleck and Leto’s characters.
How Zack Snyder Got Jared Leto to do the Scene
Snyder knew he could not say goodbye to DC without having created a scene with Batman and Joker. Justice League (2021) was his last shot and he came through, despite the restrictions of the pandemic at the time. In an interview with CBR, Snyder’s wife, Deborah Snyder, who served as a producer on the film, talked about what the little meet-up meant to the director.
“The why of it was always like – listen, Zack was like, ‘This is probably going to be my last shot at doing this, and I can’t leave this universe without having a Joker/Batman scene.’ And just the history of what those two meant to each other. Zack had, I think, always wanted to do it, which is why we always had that Joker card that Batman had. So the card: where did it come from? I think that’s a nice little Easter egg.”
In order to accomplish his desire, Snyder and his team had to go through a lot of complications, oweing to Covid-19.
“Even creating his look was a long process that we went back and forth, which was, also further complicated by doing this in the COVID world, because we would send him a truck of costumes and have him try on some things and then Zack would Zoom in. There was a lot of Zooming ad photos and things like that, but so much thought went into creating the character.”
In the end, Snyder was able to pull through the complications as he succeeded in achieving the one thing he really, really wanted to.
You can stream Zack Snyder’s Justice League on Max.
Source: GQ
