Why The Snyder Cut’s Cyborg Origin Was Cut From Justice League

Ray Fisher’s Cyborg was the greatest casualty from the Justice League reshoots – why did Zack Snyder’s planned origin story get cut from the film?

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The Snyder Cut features a major origin scene for Cyborg – but why was this cut from Joss Whedon’s Justice League? In May 2017, controversial director Zack Snyder left Justice League after undergoing a personal tragedy. He was replaced by Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Avengers fame, but Whedon didn’t just complete Snyder’s film; he rewrote most of the script and completely erased Snyder’s vision. The finished product is frequently described as a Frankenstein’s Monster, with different artistic styles stitched together in painful fashion.

Ray Fisher’s Cyborg suffered from the rewrites more than any other character. Snyder had viewed Justice League as Cyborg’s origin story, describing him as “the heart of the movie.” This origin was removed, with Cyborg instead introduced as a fully-developed superhero – albeit one who was still a bit of a hermit. The Snyder Cut will restore this lost plotline, giving viewers a sense of what could have been. But, naturally, that raises a disturbing question; why was this cut in the first place?

Zack Snyder’s Justice League was an incredibly ambitious project. Snyder’s early assembly cut was five hours, and his original director’s cut was reduced to three-and-a-half hours. That’s partly because of the approach Warner Bros. took to building a shared universe; they’d technically only introduced three members of the Justice League up to this point, meaning Snyder had to win fans over on Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman as part of this film. But Warner Bros. execs felt this was far too long for a superhero movie. There are reports CEO Kevin Tsujihara personally requested Justice League be trimmed down to under two hours, which naturally means a lot of subplots and character arcs were lost. This, more than any other factor, probably explains Cyborg’s sorry fate.

The sad truth, however, is that Cyborg’s scenes were always likely to be ditched by Joss Whedon. He had been tasked to make a lightweight superhero team-up movie, and Snyder’s plans for Cyborg didn’t really fit with that. Snyder intended to give Cyborg a quite dark narrative arc, a story in which he became isolated from the world but gradually learned to accept his place alongside members of the Justice League. According to Fisher, this was intended to give representation to people with disabilities, with Cyborg initially uncomfortable being seen in public. One key moment in Cyborg’s story would have been the death of his father Silas Stone, breaking his last tenuous connection to humanity. None of this story fits with the narrative style Whedon was going for in his version of Justice League, and so it was all excised, leaving Cyborg’s role substantially reduced.

This is one major benefit from the Snyder Cut; it is an opportunity for moviegoers to get to know Cyborg as an actual character, to experience his origin story, and to understand the price Victor Stone pays to be a hero. Joss Whedon ripped the heart out of Justice League when he rewrote the script, but that mistake is now being corrected.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/justice-league-snyder-cut-cyborg-origin-cut-reason/