Justice League 2 Concept Trailer Proves The Need For A Zack Snyder Sequel
The SnyderVerse DCEU has been labeled as more or less dead since James Gunn and Peter Safran took over, but that hasn't stopped fans from dreaming big that Zack Snyder's story could be completed one day. After all, this isn't the first time a certain group of DC Comics fans were told that they'd never win the day.
With that in mind, Screen Culture has put together a trailer imagining what "Zack Snyder's Justice League Part II" might look like if it ever comes to fruition. Setting itself as a Netflix trailer, the fan-made teaser posits that another streamer has purchased the rights to the story and characters, which seems a bit unlikely, but the video itself is still pretty convincing.
It begins more or less where "Zack Snyder's Justice League" ended, with the future set-up of the Snyder Cut's explosive epilogue, featuring surviving League members and a few villains trying to stop Superman (Henry Cavill) and Darkseid (Ray Porter) from destroying what's left of the world. As Batman (Ben Affleck) mourns his inability to save Lois Lane (Amy Adams), the future world turns into an apocalyptic hellscape dominated by Darkseid's Anti-Life Equation.
The fan-made trailer teases an interesting Justice League story
The prospective trailer seems to then pivot back and forth between the present and future timelines, inevitably showing how the world became a desert wasteland of fire and death. It also spotlights the last-ditch attempt by the surviving characters to finally fix things and find some hope in this awful future.
Interestingly, the payoff for this imagined version of "Zack Snyder's Justice League Part II" seems to be that Batman will enact a plan to kill Superman in order to save the world. What makes this ironic is that this was very much the plot of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," a movie ending with Bruce Wayne realizing how wrong he had been to try to kill Clark for the greater good of humanity.
It would be a brutal punishment for Bruce to kill Clark after all that, but there seems to be some reason for optimism here. The Flash (Ezra Miller), who was seen time-traveling in the previous two installments, looks to fix it all by going back in time and setting things right. Of course, that comes with its own dangers, as those who have seen "The Flash" know.
This may be the closest we get to seeing more of the DCEU
Finally, this trailer for an alternate version of "Justice League" ends with a brief look at the cut footage of Wayne T. Carr as Green Lantern, suggesting that the Green Lantern Corps. would have aided in the fight against Darkseid. Zack Snyder famously almost quit the movie over Warner Bros. deciding not to let him use the John Stewart version of the Green Lantern, so this is an especially nice touch to wrap things up.
Sadly for DCEU fans, it looks like it's full steam ahead for James Gunn's DCU. The filmmaker has specifically said nothing is canon until his "Creature Commandos" and "Superman: Legacy" come out, purportedly in 2024 and 2025. This means the only way the SnyderVerse could survive would likely be as an Elseworlds-type story.
Still, as far as well-edited fan trailers go, this one is something special. Though it may not fill the DCEU-sized hole in the hearts of many fans, Screen Culture's mock-up offers a shimmering glimmer of what could have been if Snyder had been allowed to carry out what he had planned for the franchise.