Zack Snyder and Warner Bros.’ difficult road to getting the Justice League made included a futile compromise to cut the Green Lantern from DCEU.

Zack Snyder has always been a visionary when it comes to expansive storytelling. His hold over comic book lore and the cinematic medium combined to give the audience and the studios an unprecedented experience that almost launched a rebellion across the globe for the sake of one film.

Zack Snyder with the Justice League cast behind the scenes [Credit: Warner Bros.]

The five-part Justice League story that he had cooked up for the fans of the grimdark universe was to remain in the shadows, forever festering like an old untreated wound. However, Snyder has managed to outlive and outgrow the controversy and scandal wrought on by the DC Extended Universe.

In the aftermath, the director found himself accepting the possibility that he would never again visit the DC universe. As such, it was an easy decision to spoil the rest of his Justice League story, which was set to complete his five-part DCEU trilogy.

Zack Snyder decides to introduce Martian Manhunter

Martian Manhunter meets with Bruce Wayne in Justice League [Credit: Warner Bros.]

In any other world, a director would have preferred a character with a much richer history to take over the mantle of the overseer and messenger than the Martian Manhunter. Zack Snyder was no different. The director always meant to bring in the Green Lantern instead of the Martian Manhunter to serve as the final piece of his Justice League puzzle. Then, his vision would be complete.

However, the studio threw a wrench in his plans. Snyder’s original blueprint for the five-part DCEU story was not acceptable to Warner Bros. for numerous reasons – a primary one being that they were developing separate projects on the side that could be upended by Snyder’s vision.

Bringing in Martian Manhunter was a compromise on his part when Warner Bros. refused to concede on their end. Despite having to change such a key piece of the puzzle, Snyder later managed to make the character work in the broader context of the story, even adding an element of surprise and mystery to Harry Lennix‘s General Swanwick who had first appeared in Man of Steel.

WB forces Zack Snyder to make a compromise

Green Lantern in DCEU has a short-lived cameo [Credit: Warner Bros.]

Although the Martian Manhunter did make several fans raise their eyebrows at the screen, Zack Snyder’s decision to bring him in was not entirely in vain. But the lores of DC state that the Justice League can never be complete without a Green Lantern. With the number of creative changes that Snyder applied to his reimagined DCEU, the absence of one wasn’t a deal breaker.

In a 2021 interview with Vanity Fair, Snyder revealed the behind-the-scenes deal that he brokered with the studio after his decision to bring in Jon Stewart as Green Lantern was nullified by WB.

We shot a version of this scene with Green Lantern, but the studio really fought me and said, “We really don’t want you to do Green Lantern.” So I made a deal with them, and they let me do this [instead]. They were like, “We have plans for John Stewart and we want to do our own announcement.” So I said all right, I’ll give you that. So [Martian Manhunter] was the compromise.

The five-part Justice League story that Snyder was developing for DC had the potential to be one of the greatest achievements in the live-action cinematic world, ending with Superman and Lois’s son, Bruce Kent, taking on the mantle of the Dark Knight 20 years after the events of the finale.

However, the studio’s reluctance to veer away from the familiar and well-trodden path killed Zack Snyder’s vision, resulted in a catastrophic blunder for the studio that fought against millions of fans in a five-year-long campaign and went broke, and ultimately never got to enact their plans for Jon Stewart for which WB made Snyder compromise and bring in the Martian Manhunter.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is available for streaming on Max.