Wow

I won’t bore you with the details. We all know Justice League was cut to shreds to hit a 2-hour run-time mandate given by former Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara. And we also know that Joss Whedon was NOT brought in to add “Connective Tissue” to Snyders already shot film. But in my findings and research, I’ve always wondered something: How much of Snyder’s ACTUAL footage was in the theatrical release? Well, I got my answer.

Now you may be asking yourself: “How would you know what was Zack and what was Joss”? You see, I began a little miniseries doing my damnedest to unearth what was changed from Justice League and what remained of the original product. I called it The Periodic Table of Justice League (and yes, I’ll be finishing it up soon). But in that time, I forced myself to scour EVERY behind-the-scenes video and painstakingly watch the film over and over to compare it. My commitment is that deep. But what I discovered was shocking.

The Snyder Cut

After cutting up all the easily known footage between the two directors, it was time to go through the scenes individually. This meant dissecting the inserted reshoots and dialogue to determine what was what. Sure, Snyder shot 100% principle photography, but we had heard rumors that Joss was literally shooting an entirely different film for reshoots. Boy, should we have listened then! I will say that my figures probably have an error of 3% due to the fact some scenes were hard to place. But I’ll also say that even if it’s a small percentage of error, these figures should open your eyes.

According to my calculations, Joss Whedon has roughly 35 total minutes* (or close to 32%) of new footage. Add his obviously glaring reshoots of nearly 16 minutes* (or close to 14%), and Whedon’s total contribution squeaks out at 50 Total Minutes* (Or close to 46%) of Justice League. Comparatively, Zack has roughly 18 minutes* (or close to 17%) of the original footage not touched. Adding the tampered footage inserted by Joss Whedon, and you get another 41 minutes* (or close to 38%) of Zack Snyder footage in Justice League.

The Plot Thickens

If I were to add up those scenes above and include the dialogue, things become thick-milky. But using my figures, I was able to at least come up with the total of Whedon dialogue from his own footage (regardless if anyone was talking or not) and it totaled to roughly 34 minutes* (or close to 31%) of the entire film. Terrio and his untouched dialogue with Zacks footage totaled a mere 17 minutes* (or close to 17%) of the entire run time.

But what about the Snyder Cut? Well, Zack’s footage equals a healthy figure of roughly 60 minutes* (or close to 54%) of the theatrical cut of Justice League. Regardless if the footage was tainted or not, there’s something else we know. Zacks Cut of Justice League is 214 minutes long. And when we look at his total run-time compared to that number? We have roughly 154 minutes* (or close to 72%) of UNSEEN footage that we don’t know about. 2 hours and 34 minutes are longer than some films in theater! The Snyder Cut of Justice League is TRULY a whole nother film and that’s shocking! The only question is: When will we see it?

* Minutes were counted towards my own research and were not provided by any source. Estimates should be treated with a 3% +/-