Justice League VFX Artist Reveals Snyder Cut’s Steppenwolf Design
Over the past year, Snyder fans have been frustrated by a series of revealing posts by Zack Snyder on social media on what Justice League could have been. Each new post from Snyder confirms how different the Snyder Cut would have been from the theatrical release of Justice League. To say fans are disappointed with the final film is an understatement. But despite their ongoing requests for Snyder to reveal more, one of the more interesting leaks came from Justice League’s VFX artist, Greg Ecklund.
On his Vimeo account, Greg Ecklund teased fans with previs work from the Snyder Cut. His reel (which is now pretty difficult to track down) shows three scenes from the proposed Snyder Cut including Parademons attacking the Batmobile, and Superman confronting the League just after his resurrection. But its the third scene which is the most revealing. It depicts Steppenwolf chasing the Amazons as they try in vain to keep the mother box from Steppenwolf’s grasp, as we see in the final film. But what is different is Steppenwolf’s design. After he descends down the Boom Tube into the Amazons chamber he rises up to reveal his truly monstrous design, that bears little resemblance to the villain seen in the theatrical release.
The tall white guy with the horned helmet we see in the final film is no where to be seen. In his place is a nightmarish vision for Steppenwolf that you’d expect to come from a hell-scape like Apokolips. Snyder’s version is more monster than man, a hulking, and truly menacing alien, suitable for conquering worlds. His armor is also different, a bristling set of metal shards pieced together. This design is very similar to the hologram of Steppenwolf we see Lex Luthor communicating with in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. This means Snyder most likely committed to this design early on only to have it abandoned when he left the movie during post-production.
Remember these designs aren’t the final VFX for the film. Far from it. Previs, or previsualization helps visualize complex scenes for filming. It’s a tool Snyder uses a lot, and with his stunning visuals you can see why. Greg Ecklund’s previs work shows us just how different Snyder’s Steppenwolf would have been from Whedon’s more family-oriented take on the character. And since it has been revealed that Snyder was well into post-production on Justice League in February 2017, you can safely assume if he had stayed on, his version of Steppenwolf would have been as good as the CGI in BvS.
This also means that when Joss Whedon took over and at Warner Brother’s behest went on a mad quest to reshoot a large portion of the film in record time, that the new reshoots and reorganization of Snyder’s footage into the final cut was also rushed through post-production. This has been confirmed by a number of the VFX team, who complained on Reddit that they ran out of time.
The results speak for themselves. Whedon’s iteration of Steppenwolf is cartoonish, a sure sign the character was unfinished. But even if finished the character design was also uninspiring, even though Whedon’s iteration of Steppenwolf was more comic book accurate.
Of course Steppenwolf’s issues don’t end with his design. There are ultimately more problems with his non-existent characterization. Still, the conceptual design of the villain is such an important piece. And if given a choice I know which version of Steppenwolf I would like to see.
