WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Zack Snyder's Justice League, now streaming on HBO Max.
Ahead of Zack Snyder's Justice League's release, director Zack Snyder conducted some additional filming to complete his vision with a Knightmare that sent Bruce Wayne to a future where Darkseid had ravaged the Earth. In this dystopia, Batman led a ragtag group of heroes -- including Cyborg, Flash, Mera and Deathstroke -- against Apokolips' army, which boasts a Superman who has been infected with the Anti-Life Equation. Surprisingly, even Batman's longtime enemy the Joker went along for the ride, in a move that producer Deborah Snyder says was a long time coming.
Speaking to CBR, Deborah Snyder weighed in on that Knightmare scene and how it captured Zack's original plans to continue the story, despite Warner Bros. moving DC in another direction. She broke down Joker's role in the film and explained how Zack had "always wanted" to film a scene between the Dark Knight and his mortal enemy. She also revealed the significance of the playing card the Joker gave Batman, how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic impacted additional photography, what it took to properly costume the Clown Prince of Crime and more.
CBR: The Knightmare introduces an almost-sexual tension between Batman and Joker -- Are we reading too much into the scene, or is this a fair interpretation of Bruce's subconscious desires?
Deborah Snyder: Listen, I think that the fun and interesting part of Joker is that he is also seductive -- especially, I think, Jared [Leto]'s Joker. To get to have this scene in the movie -- because that's the additional scene that we shot. We did a pickup shot that we needed to get for another scene, and then we did this scene.
The why of it was was always like -- listen, Zack was like, "This is probably going to be my last shot at doing this, and I can't leave this universe without having a Joker/Batman scene." And just the history of what those two meant to each other. Zack had, I think, always wanted to do it, which is why we always had that Joker card that Batman had. So the card: where did it come from? I think that's a nice little Easter egg.
But I think in his performance, there's just something that's super chilling, I think, but it is also a seduction of sorts and he's playing on all the insecurities. It was really fun to be able to dive into that character, even for just a short moment. I think it goes a really long way and it's really impactful.
Even creating his look was a long process that we went back and forth, which was, also further complicated by doing this in the COVID world, because we would send him a truck of costumes and have him try on some things and then Zack would Zoom in. There was a lot of Zooming and photos and things like that, but so much thought went into creating the character.
I also couldn't help but notice that, in this future, Warner Bros' other DC franchise leads -- Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Harley Quinn -- are either missing or confirmed dead. Would you say that was just a coincidence, or was that more of an Easter egg/in-joke for fans following the continuity?
When we originally came up with Justice League, there was an intention that there were two more movies that Zack had in his head. So, even though this is kind of the end of our trilogy of movies, we weren't going to change the ending, even though I think DC has moved on in other directions. Still, we want it to be true of the vision that Zack had -- what Chris [Terrio] and Zack set out to be. So that's kind of where that came from, where it was or where it could have been. Who knows? We play with dreams and time a lot. So there's always a play of what can happen, as we've seen in this film.
Zack Snyder's Justice League stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Ray Porter as Darkseid, Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. The film is currently available on HBO Max.
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