Thanks to the long, drawn out process of bringing “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” to the screen, people are now obsessed with the idea of Zack Snyder doing director’s cuts of his films. So, even before anyone saw one frame of his new film, “Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire,” there was already extensive discussion about his R-rated director’s cut. But according to Snyder, you shouldn’t look at this as a pure director’s cut or extended cut. His R-rated version of ‘Rebel Moon’ is an entirely different beast.
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Speaking to the AP, Zack Snyder teased what people can expect with his upcoming director’s cut of “Rebel Moon.” And no, it’s not just an excuse for him to include a ton of gore and even more slo-mo. Instead, it appears the idea of going into this filmmaking experience, knowing that he was going to have the freedom to do completely different cuts of the film, created a situation unlike anything he’s ever experienced. And thus, the versions of ‘Rebel Moon’ are going to differ drastically.
“It’s not an ‘extended cut’ of this movie,” said the filmmaker. “It’s almost like a different movie. It’s almost a different universe that [the R-rated cut] lives in than this movie.”
The reason for this huge difference between cuts of the film comes from the philosophical place he was in when Snyder was creating the films. He knew he’d have the chance to go all weird and wild with a director’s cut, so he was able to craft what he believes are really different experiences for the viewer.
“The reason for that is because it’s such a philosophical thing to shoot a director’s cut of a movie before you finish this version,” explained Snyder. “All of my director’s cuts exist as a response to the things that were demanded of me to take out of the theatrical version, right? With [‘Rebel Moon’], that demand was never made. We knew this would be a PG-13 movie. In my heart of hearts, I always wanted it to be rated R, but you realize this sort of scale and cost of a movie and say, ‘Well, it’s not 100% responsible to have that demand.’”
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He added, “I’m a good partner, in that sense. It was Netflix’s idea, they’re like ‘What if we said do whatever you want over here? Do the PG-13 version and then go nuts [on the other cut]. We don’t care.’ That was a thing I’ve never experienced before. That’s when the dimensional rift happened [between the two versions], when that was said out loud.”
Interestingly, this sort of discussion creates a new hurdle for Snyder to overcome when the new version of the film is finally released in 2024. You’ll have plenty of people who maybe don’t gel with the PG-13 version that will be convinced to give the R-rated version a shot, considering they’re supposedly so different. But if that claim is oversold, and all we get are just more blood and artistic flare, then perhaps Snyder shouldn’t hype it up so much.
Regardless, his diehard fans will eat that up, and ask for hours more content. So, there’s always that.