Zack Snyder Says To “Go F*** Yourselves” If You Think His Fans Are Toxic & Defends Misfire ‘Batman v Superman’ With 10th Anniversay Approaching

This month marks the 10th Anniversary of the release of Zack Snyder‘s DCEU installment “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” The former DCEU director is talking up the big crossover attempt that came out on March 25, 2016 (yeah, it doesn’t feel like it was a decade, but here we are) and isn’t terribly happy with folks referring to his devoted fanbase as “toxic.”

Speaking with Josh Horowitz on his industry podcast “Happy Sad Confused” (via Variety), Snyder talked about the headaches he endured with a back-and-forth with the MPAA trying to secure a PG-13 rating and alludes to studio meddling with his edginess.

“My 100% honest reaction to [‘Batman v Superman’] and how it’s received in the world is… Do you really want a movie that’s had all the edges shaved off it by the focus groups? Do you really want a movie where the decisions have been made in a boardroom, or tested ideas have been rendered for your enjoyment? Do you really want the K-Mart version of your story? Is that what you really want?”

READ MORE: ‘Man Of Tomorrow’: James Gunn Casts Lars Eidinger As Brainiac For His ‘Superman’ Sequel

“When we were trying for the PG-13 rating on ‘BvS,’ the MPAA kept kicking the movie back to us, saying, ‘It’s still an R.’ I remember someone saying we got a report from the MPA saying, ‘We just don’t like the idea of Batman fighting Superman. That kind of makes it an R. He really hits him hard with that sink. That’s rude. That feels like an R.’ I’m just like, ‘Okay… let’s just pretend it’s not Batman vs. Superman for one second.’ You realize then that we were kicking the zeitgeist in the nuts and that we were going to anger people,” Snyder continued. “Not only do they not want their heroes deconstructed, they don’t want their heroes battling each other on a road to deconstructing the why of their existence. That’s another sacrilege.”

The truth of it is that “Batman v Superman” ended up a critical failure, and Warner Bros. didn’t ignore that hiccup moving forward. Despite going somewhat okay at the box office with a reported budget of $250 million and earning an impressive $874.3 million, those lingering issues and a family tragedy led the studio to replace Snyder with Joss Whedon (after exiting Marvel Studios when “Avengers: Age of Ultron” didn’t cut-the-mustard) on “Justice League” extensive reshoots, which seemingly only made things worse.

Fans of Snyder’s work and his Snyderverse were quite a vocal group online and while there are certainly very real groups from the Snyderverse fandom that have been extremely vile, bigoted, and trolling with various levels of harassment, Snyder still thinks the good they’ve done overshadows the bad.

“I would never say there is no way,” Snyder states when asked by Horowtiz about his fans’ continued pleas for the Snyderverse to continue (online rumblings of resurrecting the Snyderverse revived when it looked like Netflix would acquire WBD). “I was on the ride that created ‘Justice League‘ [alluding to the pricey Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League’ that ended up on HBO Max], and if you were in my shoes there were numerous times, dark times, when there was no chance that there will ever be my version of it. It will never exist. It can’t… cost, politics, everything stood against. And yet it exists. The fans should never forget they did that. They also raised a ton of money for suicide prevention. They did a lot of good. They catch a lot of flak for being toxic or whatever, but they literally saved human lives. You can go f*** yourselves if that’s what you think.”

Support independent movie journalism to keep it alive. Sign up for The Playlist Newsletter. All the content you want and, oh, right, it’s free.

Snyder is certainly entitled to his viewpoint and opinion, but doesn’t suddendly negate or erase all the trolling (we’ve witnessed in real-time on various social media platforms to critics, reporters, and people hired to tell new DC stories) people still experience and the overlap with his Snyderverse group contributing to the ongoing harassment campaign to get James Gunn fired by studio brass (#FireJamesGunn was birthed by the Snyderverse collective, when he was hired to reboot the cinematic universe, like it or not). With that said, Snyder likely needs even the bad apples to support future project ventures (his MMA pic “Brawler” and long-delayed “The Last Photograph” being in the works) with dewindling studio options after being kicked to curb by WB and Netflix (a string of projects cancelled like follow-ups to “Rebel Moon” and “Army of the Dead” after disappointing viewership numbers for the streamer).

What the future holds for Snyder in the superhero space remains to be seen and you can listen/watch that full exchange with the filmmaker below.