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Final Justice Weta Digital’s digital wizards discuss their work on the much-anticipated Zack Snyder’s Justice League. By Trevor Hogg
W
ith the release of Zack Snyder’s version of Justice League last month, the helmer got a second chance to complete his vision for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice after studio politics and the death of his 20-year-old daughter resulted in his replacement by Joss Whedon in 2017. Lackluster box-office results for the extensively reshot Justice League caused Warner Bros. to rethink its approach in bringing the DC Universe to the big screen. Rumors began to circulate online that a version existed which was overseen by Snyder, who through social media fuelled the frenzied fan desire for its release. With the arrival of HBO Max, Warner Bros. took the unusual step of providing extra funds for the additional shooting and visual effects needed to make the ‘Snyder Cut’ a reality. Retitled Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the four-hour event movie appears exclusively on HBO Max, with Weta Digital reuniting with production VFX supervisor John ‘D.J.’ Des Jardin to produce www.animationmagazine.net
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1,000 visual effects shots that involved updating shots and creating entirely new ones.
Second Chances Animation supervisor Simeon Duncombe was part of the original Weta Digital team that worked on the 2017 version of the movie. “It’s not often that you get a second chance at something, particularly like this,” he tells Animation Magazine. “All of the cool stuff was coming back that you wished wasn’t cut out in the first place.” Uploading assets from the original movie did not make the process any easier. “There is a scene where Steppenwolf is chasing all of the Amazons who are escaping with the Mother Box on horseback,” states Weta Digital VFX supervisor Anders Langlands. “In 2017, they built what was needed to get the shots done. But then, we’re coming in, designing new shots and pointing the camera in places that we never saw before. It was pitched to us as updating the characters, picking up a few shots, and finishing some shots; that com-
pletely undersells the amount of work that goes into something like this.” The hour’s worth of material produced by Weta Digital includes redesigns of Steppenwolf and Darkseid — with the latter making his onscreen debut — as well as the expansion of the Knightmare sequence. “If you look at the end credit scene in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice where Lex Luthor is talking to a version of Steppenwolf; that is a design we reverted to in the 2020 version of Justice League,” remarks Weta Digital VFX supervisor Kevin Smith. “For us, it was hitting the marks on executing the design as opposed to trying to develop anything new. Zack is a visual guy and he already had an idea of what he wanted all of his characters to look like.” A redesign request that proved challenging was increasing the iridescence of the armor worn by Steppenwolf. “What was interesting about that is Zack kept pushing for it to be more,” reveals Langlands. “There was a certain point at which we stopped fighting it and embraced the disco version of him, which is cool.”
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may 21
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