Zack Snyder Breaks His Silence On Superman's Mustache

When the original Justice League hit theaters in 2017, audiences found their fair share of problems with it — to say the least. For one, there was the jumbled mishmash of tones due to the film having two directors, Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon, each with different visions of what the movie should be. Or how about the borderline incomprehensible storytelling that resulted from Whedon cutting down Snyder's vision of a four-hour epic into a two-hour CliffNotes version? But none of Justice League's flaws came to embody the movie's failures quite as well as Superman's mustache.

This is how it all went down. When Zack Snyder was at the helm during principal photography in 2016, Supes actor Henry Cavill was clean-shaven. When Joss Whedon was brought in to direct his reshoots the following year, however, Cavill had already grown a dastardly mustache for his villainous role in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.

Trouble was, Cavill was contractually obligated to keep the mustache. Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie later told Empire that he actually did give permission for Cavill to shave — in exchange for $3 million from Justice League's producers to cover the costs of digitally filling in Cavill's upper lip. But Paramount Pictures executives balked at the compromise, and the responsibility of Henry Cavill's facial hair management fell entirely on Team Justice League. The film's CGI artists did the best they could to digitally shave him, but the end result looked… well, it looked bad. Really bad.

In the end, the Superman's mustache fiasco came to symbolize the worst of the 2017 cut of Justice League — and perfectly demonstrated how all the money in the world can't cover up something that just isn't going to work.

Everyone knows what happened next. Justice League opened as a relative box office flop, fans started the ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement, and WarnerMedia finally gave Snyder the money to release his version of the movie on HBO Max. Zack Snyder's Justice League has garnered a positive response, too, and in recent days Zack Snyder has been talking to the press about the experience as a whole.

Snyder has refrained from actually badmouthing the theatrical version, but he is apparently relieved that Superman's weird CGI face isn't doesn't feature on the final version of the character. Asked about the mustache mishap by MTV News, Snyder said that since he's never seen Whedon's version of the movie, he's never really gotten a good look at smooth Superman. He explained:

"I've only seen it in memes. It was funny, because part of me is happy that we were able to have that not be the total legacy of the hard work that [Cavill] had done over the last ten years, you know? It's sad to think that [...] could have been the last view that people had of Superman."

Of course, the man who was most affected by the mustache fiasco was Henry Cavill himself. Luckily, Cavill has been a good sport throughout the whole mustache saga. In 2017, he posted a photo from the set of Mission: Impossible – Fallout and captioned it:

"It is time to finally set the record straight in this moustache fiasco. Pictured above, is not a set on MI6 but the latest in a series of weapons being designed by Warner Bros and Paramount Studios to combat the entity known as 'Henry Cavill's Moustache.'"

When the ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement was building in 2019, Cavill didn't say much about it publicly, and when he did, he joked that talking about Justice League brought back painful memories. He even told entertainment reporter Jake Hamilton:

"I miss my mustache — which is the most important thing. And for me, it was just a harrowing reminder that I didn't have it anymore. And so I just didn't want to dig that wound any deeper."

But now that the Snyder Cut is out, Cavill has returned to the Justice League fold, even posting a message of congratulations to his director. He wrote on Instagram:

"I couldn't be happier to see your vision for Justice League realised. And what a movie it is!"

#SnyderCut #Superman #HenryCavill

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