Yesterday, Vanity Fair published an in-depth piece on the making of Zack Snyder’s Justice League suggesting that the ending of the four-hour project will “feature a hero cameo that will wow hardcore fans.” Of course, fans immediately started speculating on what that cameo might be, with Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordan – AKA Green Lantern from WB’s 2011 live action movie – gaining traction as a possible contender. Reynolds took to Twitter and denied that he was in the project, but the fan community has been burned by denials before, so I imagine a few stubborn people still wonder if that response was just a smokescreen to hide a surprising Reynolds cameo before the end credits rolls.
Now the cameo has been revealed. If you want to go fresh, return now – there will be spoilers further.
When I first saw that Vanity Fair quote going around, a small part of me wondered if the cameo might be J’onn J’onn, the shape-shifting alien known as The Martian Manhunter, as played by actor Harry LennixThe reason my thoughts immediately went there was because Lennix spoke openly last week about Snyder being in touch and being asked to come back for reshoots (more on that later).
According to a report from io9, it turns out that, yes, the Martian Manhunter is the new Zack Snyder Justice League cameo that was touted by Vanity Fair.
This amounts to a classic case of semantics: the phrasing of the VF article appeared to be imply that the cameo was a secret but never explicitly said it was. I also bet that “hardcore fans” are the kind of people who constantly scour the internet for details about the Snyder Cut and are therefore already aware of the role of Lennix in this movie. Oh yeah. Apologies to fans hoping for something more earth shocks.
In October 2019, Snyder revealed on social media that in his ideal cut, a scene between Martha Kent (Diane Lane) and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) would have ended with Martha walking away and changing shape into Martian Manhunter before finally changing in shape from Harry Lennix’s General Swanwick, a character who appeared in Snyder’s 2013 film Man of SteelAnd just five days ago, Lennix was interviewed by Variety and talked about his performance in this new version of Justice LeagueThe next call I got from Zack was, “ Hey, when can you come in and shoot? Lennix said. So that was great. I discovered it was a possibility, or at least that Martian Manhunter would be in it, when he revealed through the storyboard that Martha Kent is coming by visiting Lois, and after she leaves, she reveals that in fact, Calvin Swanwick, or the Martian Manhunter. That’s how I knew about it. “
I was wondering if this was a version of the scene that made it into the theatrical version where Martha comes by the Daily Planet to visit Lois, but since this Martian Manhunter revelation is supposedly part of the movie’s ending, it’s probably complete different creation.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuts on 18th of March 2021 on HBO Max.
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