Zack Snyder on stepping away from "Justice League", not watching "Superman" or "Supergirl"

[...] How do you feel about having the DC superhero universe taken from you when you’d made quite a bit of money for the studio?

The circumstances around it were so particular. It just kind of crawled over me. What was happening with me and my family was so intense.

And to have this be added to it.

It was so loud — that part was so loud — that, in retrospect, asking, “How’s the movie going?” And they go, “Oh, it’s fine! They’re doing some reshoots.” And I go, “Oh, OK. Fuck it.” So, Debbie went and watched the Joss [Whedon] version of the movie, and to have her come back to me and say, “You can never see that movie,” and to realize then that it was 60 pages of rewrites that they did for it… I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t know.

You’ve never seen Joss’ version?

I’ve never seen it. There was a point when the movie was released that was a low point for me because the pile-on effect was so insane. Not only did I lose my daughter, but also they’ve released this version of the movie that I had nothing to do with and my name is on a movie that I didn’t make.

Were you like, “What else?!”

“What else!” Literally. But there was this catharsis of, I met with this executive at Warner Bros. who’s long gone since — I won’t say who it was — and he said to me, “You know, Zack, I’ve got to tell you one thing: You were right about everything.” And I was like, “That’s kind of you.” And he goes, “We were fighting you, and in the end you were right.”

What were they fighting you on?

The whole vision for the DC universe and the way I made movies and everything. They did this attempt to control it — and I’m just talking about the regime that was there that’s no longer there. They had this massive IP that’s worth a ton and I can understand wanting to protect it as best they could since all their jobs depended on it working, and they’d put it in the hands of a madman — or so they thought — so the part of them thinking that, and this is going to sound horrible, “This thing that happened to Zack is a window for us to take the movie back now.”

It’s unfortunate that that’s the way some people in the industry think.

Yeah. But the catharsis of being able to finish it, and do it my way, was amazing. I can’t walk down the street without having people come up to me and say, “Thank God for that movie.” And it’s awesome.

I do want to know what your thoughts are on the current state of the DC Universe. Have you seen Superman or Supergirl?

I haven’t seen the movies. It’s a little bit too personal for me. Too soon, I guess you could say. I do like James [Gunn]. And I do have an appreciation for his [vision].

He consulted with you on Superman’s suit, right?

He asked me a question about the underwear. You know, I can’t even remember now, but I think it was about the underwear. Sorry, but I’m going to do a little diatribe. Watchmen is a superhero deconstruction film — neuroses, sexual impotence around their costumes, the fetishism, everything. You can’t undo that. I think about everything that way. So, the underwear on the outside of the superhero costume comes from Victorian strongmen. The Victorians were so prudish that they’d wear flesh-colored leotards and then put the underwear over it. That’s how it started. It was really just a reflection of the Victorians not wanting to show any real skin due to their prudish fear of nakedness. So to me, that’s such a dinosaur. We don’t feel that way anymore. We live in an era where we’re OK without putting the underwear on. But maybe we’re not OK! Maybe the message is that you put the underwear back on Superman because we haven’t moved on from our Victorian prudishness. But I thought we had!