Loss and Hope
How and why I became an Associate Producer on Justice League
This is a translation of a text originally published in Brazilian Portuguese.
“This world is divided. They are a primitive species. Unevolved and at war with one another. Too separate to be one. […] This world will fall, like all the others.” Steppenwolf
W e are under attack. Suffering blows from maddened tyrants, angry lackeys and zombified beings that feed on fear and hate. The consequences are losses, ruins and dead people. Piles of dead people. Am I talking about a movie or real life?
I’m talking about a world without Green Lanterns or Kryptonians… A world where I fortuitously became a producer on Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Part 1: Something darker
I n 2017, filmmaker Zack Snyder stepped down from his key position in DC Extended Universe due to a family tragedy: his adoptive daughter had taken her own life. Autumn Snyder was a writer who loved to help those in need and she was only twenty.
Unfortunately, at the same time, many people around the world have decided to walk themselves into an abyss, giving power to cartoonish evil villains. By 2021, we all have our own dead and personal tragedies to mourn. It looks like we’ve been victims of the Anti-Life Equation.
Loneliness + Alienation + Fear + Despair + Self-worth ÷ Mockery ÷ Condemnation ÷ Misunderstanding x Guilt x Shame x Failure x Judgment
N=Y where Y=Hope and N=Folly, Love=Lies, Life=Death, Self=Darkside
It seems that the archetypal comic villain Darkseid takes very real victims. It’s exactly like the dark side in all of us when we don’t properly feed the mind until it’s hijacked by some convincing lie.
Living in a “new normal” more akin to an apocalyptic nightmare than we’d like to admit, many of us would agree with that bitter Batman quote: “I’ve been dead inside a long time”.
Part 2: Don’t count on it, Batman
W hen I was too young to be able to read, my world was very limited. But it widened a little bit when I met the Super Friends at the hall — they at the Hall of Justice, me in a small TV hall.
I’m not lying when I say that much of who I am is due to Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman… and also Apache Chief, Samurai and Black Vulcan. Thanks to their stories I learned that I should not accept injustice, and that I should use my powers (the ones that I swore I would get someday) to help people. So I grew up and the world has become less colorful — and note that in my childhood I used to watch TV in black and white.
Later, as a young man, I left my hometown to study film production and work behind the scenes. I didn’t go to California and obviously never took part in a blockbuster. But I get involved with indie films and public programs that offered many free courses, talks and workshops where I taught guerrilla filmmaking to more than a thousand people. Parodying the motto of a friendly neighborhood: with small power also comes great responsibility.
Meanwhile, at the top floor, Zack Snyder was making comic book adaptations like 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. I didn’t like everything I saw, but I did consider some storytelling and cinematography choices as amazing director’s qualities, such as the usage of mythical and allegorical elements, the good pace and iconic visuals, and also the choice to portray more realistic heroes in a grayish world.
Then, the filmmaker stepped down following the unexpected autumnal mourning, and his movie was completely remade and tampered as a “Frankenstein” work by another director. Meanwhile, on this side of the equator, we’ve suffered all the losses we already know by heart and yet seem too terrible to be true.
Unfortunately, History, newspapers and everyday life show us that humanitarian catastrophes intensified by megalomaniac supervillains are terribly real. If evildoers disguised as messiahs are plain to see, why heroes remain restricted to pages and screens? Where are our superheroes when we need them most?
Part 3: The age of heroes
Wonder Woman: They said the age of heroes would never come again.
Batman: It will. It has to.
U ntil early 2021, the Snyder Cut — as fans call Zack Snyder’s Justice League — has existed only as some sort of urban legend or an unfulfilled whim. It showed up in peppery tweets, pictures of what could have been, banners on planes flying over Warner Studios, billboards in Times Square, and the most important: a suicide prevention movement reflecting Autumn Snyder’s untimely end.
Yes, at some point during the clamor for the movie release, the fans realized they could do more than beg a company to launch a product and take their money. It was in this stage that I stepped in the project, joining thousands of other comic book nerds like me around the globe. The results were donations and attention to an AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) campaign that could and still can help many anonymous heroes and heroines to defeat the anti-life equation.
In Brazil, suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 29. According to WHO, World Health Organization, the country is second only to the US in this unfortunate ranking. Then the local fanbase, SnyderCutBR, has created a noble fundraising campaign in support to CVV (Centro de Valorização da Vida, roughly, “Valuing Life Center”) — a non-government organization that provides emotional support and suicide prevention efforts since 1962.
In the SnyderCutBR+CVV campaign, people buy items with exclusive prints by independent artists, and 100% of the profit is donated to the Valuing Life Center. I’d created some Justice League artworks and I’m honored to take part in this worthy cause approved by director Zack Snyder himself.
“You are not alone” says a sign in a scene in the film, finally completed and released after four years of effort by the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement. By the time I publish this article you’ve probably already watched the Cut. So you know that the message of struggle and union are all over the feature-length — and sure it’s pretty lengthy.
At a time in which projects are always running late, the film is four hours of unhurried storytelling. Shades of black and white on canvases usually dominated by colorful figures. Broken heroes suffering the doubts of our times when everyone needs to be like perfect beings in impeccable virtual display windows.
The film released in 2021 has a plot very similar to its 2017 version, but at the same time is so different that it is a completely new opus. Watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a journey from the intricate script written by Chris Terrio, passing through the striking unsaturated photography by Fabian Wagner, accompanied by the epic post-modern soundtrack by Junkie XL, to the meticulous work done by the fandom responsible for the release and social campaigns. In director’s words, we all have associate producers credits.
The feature film available on HBO Max is a corporate studio production made by a huge team, but at the same time it is also an authorial work. It’s impossible, for example, to watch the heart of the movie, Cyborg’s struggle and his father trying to save him somehow, and not to draw a parallel between director and his daughter in interchangeable roles.
Part 4: Change Machine
T he new Justice League is properly dedicated to Autumn Snyder. Likewise, there’s no doubt that the film is a motivation for each one of us, from the fandom and beyond, to overcome our personal battles. If the dark side is already here within us, so are the heroes — they just need good conditions to evolve.
The superhero genre arose in comics nearly a hundred years ago amidst crises and world wars. The world was quite different from now but it’s still the same. People are still looking for lighthouses to guide them in a rough sea.
Are Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman naïve characters from an imperialist marketing machine? We can say so. Are their stories the closest we have to a recognizable world’s contemporary mythology? Are they symbols of hope for a lot of people? Sure they are.
Decades after watching the Super Friends cartoon on a black and white TV set in a wooden case, now I watch Justice is Gray on my colored flat screen, wearing my “Associate Producer” shirt. I’m alone when the film credits roll for the fourth time, but I know that there are thousands of people like me using art as fuel to fight the parademons of hate and send them back to the place they came from.
So let’s change a little bit the statement of the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell: “All the heroes, all Justice League, all the hells of Apokolips, are within you”. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist in the real world, it means just the opposite. That means it’s everything we believe that forces us to make a difference in the world — the greatest difference possible in our everyday world.
Every superhero fan has the potential to be a hero or heroine in their own right. I hope we always act according to the ideals we share with our friends at the Hall of Justice.
Cyborg: I heard about you. Didn’t think you were real.
Batman: I’m real when it’s useful.
P. H. de Aragão is an Associate Producer on Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Keep in touch: Website | Instagram | Newsletter
Get SnyderCutBR+CVV items and help save lives: Website | Store | Webportal
