Zack Snyder’s Justice League Cameo Revealed

Zack Snyder’s cameo in Justice League was sneakily revealed as part of a recent interview with cinematographer Fabian Wagner. Although the movie is on track for a disappointing box office run and got a lukewarm-at-best reaction from the majority of fans and critics, Wagner’s work behind the camera was not one of its biggest issues. He made good use of some stunning locations at times and lent the movie a slightly more stark look than Larry Fong’s often noir-ish style on Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Wagner worked extensively with visual effects supervisor John Des Jardin to make his photography and lighting work well in concert with the CGI, and that included methods to give each of the main actors their own distinctive looks. But Wagner revealed in a new interview that he also worked on a scene with Snyder himself as an actor, shooting a brief cameo for the director that’s apparently hard to catch.

Speaking with Comic Films M.D. in a recent interview to promote Justice League, Wagner joked about donning Ben Affleck’s batsuit before slipping in the detail that Snyder made a cameo in the movie. The director also has a credited appearance in Wonder Woman as a U.S. soldier. Here’s how Wagner described Snyder’s Justice League cameo:

“Should have done that but I’m too small for that. Ben is really big and very strong and he’s a lot taller than me so it wouldn’t have worked (laughs). I wouldn’t have fit into the bat suit but that would have been really cool. Zack had a cameo in one of the shots, he’s sitting in a cafe.”

The interview mostly delves into Wagner’s technical work as director of photography. He said that he didn’t change his general approach for Justice League, despite the movie having a far bigger budget than anything he’d done before (his prior biggest-budget movie was 2015’s Victor Frankenstein, which cost $40 million to make). He described Snyder’s expectations for the cinematography of Justice League to be “slightly more naturalistic” and “less stylized” than BvS. On the idea of giving the characters their own unique looks, he said that it grew naturally out of the filmmaking process and wasn’t necessarily something they’d mapped out.

The interview with Wagner is worth checking out in full for fans of his work and cinematography in general, but Snyder’s cameo is easily the most striking detail that he revealed about the movie without giving anything away. The director’s sneaky appearance will give Justice League some added replay value for fans who did enjoy it. You can count Wagner among those fans, because he’s publicly supported a recent petition to release Snyder’s original cut.

Despite Snyder having some fun by getting in front of the cameras for a change, his cameo certainly did nothing to stop Justice League’s disappointing results both critically and commercially. The movie could lose up to $100 million for Warner Bros., which could signal major changes to the DC cinematic universe moving forward. Unfortunately for Snyder, his cameo could be the last time he appears in any DC movie.

KEY RELEASE DATES
Justice League release date: Nov 17, 2017
Aquaman release date: Dec 21, 2018
Wonder Woman 2 release date: Nov 1, 2019
Cyborg release date: Apr 3, 2020
Green Lantern Corps. release date: Jul 24, 2020
Shazam! release date: Apr 5, 2019