The Snyder Cut movement has finally gotten what they wanted, Zack Snyder's Justice League is complete and viewable to anyone with an HBO Max subscription, vindicating both the director's original vision and the fans' desire to see it themselves. That doesn't mean, however, that they're at all happy about Snyder's departure from the DC Extended Universe. Even though he is leaving on an admitted high note, there has been steady and continual interest in the director's various ideas and concepts that could have and almost did make it into the DC films, including plans for DC's The Atom.
There have been plenty of interviews and panels where Snyder discusses what he wanted to do with Justice League, how he would have brought specific characters to life, and what comic arcs he would love to have adapted if given free rein. One of the more out-there suggestions came from a recent discussion where he talked about one of his long-shot ideas that he never got around to working on.
DC Comics fans may be familiar with The Atom, a superhero who doesn't quite have the profile of Batman or Superman, but still has a decent amount of name recognition. His powerset is quite similar to that of Marvel's Ant-Man, with the ability to shrink himself down while retaining his overall mass. As of the time of writing, the mantle of The Atom has been held by several characters, but the version of the character Snyder was interested in was Ryan Choi, who debuted in 2006.
Not only did Snyder want to tackle the story of The Atom, but he also wanted to make it a multicultural experience by setting the film in China, and having it be in both Chinese and English. It's certainly a bold idea, as most superhero films stick with English characters and settings and then translate them over for overseas audiences, but Snyder wanted something a bit more unique for the project: "I had always had this idea that we would make a movie, a Ryan Choi movie, an Atom movie in China, with Chinese–English and Chinese language."
Having an Atom film in multiple languages could be considered risky, as most audiences are used to films with only one language spoken, and usually English at that, but it's clearly an idea that has captivated Snyder's attention. As he points out to Beyond The Trailer, he managed to make something similar happen with his upcoming Army of the Dead prequel: "We've just done it with the Army of the Dead prequel, Army of Thieves, where it's [an] English, French, and German language movie."
While it's a shame that Snyder didn't get the chance to make his Chinese-English Atom film, at least he got to experiment with the concept to some degree with Army of the Dead. Though Snyder's DCEU work is now behind him, the filmmaker clearly has plenty of interesting ideas left to explore.
Zack Snyder's Justice League is now available on HBO Max.
Source:Â Beyond The Trailer/YouTube