‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Got Rid of All Those Creepy Wonder Woman Butt Shots

There were a lot of things that Zack Snyder’s Justice League had to make fix. There was the fact that the 2017 version of Justice League didn’t make much sense, had the completely wrong color correction, and gave Cyborg (Ray Fisher) short shrift. The Snyder Cut was meant to cure all these ills and more. However, the thing I most wanted to see fixed in The Snyder Cut were all those creepy shots of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot)’s butt.

Under Joss Whedon’s direction, Wonder Woman was often shot from below her waist, so that the camera leered up her short battle skirt, as if the audience was supposed to be looking at her vagina-first. Worse, she was introduced into scenes butt-first. The camera lingered on her entrance from behind and put Gadot’s behind in the exact square center of the frame so it was what your eye followed.

It was a bizarrely sexist framing of a feminist icon. And while it’s part of the comic book genre to glorify the hot bods of superheroes, so many of Whedon’s shots seemed to be focused on Wonder Woman’s butt over what she was even, uh, saying. (Especially in the middle, plot-connecting dialogue-heavy scenes.)

So were these specific shots part of Zack Snyder’s ultimate vision or was it one of the many things Joss Whedon left his stamp upon? Would Zack Snyder’s Justice League still have all the Wonder Woman butt shots?

The short answer is no! Many of the gratuitous Gal Gadot butt shots have been razed from the Snyder Cut of Justice League. That’s because it seems those aforementioned dialogue-heavy scenes seem to be completely absent from Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Instead, Wonder Woman joins forces with Batman in a different scene and meets the Flash in a totally different circumstance. Thus, we can surmise that at least a few of these offending sequences were Whedon’s vision for the character. Or his attempt to streamline Whedon’s super-sized script.

However there’s something more complicated going on here from a cinematic perspective. While a few of the infamous Wonder Woman butt shots have been cut from Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a few are still there. Like this one…

And this one…

The angles are exactly the same in both versions of the film. But there is something that is 100% different about these shots as they appear in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. They are color corrected.

What that means is while in Whedon’s color-saturated version of the shot directly above we get a clear view of Wonder Woman’s “Wonderoos,” it’s just shadow in “The Snyder Cut.” The composition of the shot no longer feels like the POV of a little perv boy tossing coins on the ground to get a chance to peek up a lady’s skirt. Instead it’s meant to evoke a sense of oddness and literal wonder. Not only that, but the sequence ends with a scene where Diana stoops down to a little girl’s level and gives her an inspirational speech. It all feels decidedly less creepy.

Similarly, the lighting in the sequence where the newly formed Justice League leap down, ready for action, doesn’t make it look like someone’s shining a flashlight on Diana’s ass. She’s just one member of a team, charging into action.

Indeed, one of the most striking things about Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League versus the theatrical version is how Diana Prince is used. Snyder gives Wonder Woman several more scenes to show off her detective skills, bond with Alfred (Jeremy Irons), and just be a normal person sitting in a chair or hanging out. Maybe that sounds weird, but what that means is we get to know her as a formidable personality. She is allowed to exist outside the perspective of a horned up dude looking at her bodacious bod. Wonder Woman gets to be a person.

In a recent interview, Deborah Snyder told Decider’s Anna Menta that the choice to make Wonder Woman “multi-dimensional” was intentional. “She can be vulnerable and sensitive, but she’s also super strong and she’s a fierce warrior. This is how we always intended on showing her,” Snyder said. “I love some of the lines that weren’t in the theatrical cut—like with the little girl asking, ‘Can I be you someday?’ ‘You can be anything you want to be.’ Because that’s who Wonder Woman is. She’s empowering.”

You’re going to see Wonder Woman’s butt in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but you’re also going to see her tenacity, her grace, her courage, her wit, and her approach to tea brewing. That is the great difference between Snyder and Whedon’s approaches. Snyder’s color correction, approach to plotting, and overall approach definitely mitigated the problem, but what really makes the shots of Wonder Woman in The Snyder Cut less creepy is the fact that she gets to be more than one part of her body.

So thanks HBO Max for releasing The Snyder Cut. You also showed the world Wonder Woman is way more than a great ass.

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