What The Flash And Iris Scene In Justice League Looked Like Without Special Effects
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When Justice League was first released in theaters in 2017, the film ran for exactly two hours in length. That version of the film, which was completed under the guidance of Joss Whedon rather than original director Zack Snyder, was panned by critics upon its debut, per Rotten Tomatoes. Fans of the franchise, therefore, mounted an online campaign intended to compel Warner Bros. to release a cut of the film following Zack Snyder's original creative vision (via CinemaBlend). As of March 2021, fans can now watch that version of the film on HBO Max. Known colloquially as the Snyder Cut, the new release more than doubles the runtime of the theatrical cut, clocking in at four hours and two minutes.
As a result, the Snyder Cut includes key moments for all of its central heroes not present in the theatrical version of the film. Among those is a scene introducing Ezra Miller's Barry Allen, in which he interviews for a position at a dog daycare business. During the interview, Barry's future love interest Iris West (Kiersey Clemons) is almost hit by a semi-truck when its driver becomes distracted after dropping a hamburger. Barry must use his Flash powers to slow time and save Iris from the resultant car wreck. There's also a prominent, scientifically-inaccurate hot dog floating around for reasons that become clear at the scene's conclusion.
Given the inclusion of the Flash's superpowers, the scene is visibly heavy on special effects. And thanks to a making-of video recently shared to the official Twitter account for Zack Snyder's Justice League, fans can now witness just what went into creating the visual effects in the lead-up to the so-called "hot dog scene" in which Barry and Iris first meet.
The Flash and Iris scene in Justice League used a real hot dog
In their behind-the-scenes video, director Zack Snyder and visual effects supervisor John "D.J." Des Jardin walk through the Snyder Cut's Barry and Iris sequence beat by beat, explaining how many of its shots were completed in post-production.
The scene opens with Barry entering the dog daycare business. Though the moment appears relatively mundane, the studio backlot set at which the sequence was filmed was only a square block in size. Thus, green screens were placed at the end of each visible street in order to allow the post-production team to add in the appearance of a significantly larger cityscape.
Immediately upon activating his Flash powers, Barry shatters the glass door of the dog daycare. The glass is all computer-generated, meaning that Miller simply had to poke their finger through an empty doorframe to act out the moment on camera. Then, Snyder and Des Jardin reveal that the moment when Barry reaches Iris in the middle of the street was filmed entirely in front of a green screen. Clemons was even wearing a performance-capture suit and hair net, meaning that both her hair and clothing are entirely CGI. In fact, one of the only non-computer-generated elements of the shot — aside from Miller and Clemens – is, as it turns out, the all-important hot dog.