Superman's Black Suit Scenes Were Cut From Justice League

Scenes of Superman in his sleek black suit were filmed but cut from the theatrical release of Justice League, the cinematographer for the movie has confirmed.

In the lead-up to the release of Justice League, the central mystery for savvy fans wasn't "is Superman going to be in this thing?" but rather "black suit—yes or no?" Prior to November, many would have hedged toward "yes", considering tie-in merchandise hyping up the suit, and an Instagram post from Henry Cavill that many took to be a close-up of the black outfit.

But when the movie hit theaters with a relatively lean two-hour runtime, the black suit was nowhere to be found. Instead—spoiler alert—Superman's revival saw the brief rise of a shirtless Man of Steel. 

As such, viewers expecting the black suit were left feeling gaslighted, wondering if they had imagined the whole thing. Was this really advertised? Maybe that was a Henry Cavill fan account.

Now, thanks to cinematographer Fabian Wagner, it's finally been confirmed that the suit did exist, scenes were shot, and they didn't end up in the final edit.

Wagner is fairly clear about this in an interview with Inverse, responding to a question regarding whether or not scenes were shot involving the black suit with a simple answer: "There were."

 "It's a cool looking costume," Wagner said. "Sadly, we didn't see that either in the final cut."

Could the black suit casualty have been the result of Warner Bros. wanting to distance the movie from the aggressively dark tone of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman? It would make a lot of sense, considering what we know now about the movie's troubled production. 

We now know that, despite face-saving insistence to the contrary, some influential people at the studio did not want Snyder as a director on the tentpole project following the worse-than-expected reception to his Batman-Superman fight flick.

Ultimately, Superman's black suit ended up in the same pile as Willem Dafoe's performance, Robin Wright's performance, and Cyborg's backstory. Just another thing to wish for in that director's cut.