Right. It's somewhat unique for a director, removed from the project 90% of the way through, with the theatrical release completed by a different director, to then get the green light to go back and re-edit a completely new and different cut of the film. I was speaking specifically about that very unique aspect of his cut, and arguing that more had to have happened behind the scenes to make it happen, and you countered with "but there are lots of directors cuts out there".
I mean, if your argument is that 'the director had creative differences with the studio' and that was the unique thing about the production, that seems unlikely, especially if you dismiss all the other unique things about this production. It was a very unique situation

"More happened behind the scenes". Well, yes, that's always true in every possible situation. So what you're saying amounts to 'I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but I think this happened.' Anyone can assume anything they like happened behind the scenes, just because you think it might have happened doesn't mean it did.

Look. You are free to have your own version of events, but everything I heard about during the time period between when JL was released and Synder released his own cut was that Synder was actively stoking the fans on this. It's hard to image any studio doing what WB did in this case, if that wasn't what happened. Fans alone dont cause this to happen. Never have. Like... ever. Which suggests that not only was he pushing the fans on this, but also pushing internally in the industry as well (which we obviously can't know directly about).
And what makes Zack so incredibly powerful that he can make all this happen? Lots of directors push for different versions of their movies, and they get ignored all the time, what in this case was so unique? Not anything Zack did. The unique part was the fandom movement, the bad performance of JL, COVID meaning CG artists were short on work, bad behaviour coming to light from both Joss and Warner Execs, Senior Management changing, his daughter's death, among other things. All those things are far more unusual than anything Zack could possibly have done behind the scenes.

As I said above. I'm not sure how else you interpret him going on fan site, and "stoking the embers", and teasing out scenes and details about his cut, doesn't count as him actively pushing to get the studio to give him a crack at making his version of the film.
When did he go on fan sites? Where, when and how? The only things people actually mention are him occasionally teasing things on his own Vero account. If he was going on fansites, people would know and bring that up, but I've never seen anyone able to cite them. Presumably they could if that had actually happened. The only things I have heard of is either his own Vero account, or promotion of the new version after it had already been greenlit.

Snyder fed into the movement by occasionally teasing images from his movie or storyboards on social media, in some ways only stoking the hot embers.
This is a much less strong statement than you seem to think. It's mentioned only on his own social media, not fansites, which the journalist thinks in some ways might be stoking the flames. You keep talking about fansites. Which ones did he go on to stoke flames? If it was true you would think people would actually know.

Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard
I didn't watch the JLs (meant to, but never got around to it), but I do remember liking Bruce's 'Save One' scene. It's not like everything was terrible, but for a two hour movie, it holds on to a lot of unnecessary scenes and cuts some more necessary ones (why the Mother boxes are waking up, it wouldn't have taken much time.), which makes me doubt that it was just cutting stuff (why change the composer, that doesn't affect the runtime). There was more at play than ' we need to cut this for time.'
I meant 'recently'. I saw them both on release. Now, having watched them both again, I can say that I still think the Snyder version is my preferred film, the soundtrack, action, and story is more coherent (why does the Parademon explode into three boxes? You don't need that, just have Diana explain it)

Curiously, the two hour version has considerable dead time that could easily have been cut (Batman rooftop scene, Russian family scene, WW opening scene) that aren't needed for strictly cutting for time.

Except it's reasonable to point at the Snyder cut of JL and say that he had a heck of a lot of control over that cut of that film. I've watched it (twice now). I've watched the Whedon cut (also twice now). I've given my comparison and critiques of both films. I'm trying to restrict myself to looking at the work and observing a pattern that I see there. That's it.

Sucker Punch was produced when he was a much younger director with a lot less power and influence in the industry. It's reasonable to assume he had very little ability to put pressure on the studio, and more reasonable to assume that the pressures went in the other direction. That's just how the film industry tends to work.
You could just as easily argue that lower budget, lower stakes movies can have more creative freedom because the execs don't care about them as much as the big high stakes tentpole movies. The thing about this pattern is that involves ignoring things that don't fit the pattern and making huge assumptions about what might have happened behind the scenes (because we can't actually know.)