Fans got their first real peek at Zack Snyder's Darkseid through a teaser clip that showed Wonder Woman investigating a ruin and finding a glyph of the New God before cutting to a younger Uxas preparing to conqueror Earth in Steppenwolf's place. A bit leaner and wearing far less armor than expected, at least compared to the comics and animated series, this Darkseid appeared more wild and less refined, in a good way.
The original Justice League villain, Steppenwolf, was also given a new, far more intimidating design that much more closely matched his appearance in the director's cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Producers initially rejected this design because they found Steppenwolf to be too scary.
At first, fans just expected Steppenwolf's old model to be replaced with this redesign, but a new image of the villain could point to new scenes that were originally cut.
NEWS
HypedBase released new images of Darkseid and Steppenwolf from Zack Snyder's Justice League on their Facebook page.
Although the pose Darkseid is sticking in the image has already been seen in some trailers, it gives fans a better look at the character model that Snyder will be using for this scene.
The second image showing Steppenwolf is actually new, although the image's compression is causing details to be a bit pixilated. This angle of the redesigned villain shows off his incredibly spiky design.
WHAT THIS MEANS
It's pretty cool to compare shots from Joss Whedon's Justice League to this upcoming cut from Zack Snyder, especially when it comes to seeing the differences between the inclusion of Darkseid and the newly designed Steppenwolf.
The only real concern that some fans have is whether Darkseid uses the same animation rig as Steppenwolf's from Whedon's version, or if Steppenwolf was actually using an animation rig meant for Darkseid; it was reported that Darkseif was replaced with Steppenwolf when Joss Whedon came onto the project. As looking at Darkseid's design, one can't help but wonder if the model was designed in a way to fit the general shape and size of Steppenwolf in the theatrical cut.
The new Steppenwolf image is a bit more exciting, as it seems to be an angle and shot of the villain fans didn't see in the theatrical release. This seems to indicate that Zack Snyder won't just be replacing the old model with this one, but adding perhaps incomplete scenes for the character that were never finished when Whedon took over. It will certainly go a long way to making Steppenwolf a more memorable and engaging villain if he has a bit more screen time.
