When Zack Snyder released the trailer for his cut of Justice League, he ended it with a tease that Jared Leto as the Joker would actually say the line “we live in a society.” After plenty of Internet jokes, Leto’s inclusion of the line was sort of an apt inclusion to this new cut, a ridiculous internet snake-eating-its-own-tail that Leto also referenced when tweeting out the trailer. However, after fans spent four hours watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League, they learned the scene was not actually in the film. Well now, Snyder has released the actual scene on Twitter.
The scene takes place during the Knightmare sequence during the end of the film, and gives Batman (Ben Affleck) and Joker (Leto) a pretty intense moment together. In the scene, Batman tells Joker that Harley Quinn died in his arms, and with her last breath, she made Batman promise he would kill Joker slowly. Batman says he plans to honor that promise. He even slips in an expletive! This isn’t your parent’s Batman!
But after this promise, Joker says the line everyone has been waiting for: “We live in a society where honor is a distant memory.” Of course, Joker says this in the shadow of a burning city, which shows that, actually, there doesn’t seem to be much of a society left anymore.
The version that Snyder shares is black-and-white - like Snyder’s “Justice is Gray” version - yet the scene doesn’t exist in this new version of the film either. But in addition to sharing the deleted scene, Snyder also links to the shop for Leto's band Thirty Seconds to Mars, where fans of the Snyder cut can purchase a T-shirt that says “we live in a society,” and is modeled by Leto.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the “Justice is Gray” version are both available on HBO Max now. Check out Snyder’s “we live in a society” deleted scene tweet below: