That was certainly the feeling when HBO announced on Wednesday that its new streaming service, HBO Max, will debut director Zack Snyder’s long-rumored extended cut of the DC Comics film “Justice League” in 2021.

Special request: Can it be a director’s shred instead?

Max is looking to beef up its new stand-alone service with content to compete in a crowded market, and what better way than with footage that’s already in the can? What’s inside that can, however, is Purina. Cinematic cat food, like so much of DC’s increasingly feral Extended Universe.

The so-called Snyder Cut has a long-for-the-internet history.

A regular of DC, Snyder was forced to depart 2017’s “Justice League” after the death of his daughter, and was replaced by Joss Whedon (“Firefly”). Roughly one-fourth of the original film — featuring Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, the Professor and Mary Ann — remained, Snyder says, and Whedon’s retooled end product got the old heave-ho from vicious critics. My colleague Sara Stewart said that “even The Flash can’t outrun the sucking maw of this unambitious movie.”

So devotees decided to swap one sucking maw for another. An obnoxious subset of fans on social media created the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut in hopes that the director’s dark aesthetic would one day be allowed to brood once more. And in 2021 they will finally get their death wish. They don’t seem to mind that Snyder’s other two DC efforts, “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” were depressing big-screen ashtrays.

HBO has not specified a format for “Justice League” — it could be a four-hour movie (ugh) or a six-part miniseries (UGH) — and, according to the Hollywood Reporter, the project could cost another $20 million to splice the new cut together and add effects.

The real price, though, is whatever’s left of DC’s floundering identity.

Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, as much as he’s pissed off Martin Scorsese, has painstakingly assembled a coherent, enjoyable 23-film narrative and made it look easy. DC, on the other hand, is creative-directed by a chimp who’s learned to juggle. One year we get an “Aquaman” that belongs on the Cartoon Network. The next, how about a young-adult fiction “Shazam!”? In between, let’s allow a special one-off Joker origin story that draws comparisons to “Taxi Driver.” The lunatics are running Gotham.

The movies are not all bad (OK, Snyder’s are), but taken together, they make no sense and foster no loyalty. Just ask “Birds of Prey.”

And now, to add more chaos to this gibberish collection, comes a second version of a loathsome movie still featuring an awful Ben Affleck as Batman in the very same year Robert Pattinson will also start playing “The Batman”? It’s gross franchise negligence!