Despite being overspiced with destruction porn and anger at the world, I loved Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel as a Superman for the current generation. I also liked Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for introducing a fresh version of Batman on film that’s existed to comic book fans for decades and the exact right Wonder Woman in the exact right way. BvS also had the potential to lead to something truly epic for DC, a Justice League movie that could have brought Superman full circle while introducing the world to characters on the edge of the DC U.
What we got in 2017 was a hodgepodge of scared studio executives not willing to cross their own finish line and fill-in director Joss Whedon whose CW teen drama style wasn’t a compliment to the slick visuals and adult characters Snyder had spent years developing on film. In a monumental alignment of the right planets, Warner Bros went back to one of their biggest disasters and let Zack Snyder show the world where he wanted the DC Extended Universe to lead. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is an annexation of the knock-off Avengers Joss Whedon turned the 2017 film into when he was brought on to reshoot and redirect the movie.
There’s an article on Variety about Snyder’s days on Justice League and the tragedy his family endured while making the movie that, when combined with constant studio battles, forced him to walk away. Here, today, we simply get to tell you Zack Snyder’s Justice League is good.
It’s not perfect by any means, but its something unheard of in film. Not a remake, reboot, but a 243 minute vindication of the movies that led to this point. Most people have put the original Justice League movie out of their memory which makes even the scenes shared by the original and Snyder’s cut feel fresh. Then there’s Snyder’s remastering of his own work, you’ll notice this in such elements as Darkseid’s failed son and antagonist Steppenwolf who sports an incredible visual upgrade that actually makes him look menacing. His armor shifts like its own living entity that makes him look like the badass he was intended to be.
While the first hour shares much with Whedon’s 2017 movie (albeit in a different order), once Snyder really starts to drop in his original footage everything feels like a new timeline for DC. There’s no terrible rooftop Batman scene with the para demons, Cyborg and Flash get quality screen time in scenes that finally give them the weight they should have had all along. Since Cyborg was unlikely to get his own movie, it was important to deal with his origin in Justice League and Zack Snyder allowed actor Ray Fisher to do incredible work in showing the struggle of the man inside the machine.
In additon to simply allowing every important character breathing room to create their own world that has to come together in the end, the movie doest a complete 180 on its fifth act. The reactor fight scene from the original that was colorized to look like they were doing it inside of strawberry jello is fixed here to not only be watchable but it ends up being one of the best long sequence battle scenes in recent film. It’s total non-stop committed action that isn’t skeward by unnesscary moments of levity like Superman’s “fan of justice” line or a weird family saving moment that cuts down the Flash’s importance. In Snyder’s cut these characters are in a real battle complete with failures and triumphs where every choice is the hard choice.
The re-adding of DC Comics’ biggest villain Darkseid was used in proper amounts of touch to the film. He’s set up as the big bad of the DCEU that eliminates the mystery but doesn’t make him any less ominous. Especially at the end of the film’s final battle between the Justice League and Steppenwolf.
Zack Snyder is very much Zack Snydering his Justice League which is either a good or bad thing depending on what side of his fence you’re on. One of the biggest cringes of the four hours I sat through in this movie was the clammy ji**fest of slow-motion used for everything he wants the audience to pay attention to. By the time you get to the special effects for the Flash, the slow-motion is soo far used up that it takes away from the speed force distinction feeling we should have by watching him. The minor gripe I have is the run time. I don’t hate the length of the movie because, in the end, it was all necessary. What bothers me is that even Snyder’s four-hour version of the movie could have been broken up into two parts with the same amount of work he’d already put into this HBO Max version. Doing so would have made Justice League more accessible beyond die-hard fans and the comic book crowd. I think many people will start Justice League and simply not have the endurance to finish it because the movie has no breakpoint telling them this is a good place for you to stop and feed your cat.
Overall Zack Snyder’s Justice League repaired the damage caused by Whedon and Geoff Johns. Ezra Miller and Ray Fisher are proven to be grounded superhero characters rather than bumbling afterthoughts. Even the film’s supporting cast gets to feel an inch more grown. Amy Adam’s grieving Lois Lane is the audience’s perseverance through grief. Incredible actors like Willem Dafoe and J.K. Simmons get to actually act and contribute even if it’s brief. As for the core of the DCEU; Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, and Gal Gadot gave director Joss Whedon good performances with bad material in the original theatrical cut. Here the big three show the same level of quality performance, it’s just that the awful dad jokes humor written in are stripped away and what we’re left with are the proper versions of DC Comics trinity.
If you enjoyed Man Of Steel and Batman Vs Superman, this movie is the payoff we all deserved even if it leaves the audience on a massive cliffhanger that we may never get to finish.
