So, having explained my complicated thoughts on Zack Snyder, my uncomplicated thoughts on Joss Whedon, and my perception of the theatrical cut of Justice League, here are my thoughts on what we see in the Snyder Cut trailer:

• 1. First, the choice of music. I was a little offput by the choice for two reasons. One, “Hallelujah” doesn’t seem entirely in tune with the operatic scif-fi-fantasy environment…. and two, Zack Snyder used this before. In Watchmen. During an absurd sex scene. Erm. Okay. I guess he likes the song.

But as the trailer went on, I minded it less and less. For one thing, the new footage we’re seeing is actually edited pretty well to flow along with the music. For another, the music kind of complements both the warmer, more human moments we see, and the grander, more epic moments as well. So… yeah, the music is all right with me.

2. Then we see Darkseid right at the beginning of the trailer, which… well, people are a little divided about how he looks, but as I understand it, this is Darkseid before he actually became Darkseid. I’m cool with that, and want to see more.

• 3. The movie seems to have a lot more alien-attack aspects than the theatrical cut, which I am absolutely on board with. Honestly, the scope of the theatrical cut never felt as big as it should have – most of the fights were relatively small skirmishes, and Steppenwolf just sort of boom-tubes in and out of wherever he is with a handful of Parademons. Even the climax, which overruns a Russian town, feels small because… it’s just a town, not even a big city.

So I was glad to see some big alien ships raining destruction on major cities, and signs of their actual destruction in the Justice League HQ. Which, hopefully, will not be Wayne Manor as in the theatrical cut, because that was stupid – if Bruce is going to openly turn his house into the JL clubhouse, he might as well just announce to the world that Bruce Wayne is Batman.

• 4. I perked up considerably when I saw the football game being shown, presumably either in flashback or an early scene set shortly before Cyborg is turned into, well, a cyborg. And this is because Cyborg’s story is probably the most bungled part of Josstice League.

Hear me out: in any story about a character forced to undergo traumatic change, you need to see both a Before and an After. We need to see the transition, the change in this person to feel how much their circumstances have hurt, traumatized and altered them as a human being. But in Josstice League, we only see the After. We see Cyborg angsting about his inhumanity and his robotic body… but we never see what he was before. Was he happy? An extrovert? How did he interact with others? How did he see himself? Did he have friends? What precisely has he lost?

We never see. We don’t know the “old” Victor Stone. There are only a few seconds of pre-Cyborg Victor seen, and in those, his body is mostly obliterated. How can I be emotionally invested in the change this character has experienced, when I don’t know what he used to be BEFORE the change? I couldn’t, and honestly Cyborg was my least favorite character because by the end of the movie, all I had seen was pouting and angsting. They didn’t really dive into his feelings and his trauma; they just had him bro out with a couple of other guys, and get over his pain at the end.

The Snyder Cut looks like it’s going to be rich with Cyborg – we see him struggle, we see him losing someone he loves, ripping up a grave, and we’ll see him when he was just an ordinary college guy playing football. I expect to like Snyder Cut Cyborg much better than the theatrical cut’s.

I also wonder what is up with the image of Victor (still in his human form) redirecting a sky full of missiles.

• 5. There’s also some superheroing for Barry Allen, who is shown rescuing a young woman – I assume it’s Iris, given how the camera lingers on her face – from a car crash.

This seems to be part of a more serious, less “look at how quippy and quirky I am! I’m written by Joss Whedon!” take on the Flash. You know, a Flash who has a serious part to play in the plot, rather than a Flash who faceplants in Wonder Woman’s boobs (such feminism, Joss!) and rambles about brunch. I admit I found the Flash amusing when I first saw the theatrical cut, but time has changed my opinion.

I’m not entirely sure what the Flash’s place in the Snyder Cut plot is, but the glimpses we have indicate that he is going to be doing something more cosmic, more important, more GRAND.

• 6. Batfleck… sigh. I am going to admit my bias right out of the starting gate: I do not like Batfleck. This is partly because I disagree with Zack Snyder’s handling of the character in Batman V Superman, but it’s also because I dislike Ben Affleck as a human being and as an actor. I just have never seen a good performance from him; he always seems incredibly wooden and douchey to me.

And honestly, Batfleck was a weak point in Justice League. I do not say this because I dislike either the character or the actor – I say this because I love the character of Batman. Batman’s whole point as a member of the Justice League is that he can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the overpowered superhumans like Wonder Woman or Superman, because he uses his brains and his technology to compensate for his lack of superpowers. He is their equal.

But in the Josstice League cut, Batfleck feels like a liability. He seems to spend most of the action scenes bouncing around at the end of a grappling hook, avoiding getting attacked by others. When he does go up against someone else, he gets hurt physically in ways that the others do not. He seems less competent, more fragile, less capable. You’re left wondering why this guy is even going into battle if he contributes so little compared to, say, the butt-kicking Wonder Woman.

But he looks like he’s actually holding his own in the Snyder Cut trailer, where he’s using his body armor to block blasts of energy. So I have real hope that Batfleck is actually going to demonstrate that he’s an asset in these fights, not just a guy who swings around a lot.

Oh, and I’m looking forward to Batfleck’s Whedonisms like “I don’t NOT like you” and “something’s definitely bleeding” being excised. Batman should never sound like a Whedon character in a life-and-death situation. NEVER.

• 7. A few of the scenes look familiar, if you’ve seen the theatrical cut, but they’re definitely different. It looks like the conversation between Martha Kent and Lois Lane is different, and probably going to be less painfully cringy. Martha is apparently going to pop in during the cornfield scene. And Aquaman’s encounter with Mera looks like it will be somewhat different, given his defiant attitude and her look of distress.

8. Desaad! At first I thought this was Steppenwolf in another outfit because… well, I’m only a moderate comic-book geek with gaps in my knowledge, and I only know about some of the residents of Apokalips. But I’m told it’s the character Desaad, and I’m very curious to see what he is all about. It certainly makes the movie feel more expansive and operatic to have multiple people from Apokalips appear.

• 9. It also looks like a very different fate is in store for Silas Stone. If you remember from the theatrical cut – you probably don’t – he gets captured and then rescued, and at the end everybody is happy and smiley. But in the Snyder Cut, it seems that his exploration of the Motherbox has some unfortunate results. I smell character development for Cyborg!

• 10. The redesign of Steppenwolf. Oh, man, this is beautiful to behold. I don’t know what they were thinking with his design in the theatrical cut, but it was terrible. Nobody liked it. It was partly that it didn’t feel finished, as if they literally did not have time to finish rendering the character properly.

But it was a bad design at its root. It was just some grayish guy in a big hat, and he wasn’t very intimidating or impressive at all. I can only assume that WB didn’t want anything too scary, so they insisted on this dumbed-down design. There were other designs, oh yes. You can google them and see the much more intimidating version that was originally conceived.

The Snyder Cut’s design… actually looks menacing. He no longer just looks like a creepy guy in a big hat, but a truly alien creature encased in rippling living armor. There’s some influence from the Destroyer robot featured in Thor, but you know what? I’ll take it.

Oh, and there’s a really dynamic imagine of a black-clad Superman punching Steppenwolf in the face.

11. Speaking of the black-clad Superman, I find myself wondering where the suit comes from and how he’s wearing it. I mean, when we last saw him, he was buried and presumed dead. Does his normal costume turn black when he needs to soak up some yellow sun rays? Does someone in the cast recover this for him? Are we going to have a post “Death of Superman” scenario where his body vanishes, and he later turns up alive and well?

I’m sure this will be explained in the movie. I’m just very curious.

• 12. Batfleck’s final line is perhaps the one thing I wasn’t enthused about in this trailer, just because it’s a very clunky line. But you know what? If that is the only problem the Snyder Cut has, I will be a happy viewer.

So anyway, those are my thoughts about the trailer for the Snyder Cut. Overall, it looks like a vast improvement on the Frankenstein cut, and I am going to give Snyder a legitimate chance to wow me with his vision.