Back in 2017, Warner Brothers released Joss Whedon’s Justice League, supposedly the springboard to a shared universe of spinoff movies. But the movie cratered, and in the years since, it has been widely considered to be a creative disaster.
But another version of the movie was widely rumored to exist – a cut by the original director Zack Snyder, before it was sliced and diced by the studio and Whedon in an effort to make a more marketable blockbuster. And after years of fans demanding that the studio release the artist’s vision, the fabled “Snyder Cut” was finally released, completed and four hours long. Was it worth the wait?
In a word, yes.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League covers roughly the same territory as the Joss Whedon Cut – Batman (Ben Affleck) brings together several superheroes to fight an extraterrestrial warlord named Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds). This includes the immortal warrior Diana (Gal Gadot), young speedster Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), the gruff water-warrior Arthur (Jason Momoa) and a traumatized young cyborg named Victor (Ray Fisher). In their quest to keep Steppenwolf from uniting the three Motherboxes that will spell the Earth’s doom, they realize that they need the help of Superman (Henry Cavill) – and they may have the means of returning him to life.
But whole the overall plot – and some scenes – are familiar, the movie has whole swathes that are new and enriching. Characters are massively fleshed out, poorly-conceived comedy is notably absent, and the rich lore of the DC universe is woven into the tapestry of the plot – most notably in the malevolent Darkseid and his courtiers, who give some reason for Steppenwolf to conquer Earth other than “he just wants to, okay?”
In short, with four hours to expand into, the Snyder Cut has the ability to be a richer, more compelling narrative. Snyder’s vision here is a muscular, smooth, flowing expanse of scenes that all interweave neatly – nothing here could be trimmed without diminishing something else. This even includes some beloved DC characters who don’t play much of a role here, but were clearly intended to contribute more to a shared universe.
Snyder also strikes an almost perfect balance of action, comedy and tragedy here. There are some moments of understated comedy woven in (“This is Alfred. I work for him”), but it’s kept sedate and appropriate to whatever is happening. There are some great action scenes as well (such as the tragic battle of Steppenwolf against the Amazons), though Snyder makes sure to weave subtle characterization into them. But he delves deep into the loss and pain of the characters here, especially Cyborg’s misery and anger over being turned into… well, a cyborg. Yet he also shows their nobility and their desire to help others.
Furthermore, the Snyder Cut simply feels… bigger and more epic than Whedon’s cut. Whedon’s film always seemed flimsy and small in scale, but this actually feels like our heroes are going up against an apocalyptic threat. This is particularly true in the Justice League’s final battle against Steppenwolf, which is turned from a standard superhero climax into something dazzling – time is bent, space is torn, battles are fought in body and in the mind, and it feels like no other heroes could possibly do what the Justice League is doing.
Furthermore, the characters are finally done justice by this cut – Snyder’s Batman is intelligent and competent, his Superman is a stern but kind and good person, and his Wonder Woman is fierce and magnificent. Even Steppenwolf is given more character dimensions here – in just a few lines, Snyder makes this horned alien monstrosity feel like a real person, who desperately wants redemption and a welcome home. You almost feel sorry for him, even if you don’t want him to succeed.
But the greatest character development comes for Barry and Victor. Barry is shown not just as a funny quippy kid, but as growing into his role as a hero and completely devoting himself to saving the entire world. And Fisher does an outstanding job as Victor, whose raw pain and misery are recognizable in any person who’s suffered a life-changing injury or disease, but whose compassion for others is never dimmed.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League has some flaws, but it is a wildly different – and far superior – cut to the disaster that was released in theaters. It combined slam-bang action and a lore-rich script with a lot of heart and soul – all you could ask from a superhero movie.
I’ve finished the entire film now, seen it multiple times, and formulated quite a few thoughts about it. Among them:
Thankfully, the random Russian family is absent from this cut of the movie, being one of Whedon’s many baffling creative choices – I mean, why give Cyborg a whole character arc when you can just show random nameless people that we don’t care about? In this cut, the Russian town is completely deserted, which seems like a more likely choice for Steppenwolf’s secret headquarters… and, somehow, makes the whole event seem much more sinister. It’s a mission of death, brewing and blooming in a place that is, effectively, dead.
Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth is, by the way, a delight. The fact that he’s more prominently featured in the Snyder Cut is another point in its favor.
A pretty effective horror scene in which a hapless janitor finds a parademon lurking in the lab… very good at establishing mood and the sinisterness of the parademons. I honestly never felt that in the Josstice League cut.
The firing of the message arrow was longer and more ritualized here, giving more of a feeling that the Amazons are using magic, and very ancient means. It’s also specified that the arrow is an arrow of the goddess Artemis. Overall, it has a slight “lighting the beacons of Gondor” feeling.
It also leads into an excellent scene of Diana investigating the temple where the arrow landed, which – again – increases the feeling of atmosphere and menace considerably. In the Josstice League cut, she just saw it on TV and immediately knew what it meant. Here she knows its significance, but we see her uncovering what it means through non-verbal means and an Indiana Jones-style infiltration of an ancient secret chamber. Compared to the hamfisted dialogue of the Whedon cut, it’s refreshing to have a director assume his audience is smart enough to decipher what’s going on.
Ryan Choi is in this. If you don’t know who Ryan Choi is, he is the second person to assume the mantle of the Atom, a size-changing superhero. Basically, our dear Zack Snyder was laying groundwork for a future movie if the character went over well. But like most non-white characters, he was eliminated from the theatrical cut, which is a shame, because he has some good energy and works well opposite Silas Stone.
Something about Joe Morton apparently just says “genius scientist.” I have seen him in several roles, and the three most prominent ones – this one included – all cast him as a genius scientist.
He’s also our entry-way to Victor Stone, aka Cyborg, whom we first meet being emo in a hidden apartment. This was… about all the character development Cyborg had in the Josstice League cut – he was just emo and wooden for the whole movie, and then he just sort of decided not to be at the climax. It was truly abysmal, and I actively disliked the character of Cyborg because he was so poorly-written.
Turns out that was all Whedon’s fault. Again. Thanks, Whedon. Thanks so much.
Ah, slo-mo. It wouldn’t be a Zack Snyder movie without slo-mo.
A new scene also introduces us to Vulko, Aquaman’s mentor figure, who is rocking the Elrond hair here. He’s appeared in the Aquaman movie so his appearance is not a huge surprise, but it would have been a fun way to segue into Momoa’s own movie.
One contribution Snyder has made that I’m not really a fan of is the air bubbles that Atlanteans generate whenever they want to talk, and their apparent inability to communicate verbally without them. If they’re able to breathe water, they should be able to talk underwater. Especially since sound does travel underwater – Snyder could have had some fun with it by coming up with watery distortion.
I do, however, love the way that Steppenwolf communicates with DeSaad in this movie, in which a giant slab of stone in the middle of a nuclear power plant (no, I don’t know why it’s there) turns into a molten representation of whoever he’s talking to. It’s a very cool-looking visual representation of communication, more so than just talking through a portal or something like that.
The Snyder Cut also does something that Whedon’s never did: makes Steppenwolf a three-dimensional villain. One of the things I (and everyone else) hated about Steppenwolf was how thin and cliched he was – we’re simply informed that he conquers because… that’s what he likes to do. That’s his whole motive. Nothing deeper or more identifiable than that.
But in Snyder’s cut, you almost feel sorry for Steppenwolf. His motivation here is that he somehow betrayed Darkseid once in the distant past, and now he has to conquer worlds to be allowed to return home. It’s a simple motive – he wants to go home – but it’s one that we can understand and sympathize with, even if he’s still obviously evil.
Diana also gives a more elongated version of the “age of heroes” retelling, with some notable differences. For one thing, it’s worth noting that Whedon trimmed out the African and Asian warriors fighting for the kingdoms of men. More attention is paid to the Green Lantern who dies during the fight. We also see more of the Motherboxes and how they work, which makes them feel more like they aren’t just MacGuffins.
But the biggest difference is that it isn’t Steppenwolf who gets his butt kicked by Earth’s defenders – it’s Darkseid himself, albeit before he started wearing a shirt and calling himself Darkseid. He also is forced to retreat because Ares critically injures him, to the point where he’s bleeding all over the place. We also get an idea of how hard it is to hurt Darkseid – even in his youthful, less powerful days, it takes two or three Greek gods to take him down.
It’s interesting that despite the rather bleak depiction of Batman in Batman V. Superman, It’s Snyder’s cut that has Batman being more optimistic about humanity and the possibility of heroes coming together, whereas Whedon’s is all whiny gloom.
One thing I’ve seen people say online is that the Snyder cut of Justice League is sort of like DC Comics’ Lord of the Rings. I understand perfectly well that they mean in terms of scope, epicness, and world-building, but the comparison really took me aback when I stopped and thought about it.
Why? Because Lord of the Rings‘ movie adaptations are actually sort of the opposite of how Justice League was handled. Consider the directors. Peter Jackson was a cult director when he was given the reins of a movie trilogy to rival, or even surpass, the original Star Wars trilogy – clearly talented and capable, but not a megastar. Zack Snyder, on the other hand, has given us several blockbuster movies with varying degrees of success.
Yet the movies were handled in opposite ways by the studios. Imagine if Peter Jackson had filmed the entire extended-edition Lord of the Rings movies, all three at the same time, an epic undertaking intended to give us a great and massive story. Then the movie Dungeons and Dragons flops at the box office, and New Line wets their pants.
Instead of making sure that the best possible movie is released, they take the first opportunity to replace Jackson with another director, popular but overrated, and not really capable of giving the movie the gravitas it needs. They also want the movie to be funnier, as well as only two movies instead of three.
And that new director – let’s call him Moss – takes a movie trilogy that is all but finished, rips it to shreds, and reshoots most of the scenes, making everything less epic, impressive and important, and adding in “funny” dialogue. Many side-characters are carved out completely (an awful lot of them non-white people, it’s worth noting), and main characters have their stories carved down to the bone until almost nothing is left. Oh, and a lot of that pesky world-building gets stripped as well. It’ll scare the normies. Plus, make sure the whole story fits neatly into two standard-length movies, and just keep trimming until it does.
Can you imagine the trash-fire that the Lord of the Rings would have been if New Line had treated those movies the way WB treated Justice League? It would have been a disaster financially, fans would have hated them, and non-fans probably would have been underwhelmed. We would likely have never gotten the extended editions, and seen the director’s adaptation as it was originally intended.
Since the Snyder Cut of Justice League is a mammoth four-hour-long expanse, I’ve decided to watch it in sections. This evening, I finished watching the first part of it, with no particular expectations – I’ve been avoiding Youtube videos about it for the past few days, so I could come in with fresh eyes.
And I can definitely say: it’s much better than the Josstice League cut.
Admittedly that’s a low bar – the theatrical cut of this movie was a mess, a mismatched Frankenstein’s Monster of two clashing styles that managed to make each other look terrible. Also, it didn’t feel very epic. It’s fine to have an individual superhero movie with smaller stakes – see Ant-Man and the Wasp – but for a team-up of A-list superheroes, you need everything to feel grand and massive in scale. Nothing about the theatrical cut felt like the whole world was in danger.
That is very much remedied in the Snyder Cut, or at least the first part of it. Things feel bigger, more intense, more expansive.
Flaws? Well, it’s a bit slow. The first part of the film takes its time and unfolds in a leisurely manner… and sometimes it’s a little too leisurely, such as when the Scandinavian women sing, or when Batman is very slowly crossing a mountain range. And yes, if Zack Snyder’s staples like slow-mo bother you, gird your loins, because he does use it.
However, most of the stuff I can note are positives. Almost everything in this cut was done better than in the Whedon cut – sometimes the changes weren’t drastic, but they were notable.
For one thing, there were a lot of smaller scenes that were inserted that make it flow more effectively, such as when the Amazon mother-box first activates – we see one of the Amazons reacting to it and investigating it, before ordering that Hippolyta be told. Or Cyborg sensing the mother-box in his closet activating.
Other scenes were clearly reshot, and frankly they seem a lot better than the ones in the Josstice League version. Batman’s entire conversation with Aquaman has a lot more weight – when Aquaman says “You’re out of your mind, Bruce Wayne,” there’s a subtle hint of menace there rather than humor. And thank God, Batman isn’t spouting Whedon dialogue. Batman should never say Whedon dialogue. Ever. In any situation.
One of the most notable is the scene where Wonder Woman defeats the terrorists and saves a bunch of schoolchildren. The scene is longer, more intense, and Diana feels more like she’s actually angry and disbelieving that people could behave this way. Furthermore, instead of simply throwing the briefcase up in the air, she actually flies through the ceiling a considerable distance, and then throws it. It makes the situation seem more dire that the explosion was so massive.
Furthermore… she seems like more of a badass here, fighting more effectively, flying into the air, and using her superpowers, including that bracer-clashing move of hers. Yet at the same time, the Snyder Cut also highlights her compassion by having her immediately reassure the children and ask everyone if they are all right.
Speaking of how women are depicted, it’s also interesting to me that Zack Snyder presents the Amazons in a far less sexualized manner than onetime feminist icon Joss Whedon, including removing the implied rape threat. Something to think about.
Actually, he depicts the Amazons better in almost every way. In this movie, they’re fiercer, more effective, and the enemy they face is much more imposing, so that their losses feel more earned. Having them all roar “We have no fear!” is a pretty awesome moment, even though you know they are afraid. The fight with Steppenwolf is much more destructive and epic – including a whole temple falling into the sea – and Snyder pauses to let their losses sink in before launching us back into some pretty awesome fight scenes.
Speaking of Steppenwolf, he looks a thousand times better here. This is a CGI render that someone actually finished, and he doesn’t just look like a weird gray guy in a giant hat. He’s bigger, scarier, his voice is deeper and more distorted, and he’s covered with an armor of living needles.
The movie has also been rescored, and honestly I prefer it. The scene of Lois visiting Superman’s memorial feels poignant and heartrending in a quiet, unobtrusive way, without being too on-the-nose with people doing criminal stuff or holding up signs saying “I tried.”
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the first part of Zack Snyder’s masterwork. It’s good, better than I expected so far. I’m hoping it will continue to entertain me. To be continued!
We’re currently in an unpleasant phase in corporate/fan relationships. The attitude of the media, some consumers and a number of people in the entertainment industry is essentially that fans should not be pandered to. Which is to say, “shut up and eat the foul sludge we’re peddling without questioning it, plebeian.”
Dare to question your corporate overlords, and you’re labelled a troll or “toxic fan,” which is a convenient way of not actually engaging with the fans who care about things like character consistency and good writing.
That’s why it’s so heartening to see Zack Snyder’s four-hour cut of Justice League has finally been released after four years of kicking and screaming from online fans. Now, I have not yet seen the Snyder Cut, though I hope to enjoy it more than the Frankenstein Monster that was the “Josstice League” cut. I don’t like Joss Whedon, in case I haven’t mentioned it. I’ve seen some side-by-side comparisons of various scenes, and the Snyder Cut… honestly feels like the superior cut. It’s more epic, less stupid, and more tonally cohesive.
I know that a lot of critics have trashed it as being a horrible movie, but also found that a number of those critics don’t like superhero movies anyway. And honestly, I’m kind of inclined to view them as biased anyway, because… as much as I hate this phrase… this movie was not made for them. It was not made to court critical acclaim. It was not made for people who actively did not want fans to get the Snyder Cut because it would be “rewarding” them, who viewed the fans as “toxic” for demanding something from their betters. It was made for the audience to enjoy.
That’s why, even if the Snyder Cut is bad, I’m glad it was finished and released, and I hope it’s wildly successful. The entertainment business needs to be reminded – forcibly, with money – that the fans and the wider audience do not owe corporations their money or their loyalty. It is not “pandering” or “rewarding” people to give them entertainment that they have expressed a desire for, or want to actually see done well.
There’s another recent example – the movie Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s a completely inoffensive and mildly funny movie, a good movie to watch with children. But the impression left by its first trailer was… catastrophic. The CGI model immediately put people’s teeth on edge.
So what did the studio do? They reeled the movie back in, fixed the CGI, and everyone cheered. The only sourpuss was Jim Carrey, who complained about – what else? – entitled fans being given what they wanted, instead of what the studio shoveled out of a cesspit.
But what was the result? Not only was Sonic a success financially, it was a hit with audiences. Not just because it’s a thoroughly okay children’s movie, but because they didn’t just tell the fans they were toxic and flounce away. They actually fixed what people didn’t like.
So we can hope that studios are starting to pay attention – it does not pay to diss the fans and denounce all criticism. When you work with the fans rather than against them, they are more inclined to give you their money and praise.
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.
So I’ve been watching the new DC Fandome trailers and… I’m actually kind of getting stoked about their forthcoming releases. The Batman looks pretty good so far, and Robert Pattinson is living up to my expectations of his considerable talent, and The Suicide Squad looks like it will put being fun and weird above being dark and gritty.
But I think the most buzz is about the long-waited, long-rumored Snyder Cut of Justice League, which fans nagged and screamed and demanded for so long that eventually WB threw up its hands and gave in. So now we’re getting what seems to be an entirely different movie, with all of the material that Joss Whedon filmed ripped out and replaced with Zack Snyder’s original plot.
Let’s be frank here: the theatrical cut – which some are naming the “Josstice League” – was a mess. They took a film that was more or less complete, ripped out giant chunks of it, and then gave it to a completely different director to patch back together with his own material, to the detriment of some of the storylines (especially Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, who has made his distaste for Whedon very clear).
Whedon and Snyder… each makes the other’s style look bad. Whedon makes Snyder look dour, pompous, colorless and grim. Snyder makes Whedon look flimsy, insubstantial, obnoxiously self-satisfied. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a film whose two disparate styles are actively fighting against each other. It simply could never succeed artistically as what it is, and I almost feel sorry for it because of that.
Now, I am as critical of Zack Snyder as anyone. I don’t like his unheroic take on Batman, and I disagree with the constant deconstruction of superheroes through Superman. I do understand what he’s trying to do, but I don’t think he’s doing it well or with the right characters – Batman V Superman had many things that were done wrong. However, I do think he’s a talented filmmaker. I love Watchmen, 300, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (very underrated, definitely watch it), and I like Man of Steel despite its flaws. He does have vision and a unique style, and that’s increasingly rare in the movie world.
So… I’m glad he’s getting the chance to show the world his vision for Justice League. I don’t think it will be the Holy Grail of superhero cinema, but I do think it will have a consistent narrative and style and tone, which already puts it leagues above and beyond the Josstice League cut we got in theaters. I expect it won’t have the bipolar mood swings that so bothered me, with characters talking seriously about world-ending threats before having the Flash babble about something inconsequential.
It will also not have Henry Cavill’s CGI upper lip, which was hideously distracting, especially as it was the very first thing you saw in the film. Goodbye, CGI Upper Lip. We won’t miss you.
And I admit some bias in my interest in the Snyder Cut as well. I have mixed feelings about Zack Snyder, but I have never had the feeling that he’s an unpleasant person. And he’s been done dirty by WB. Whatever my issues with Batman v. Superman, I’m honestly glad for him that he can show people what he was building up to, what he dreamed up. He’s had a rough few years, so it’s nice that something good is coming out of it.
But I don’t like Joss Whedon, and I never have. I disliked Joss Whedon long before it was cool to dislike him because he was found to be “problematic,” because I always got an asshole vibe from him. Furthermore, I was somehow never charmed by his writing. I admit that there were jokes in Avengers that I laughed at, and I acknowledge intellectually that he is an objectively talented writer. But I’ve never been dazzled by Buffy or Firefly or any of the other shows he’s produced, because I always felt like he was waving keys in front of my eyes to cheaply elicit my approval.
I’ve always felt that Whedon is completely in love with his own cleverness and his quips and one-liners and his self-serving feminist cred. And he crafted an image that allowed people to think they were cool and smart if they were fans of his… sort of like a cult. He’s always seemed incredibly smug, intolerant and superior to me, and so it did NOT surprise me that he was eventually outed as a cheating hypocrite who has been using fans and feminists for his own ends for years.
And he’s a colossal asshole to his actors, apparently, as revealed by Ray Fisher. Fisher didn’t specify how, to my knowledge, but I wonder if racism was involved since Fisher (the one black member of the cast) is the only one who has spoken out.
So yeah, considering how badly flawed the Josstice League movie was, primarily because of the needs-to-be-annulled marriage of Whedon and Snyder’s styles… I’m more than ready to see what Zack Snyder has crafted. I’m fine with saying adios to Whedon’s mediocre contributions.
The Forest 