I had the chance to see the infamous Justice League Snyder Cut, and before I get into my thoughts, know that I'm very easily appreciative of movies of this genre. I tend to like superhero films more often than not and more than the next guy. That said, I found Zack Snyder's Justice League a little hard to process.
Zack Snyder's Justice League is rife with unnecessarily long and tedious but beautifully shot scenes, giving screen time to the characters a lot more than the theatrical release did. It loses some of the heart and humor that I really enjoyed from Whedon's version and replaces them with a lot more character beats and an overabundance of slow-motion sequences. It does accomplish to tell a more coherent story, making full use of the 4-hour runtime, but it takes quite a long time before it gets its groove going. Justice League isn't a light movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is fun - big action sequences, amazing shots, and comic book badassery.
What I dug:
- There are some beautiful shots in the movie - much like you'd expect from Zack Snyder - you can hit pause during most scenes and you'd end up with a painting-esque still.
- Steppenwolf's redesign looks pretty good - a lot more menacing. And he's got a motive that's a little bit more evolved than that of a standard Saturday morning cartoon villain. He's got his own redemption arc going on.
- The runtime of 4 hours is somewhat justified - seeing as people can enjoy this in bite-size chunks should they choose to thanks to the streaming format, but also because each character gets their own time to shine. Everyone gets their moment and everyone's motivations are established nicely.
- The Wonder Woman theme song still slaps hard.
- Flash sequences were cool as hell - not 20th Century Fox Quicksilver cool, but cool nonetheless.
- It seems like Ray Fisher's Cyborg really didn't get a fair shake with the theatrical release. With this new, longer cut, the movie was better able to explore his motivations and origins. He's still annoyingly broody, though, like pretty much everyone except Ezra Miller.
- Ezra's Flash is the single source of fun and humor in this entire film of gloom.
- Superman's black suit is totally badass. And his arrival in the third act? Holy shit.
What I didn't dig:
- It takes so long for it to get going. Some of the original scenes seem to be drawn out for no apparent reason, except for prolonging a certain ambiance. Some dialogue feels padded and bloated. There were way too many shots that linger a few seconds too long. I feel like, for some scenes, the cuts in the theatrical release were necessary for brevity and it actually helped some scenes breathe.
- I think if you play all slow-motion sequences at regular speed, this movie would barely top 3 hours.
- While the action sequences were hella cool, it still suffers from gratuitous violence that doesn't seem to fit the essence of some of the characters. Wonder Woman smashed some dude's skull into a wall when she didn't really need to. It's not heroic and it clashes with some supposedly light, heart-warming scenes.
- Did Cyborg just commit fraud, with his supercomputer brain? Yes, it was to help someone, but taking money from someone else, even if it's from the super-rich, is still stealing. If he created the money, and just inserted it into the system, then did he just commit cyber-counterfeiting or whatever the equivalent is? We should be looking up to heroes because they do what's right - and that's not always the easy thing to do. There are a LOT of moments that make these characters extremely unlikable.
- There's an overabundance of overly dramatic reveals. That scene where the quarantine guard dramatically slaps a piece of paper with what looks like a 7-year-old's rendition of Batman was so unintentionally hilarious, it completely undid any tension it was trying to establish. This movie had four or five too many dramatic door slams.
- Flash still runs funny. Has Ezra Miller ever run before?
- 1.43:1 IMAX format is weird given that it's on streaming platforms, being played on screens that have almost entirely 16:9 or wider aspect ratios. I mean, who the heck is rocking an IMAX screen in their homes to project this thing? Especially when compared to Avengers, which used a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, it made the incredible action sequences feel a little tight, not as epic as they could have been.
- One of the central themes of Justice League was about coming together, fighting as one, being strong alone but stronger together, and it works, but there are some lines that are a little on-the-nose.
- Steppenwolf's face makes my brain still go "big bad CGI guy" that I didn't get with Thanos or with Darkseid for that matter. What's up with his puppy dog eyes?
- Batfleck looked so uncomfy in his first suit, and he didn't have enough badass Batman moments. Just seeing him wield a rifle is just plain wrong, even though yes, even in modern comics, he's still depicted using firearms. It just feels off to me, but that's a personal thing.
- I miss a few scenes from the theatrical release, and sadly they were the ones that added a lot of heart to the movie.
- It was tiring. I feel like maybe this should've been three separate movies?
- The epilogue was confusing af.
6It was alright.
Justice League premieres on March 18, Thursday exclusively on HBO GO.