Film Review: Zack Snyder's Justice League
Zack Snyder Reclaims his Vision
What can only be described as a fervently anticipated reclamation of an artist’s vision, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a unique beast not just among comic book adaptations, but filmmaking in general. More than just a simple director’s cut, Justice League - or The Snyder Cut, as it’s been affectionately dubbed by fans - is a lumbering, bloated, and generic superhero epic, but it’s also a massive improvement over its 2017 iteration. Stripped of its director’s trademark grimness and imbued with a surprising amount of heart, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is finally the big screen team-up worthy of its iconic characters. Minor spoilers ahead…
I’m not what you would call a Zack Snyder fan. A director whose comic book adaptations have ranged from lush misinterpretations (Watchmen, Man of Steel) to indigestible dreck (Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice), Snyder’s superhero oeuvre has never really risen to the challenge of adapting its source material. 2013’s artful - but ultimately arc-less - Man of Steel rent Kal-El of his dimensions, while 2016’s Batman V. Superman transformed Bruce Wayne into a mass-murdering sociopath. Snyder has seemingly never had any interest in drilling to the core of the DC Extended Universe’s living gods - instead, he’s been most satisfied playing in a sandbox of base - yet at times, thrilling - pleasures: a visual auteur with an eye for action, he loves his crescendoing melodrama (see the much-maligned “Martha!” moment), his hammer-fisted religious iconography, and his balletic overuse of slow-motion. But what is an artist if he can’t grow with his creations? Zack Snyder’s Justice League is unwieldy, lumbering, and painfully generic at an unfathomably self-indulgent 4 hour, 2-minute runtime, but it’s the best thing Snyder has created in years. Painstakingly crafted and teeming with heart and substance typically left on the director’s cutting room floor, Justice League earns its indulgence.
You’ll likely never see anything like this again. A resurrection borne from a maelstrom of tragedy, controversy, a hotly passionate fandom, and the spare parts of an already-released film, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the kind of second chance that Hollywood never gives. Justice League was originally slated to close out Snyder’s unofficial DCEU trilogy in 2017, but its production was hamstrung: its script went through a series of rewrites, and Snyder officially exited the project only six months before its release after the tragic passing of his daughter, leaving Avengers steward Joss Whedon to close out the film as an uncredited director. Finishing the project with reshoots, Whedon followed the studio’s mandate, cutting down Justice League’s runtime while incorporating more humor and a brighter tone. The result was a disappointment: Justice League grossly underperformed at the box office in the wake of a critical drubbing.
“Painstakingly crafted and teeming with heart and substance typically left on [Snyder]’s cutting room floor, Justice League earns its indulgence.”
The Snyder fanbase is a loud and devoted one, but cries for a mythical Snyder Cut - a cut of the film that restores the original filmmaker’s vision - fell mostly on deaf ears. But shockingly, in February of last year, Zack Snyder announced that Warner Bros. would indeed be moving forward with his cut of the film, spearheading HBO Max and becoming a cornerstone of the announcement for the streaming service. Reinstating 80% of the film that was excised from the theatrical cut, Snyder was also given an unprecedented $70 million to finish his version of the Justice League story, allowing for added special effects, editing, score, and even new scenes.
But is this new, four-hour long Justice League an improvement over its theatrical counterpart? In almost all regards, it is. The truth is that the DCEU, up through 2017’s Justice League, had always been a patchy attempt at capitalizing on the "shared universe" concept. Where the Marvel Cinematic Universe spent almost half a decade and five films building up its foundation before tackling The Avengers team-up, Justice League had the unenviable position of introducing almost its entire roster in one two-hour narrative. With Zack Snyder’s Justice League, its 242-minute runtime may be the ultimate form of directorial hubris, but it’s also - without a doubt - necessary. Splitting his reimagined story into intertitled chapters, Snyder uses the extra time to flesh out the weakest - and not coincidentally, newest - characters: Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Each of these League members now get their own moments, but Fisher’s Cyborg benefits most from Snyder’s vision, getting the film’s most earnest and tragic arc.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a labor of love, and its restoration is almost surgical. Henry Cavill, in his still-limited screen time as the resurrected Superman, escapes with his upper lip intact: his CGI mustache concealment from the theatrical release is nowhere to be found; the film wisely retains a sense of humor, but Whedon’s ill-conceived snark has mostly been replaced by more organic, more palatable, wit; and even with its bloated runtime comes a more logical pacing - scenes are moved in their entirety, and the League’s eventual team-up feels much more organic as a result.
“While the Snyder Cut fixes much of the film’s structural instability, it still suffers from uninteresting and generic plotting: In the end, Justice League is still about the dull hunt for some magic boxes.”
This Justice League story, while new and improved, remains mostly unchanged from its theatrical cut. With Superman dead following the events of the absolutely stupid and ludicrously titled Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Diana of Themyscira (Gal Gadot) take it upon themselves to find other metahumans to protect the planet after mysterious flying creatures begin attacking the populace. Their new recruits include Arthur Curry, the heir to the underwater throne of Atlantis; Barry Allen, a college student imbued with super-speed by a bolt of lightning; and Victor Stone, a football star that becomes half machine after a devastating accident. Behind the otherworldly threat? A hulking menace named Steppenwolf (Ciarin Hinds), who has come to Earth to collect a trio of artifacts called Mother Boxes, utilized to cleanse planets and claim them in the name of his lord, Darkseid (Ray Porter).
The theatrical version of Justice League had a glaring villain problem, and while the Snyder Cut fixes much of the film’s structural instability, it still suffers from the same uninteresting and generic plotting: In the end, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is still about the dull hunt for some magic boxes to prevent an apocalypse. Steppenwolf gets an upgrade and some shading with the introduction of his Apokoliptan boss, Darkseid, but they’re basically cut from the same mustache-twirling cloth. Darkseid is one of DC Comics’ most fascinating tyrants and sadists, and one of Superman’s most dangerous enemies, but you wouldn’t really know it from this reductive portrayal. The film’s spectacle is also a mixed bag. Snyder’s version makes huge improvements over the original’s hideous final set piece, but much of its grand scale buckles under the weight of its sparse $70 million re-budgeting. The Snyder Cut would have greatly benefited from some intimate action, but it’s mostly more of the same CGI lasers and explosions we’ve come to expect from superhero films.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a lightning strike of filmmaking, a unique confluence of events and circumstances that abets something never even afforded to the most decorated of Hollywood artists: a mulligan. The Snyder Cut works, using its inflated length to juggle its heroes in a completely rearranged story, and to defibrillate a dying franchise with a current of emotion. I’ve been a Snyder naysayer for a long, long time, and while I won’t be inducted into the cult of worship anytime soon, this is the type of self-indulgence that I can get behind.
