Zack Snyder’s Justice League

The event that Zack Snyder’s Justice League (which is actually what the film is called) caused is arguably more impactful and long-lasting than the movie itself. When the 2017 version of the Justice League movie was released directed by Joss Whedon after Snyder was forced to step down after a family tragedy, the response for the movie was less than stellar, receiving mixed reception at best from critics and far worst from casual audiences who found the forced tacky humor, rushed storylines and oddly acting characters very unappealing for a story and a universe that seemed to promise more adult storytelling. After talks were heard about the troubled production and the harsh re-shoots done after Snyder’s departure, many fans and even several crew members of the film expressed interest in seeing the original version, which though deemed unlikely by higher ups, did eventually get the treatment fans wanted in 2021 when it was released in its full 4-hour long package by Snyder himself. The results were something that were certainly special. Featuring the exact same structure as the original film, the earth is still morning after the death of Superman (played by Henry Cavill) and things aren’t getting any better as an interstellar threat has arrived on earth in the form of Steppenwolf (voiced by Ciarán Hinds), a disregarded servant to an alien god known as Darkseid (voiced by Ray Porter) who wishes to put together three Mother Boxes which have the power to terraform the planet into his own home world. Noticed by Batman (played by Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), they decide to form up a team that is capable of countering this threat and any that come after. Their choice of members includes half-human, human Atlantean Aquaman (played by Jason Momoa) who is ambivalent to working in a team, speedster Barry Allen who goes by The Flash (played by Ezra Miller) who is still fresh to super heroics, and mechanically enhanced human, Cyborg (played by Ray Fisher) who was pieced back together with a part of one of the mother boxes and is still struggling with his new inhuman lifestyle. Gearing up for a battle which could even involve resurrecting Superman, the team have to face off against this foe before he calls and brings Darkseid to Earth and destroys all life as we know it. This movie’s mere existence is pretty impressive as even though everybody is familiar with director cuts and movies have been changed before releasing due to fan backlash before, but the fan’s dedication to getting this movie released is going to be something people are going to remember for years to come. Unfortunately, the hype actually proves to be far more impressive than the movie itself, as the end product, while certainly better than the original release, is not a substantial enough jump up to really feel that much better.

When you look at this movie as a whole and minus the fact that people already had an inferior version in their head going into this, it’s very evident to anyone that’s seen this movie that it’s a glorified director’s cut, not really a completely new movie. Things are definitely different and even pan out in a different way from the original film, but the pieces and plot points are still exactly the same, just with added material to help flesh things out and make them make a bit more sense. This isn’t a bad thing at all as the film needs a lot of rewrites to make any of the material actually function, but however many rewrites were done by Snyder along with fellow story creators Will Beall and Chris Terrio (who also served as the film’s screenwriter), it can’t take away from the fact that this story is still quite poor and comes off especially weak given how little this universe has been developed. It’s still throwing in some much stuff so quickly and it’s expecting the audience to just accept it right away and while the film does have a lot more time to flesh things out and thankfully manages to improve upon the previous movies’ faults, it somehow still makes things feel incomplete and unengaging. The character backstories are handled a touch better, the movie does have a much better balance with its tone (no longer suffering from painful joke whiplash), and Snyder does manage to pace out this 4-hour long experience to the best of his abilities, bringing in his usual directing tropes of overly theatrical presentation, harsher color tones and more expositional-happy characters, but making most of that work in his favor and giving the film a more grounded tone. It’s an obvious improvement over the original’s plot which was ridiculously old-fashioned and predictable, but this doesn’t automatically make this portrayal effective. It’s a success in terms of execution, but still a failure because of what its working with, even to the point now where the end conclusion is much more underwhelming because it tries to be more than a stale finale. The improved moments help the smaller moments, but the larger moments are arguably made even worse because they just add more stuff in to further derail the narrative, as stuff kind of just happens because the plot demands it or for a fan service moment, a good chunk of the characters have less demeaning moments but any sense of depth or personality take a backseat for flashy climatic moments that feel hollow and only serve to exist as a ”cool action scene”, and it’s still nowhere near as epic as a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie needs to be in order for it to properly work.  It’s a perfectly fine sit despite the length required, but the movie doesn’t leave a noticeable impact, so it will offer you very little.

The fact that this movie thought it could work on an ‘’Avengers’’ style level when only three of its characters had a movie before it was a pretty hubris thing to do (especially one of those three has only been showcased in team-up films and not his own). It left a lot of the characters feeling underdeveloped, poorly handled, and boring. Thanks to the added screen time and a majority of the scenes being focused on the new characters, there is some improvement on that level. The Flash no longer has those dumb lines so he isn’t a pain to be around, having Wonder Woman hate the villain for destroying her island is a nice touch that at least brings some sense of personal vendetta, and Cyborg is actually given a pretty good backstory and made into a far more interesting and sympathetic character than he was in the previous film (he essentially goes from a background character to the essential lead between films), so there is effort to make these characters better, but it doesn’t entirely work. While the original movie didn’t utilize them well and they lacked a certain sense of chemistry as a team, here thanks to the overdoes of backstory and limited screen-time they have together, they have even less chemistry than in the previous. Even though they were blandly portrayed, there was at least some memorable moments, whereas here there’s very few if any that make them feel like a legitimate team by the end. Batman and Superman are portrayed as extra boring this time around, with no memorable lines or even too many great scenes, and Flash and Aquaman barely even speak so it’s hard to care about them at all. The only one that does come out as memorable is Cyborg, who is given the most time to develop and even has some form of character arc in the film, but when only one out of a group of six has some form of plot development, that isn’t good storytelling. The villain went from one of the worst baddies that DC films has ever seen, to just some stupid looking threat. While the original design was bad, this one looks absolutely ridiculous, and his motivation isn’t anything to write home about either. Certain characters get featured even though they don’t really contribute anything, and motivations are surprisingly still really weak and unexplained. Diane Lane actually gets a nice scene as Martha Kent grieving alongside Lois Lane (played again by Amy Adams) after Superman’s passing, but that scene ends in a very bizarre fashion that makes it feel entirely pointless. Joe Morton is also fairly good as Cyborg’s father but doesn’t have strong enough writing to really feel that memorable as a character. Everybody’s acting is still fine and while the characters aren’t used right, they aren’t unlikable, it’s just still nowhere near the level of engagement that’s needed for this movie.

The original release had some pretty laughable effects on display which a lot of people pointed out, so it would make sense that this movie would want to focus on touching up those issues. The CGI as well as most of the action does look a lot better, and even if it doesn’t really look realistic, it doesn’t suffer from the same sense of clutter mess that the original release had. Things like Cyborg’s and the villains’ designs can be pretty awkward looking from an effect standpoint and look a little overly touched up to the point of feeling out of place, but its thankfully not distractingly so like previously. The action still isn’t anything great and the climax leaves almost no impression in this outing, as while the original was overly lit with an ugly red hue, this one substitutes that for an equally hideous muddy grey and blue look which is more fitting with the universe, but still horrible to look at and makes certain moments hard to pick out. The movie, unsurprisingly, has a lot of Zack Snyder’s cliches in it and unfortunately not all of them are for the better. The overly dramatic angles and camerawork handled by Fabian Wagner and the slow-motion to ‘poetic imagery’ can feel very pretentious, but a majority of them aren’t overused (outside of the choir harmonizing which is used nine times too many) and they are well composed shots and have a picturesque quality to them. It does avoid the joylessness of his previous DC movies as despite the removal of the painful Whedon humor writing, the movie doesn’t feel soulless. There are even a few nicer moments in the opening acts that aren’t that bad even if they don’t lead into anything.

Zack Snyder did have the right to release his own version to the public, and after the tragedy he suffered, the responses from fans being mostly positive surely would have meant a great deal to him, and that is truly wonderful. However, that, along with the public’s desperate need to receive this version as well as hate the old one more, probably clouded a lot of people from how obvious this movie’s faults are. It’s not that this a terrible movie and it is definitely a better version from the original, but it’s very much taking an awful movie, reworking it and producing a passable one. It focused so long on fixing all the terrible stuff that it didn’t really have time to make things what’s left behind great in the process. Despite the hype, it doesn’t offer anything that new, exciting, or mind-blowing, just another standard harmless DC action movie. It has a lot of pointless scenes, keeps its awful plot, the characters strangely feel more developed but have less chemistry, the action is more comprehensible but still doesn’t impact much, and the movie has less faults and is better structured, but is still lacking a lot of elements that is needed to make this type of story function correctly. People seem to be back on board with Snyder’s original ideas, but it’s hard to say whether or not they will proceed even with the success of this version. Either way, while it’s an improvement, this one still doesn’t feel like it brings justice to its namesake.