Zack Snyder's Justice League: A Redemption Review?

Streaming Platform: HBOMax

Release Date: March 18, 2021

As of this writing, there is less than a week before the premiere of a new version of 2017's “Justice League” that will reflect the vision of the original director, Zack Snyder. To be clear, this is NOT the original vision of the movie, though there will be much of that original vision present in the film. This new version is better described as an event, given its 4 hour and 2 minute runtime, which is very unlikely to have made it into theaters. Include that with the fact that Snyder has the distinct advantage of actively creating the movie with knowledge of the specific downsides of the 2017 theatrical version, there are inherently going to be some changes made to avoid similar negative marks. Regardless of how I feel about the Snyder Cut campaign, which I found quite annoying at times and thought that Warner Bros. Set a bad precedent by giving in to the bitching, it is being released and I am ready to give it fair judgment. I am excited to see the film, not necessarily because of the specifics as a Justice League film, but because I have greatly missed explosive, cinematic superhero content.

The film has a lot working against it for me and those are biases I will have to try to keep in check when writing my review. I have not liked most of what Zack Snyder has brought to the screen, outside of “Man of Steel” and “Dawn of the Dead”, and do not think that he can direct a cohesive story to save his life. I do have a glimmer of hope that with four hours allotted to the film, that he can navigate some level of cohesion in the plot. Where I do think this version will have a clear improvement is in the personalities of and the interaction between the characters, all of which felt off in 2017's version (other than Aquaman, whose characterization is terrible regardless). Of course, the clearest of improvements will be in the antagonist and having Darkseid be directly involved, as Steppenwolf was bland in every way from his appearance to his dialogue as the only villain to thwart the League in the previous version. I actually have a lot of confidence in the Snyder Cut being an improvement, but how much of an improvement remains to be seen. A better movie is good, but bringing an “F” to a “C” may not be worth the 3+ years of complaining.

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Let me go ahead and get this out of the way, getting through this movie is a fucking chore. I will touch upon what makes up the bulk of that chore later on, but for now, a near four hours is just too long. Yes, I am aware that I "could have broken it up", but you can say that about any cinematic media and it does not change the fact that this was a story that may have been too large for a single film. The length of a movie is not always that important: a short movie can feel long and a long movie can feel short if the story is done in an engaging enough manner. A long movie that feels long...not the best quality. I will give the Snyder Cut a bit of a break though, since some of this (just a little) was due to having seen a version of many of these scenes already in the theatrical version. I know there will be detractors to this perspective who will see this as a four-hour epic, but it was not. It was almost three hours of exposition and one hour of epic. There is a difference between a movie being memorable and being easily remembered. This movie is difficult to remember, even having just watched it. That is not to say that there were not memorable moments, because there were, but the dump truck full of stories makes it hard for some of the highlights to stand out.

I will continue with the overly long expositions and dive right in on the weakest areas of the film. A popular criticism from Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice was that there was too many plot threads and not enough time to settle them into a cohesive story. Even with less plot threads, the theatrical version of Justice League felt just as choppy and incoherent. So how does Snyder combat that with this film? He adds two extra hours to devote more time to the plot threads, some of which works, but the film still needed to pull back on juggling as much as it did. The introduction of four new heroes to the DCEU (Flash, Aquaman [yes, since this movie is set before his solo film], Cyborg, Martian Manhunter), the attempted fleshing out of their backstories, the return of Superman, Steppenwolf's desire to unite the Motherboxes, Darkseid's hunt for the Anti-Life Equation and fleshing out his history with Earth, Lois Lane's life as a shut-in, Batman's recruitment...need I go on? There was just an overall lack of depth to a lot of the characters and to the story because there was never enough screen time to build that emotional connection, leaving a bit of apathy when there was not ass kicking going on. The style over substance issue has not gone away.

For all the exposition that this movie had, it was all spread out way too far. The movie begins and rests on the foundation of Superman's dying activating a Motherbox and Steppenwolf's mission to collect the three on Earth. It is not until the end of Part 2 and during Part 5 that an explanation for these aspects of the movie is provided. Even being knowledgable about the comics, it felt like loose threads that were dangling distraction until we received the explanations. I liked the knightmare scenes from an conceptual and aesthetic standpoint and understand how this future was supposed to fit into the DCEU, but they still felt as out of place as in the previous version. Yes, there is dialogue at times about having nightmares and seeing visions, but they end up so disconnected from the actual future scenes that if there is no other movie to expand on them, most of it should have just been left out. "But this was mostly his original vision and that was a big part of the future of the movies," well, I can not critique a movie based on a future story that has not been told and will not be (as far as we know).

Looking at more of the technical side of the film, I get that I am not a fan of Zack Snyder's style, but how many slow-motion and slow-panning, overly dramatic camera shots can one movie have? It got to a point of annoyance for me and definitely caused some issues with pacing in an already crowded movie, particularly during the first half. I do not remember how much was spent on bringing this cut to life, but a lot of the CGI with Darkseid and Steppenwolf still had a bit too much of the "C". If they did any form of motion capture to give a more life-like feel to facial expressions and mouth movements, I did not really show and it felt a bit like a video game. Actually, I think I could say the same for Martian Manhunter.

In the same respect, there were some equally awesome visuals, mostly all of which happened during fight scenes. The highlight of these was actually Mera, who began extracting the liquid/blood from out of Steppenwolf's body during their altercation. That was unexpected and very creative. Steppenwolf still looked stupid as all hell, but his fighting and axe-wielding felt much more brutal and made him look/feel like more of a threat. The entire infiltration of Steppenwolf's main hold-up was great. Lots of strong action pieces and, most importantly, each character got their due in regards to screen time and no one felt like a complete afterthought.

While I highlighted an overall lack of depth to a lot of the story, that does not mean that there was no depth at all. I thought Batman presented as a much different character than ever, playing the philosopher/dreamer more than his usual logical/calculating, which was quite a departure. At times I did not like it and actually think Batman got short-changed in a lot of this movie because of it. I kind of missed the ruthless Batman from Batman V. Superman. The Flash was great and I originally hated the casting and did not care for the performance in the theatrical version. Using slow-motion effects for him made sense and it was a cool way of visualizing the speed force. I am much more excited for his solo movie because of this performance here. Wonder Woman continued to be a strong character in all senses of the word, but that is not much different from the previous version.

I do not like Superman as a comic character, but he kicked some serious ass in this movie and was a highlight once he was brought back. The Lois/Superman stuff, though, if there is no other movie to expand on it, was a complete drag. It was supposed to help tether Superman's humanity and the feeling of hope to the movie, but it continued to highlight how crappy of a Lois Lane Amy Adams is. Aquaman and Cyborg, I thought they felt out of place a lot of the movie, especially Cyborg and did not see all the hype surrounding his role. I get he did some important shit and was the catalyst for saving the world, but his story was not done that well and, as a character, he could be a one and done hero based on how he was written. Honestly, he felt like a second Batman and less like his own character with all that brooding.

Such a long movie with the history it has could warrant pages of discussion, but I will sum it up here. Zack Snyder's Justice League took what was a convoluted movie and rather than tidy the story up, just added double the content to try and explain the convoluted-ness. It may just be his "style," but focusing solely on the bigger picture left a lot of holes and ineffectiveness in the smaller details and that just kills good storytelling. Yes, it is better than the theatrical version, by a lot. It also, in many ways, did redeem the idea that Snyder should have been left in charge of navigating this universe. However, the movie on its own, did not feel like it was worth three years of bitching and complaining and I will likely never watch it again, at least in its entirety. A movie I previously gave a grade so low it was unwatchable now moves to around a 78/100 for me.

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RATING: 🎬 🎬 🎬 .75 / 5

(On a complete and utter side note, something that really bothered me during the movie was when the original four JL members go to Striker Island to rescue the hostages from Star Labs. as they are navigating their way through the building, they CLEARLY were taking the stairs. They were climbing stairs on a mission to rescue people from potentially world-ending stakes. A speedster, someone who can fly, and two heroes with rope like objects that can pull them up...all casually strolled up the stairs. 😑)