#TheSnyderCut: The Most Ambitious Comic Book Movie Ever Made
A lesson in the failures of DC comic book movies, the visionary filmmaker who couldn't have his way, the studio that heavily interfered, the bit about the guy who directed The Avengers, the cries of loud fanboys who could not be silenced, the power of the hashtag, the streaming service that saved the day, the glimpse of a brighter tomorrow, and (for the love of God) editing
Look, we're not saying Zack Snyder's Justice League is the greatest comic book movie ever made (although it might be the most overdramatic), but there's literally never been anything like this before
*Disclaimer: The following ramble is a LOT of words, and we're not sorry. As always, please forgive the foul language and excuse the belligerent behavior. Reader discretion advised*
*Spoilers for all things Justice League and DCEU to follow (obvi)*
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PROLOGUE
From the film's opening screams (literally), you will immediately know if this very theatrical four-hour party is your kinda dig...
Well folks, it finally happened. Somehow in the history of all the bananas-ass things that could ever occur in cinema, it actually happened. Zack Snyder's four hour director's cut of Justice League, demanded by fans for years as #TheSnyderCut, has arrived. This is an actual film (though closer to a miniseries) that was legitimately stitched together in an editing room (allegedly on Snyder's couch with no editor in sight) and resurrected like the undead corpse of Superman, released for the general public so that we could all have one more reason to yell at each other over social media and satisfy our hunger for enraged, ungodly fanboy criticism. And it's a lot. If anything, anything at all, Zack Snyder's Justice League should be celebrated because to a degree there's never been a comic book movie event such as this to ever to take place, and for better or worse there may never be one quite like it again. With a multilayered plan to expand DC's greatest line of heroes, only to be halted by tragedy and studio interference, the cult comic book director has finally been given the creative freedom to restore his version of Justice League, and the end result is a train wreck of a movie; a beautiful, glorious, four-hour train wreck, unlike any train wreck before, filmed in super slow motion, staged to a crackling soundtrack, and it's damn near impossible to look away from. In fact, this may be the most intoxicating train wreck in the history of the DCEU (and luckily, the history is thicc).
PART 1: Don't Count on the Mustache, Superman
What began with Snyder's Man of Steel in 2013, in efforts to kick off the DC Extended Universe (in what now seems like such a simpler time), has so hideously evolved into a misguided and disjointed franchise with more impressive failures than achievements (mostly due to creative differences between director and studio, and of course losing millions of dollars in the process); failures so remarkable to the point where the constant anticipation of the next DC project has become genuinely irresistible, if only to see what the unpredictable outcome will be, and it's only been eight years.
In just eight short years (which is actually a long time for comic book movies) Man of Steel immediately followed up with an actual Batman v Superman showdown movie which tanked so hard at the box office that it not only pushed for a three-hour directors cut (important to note for obvious reasons), but led to the re-shooting and re-editing of the first sibling movie Suicide Squad which bombed even harder (also in the ranks for a director's cut), paving the road for what felt like franchise course-correction for many; a standalone and wildly successful Wonder Woman movie (debatably successful by copying the saturated Marvel formula [no director's cut needed]), eventually boiling down to a gigantic Justice League movie which went through development hell for various reasons (director's cut why we're here), and THAT box office bombshell was so detrimental that the entire deconstruction of the DCEU formula; not just the sequel/spinoff movies creating their own strange, ambiguous identities (Aquaman, Shazam, Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984), but the complete split into dark solo projects as well (Todd Phillips' Joker and Matt Reeves' The Batman) has all but left fans completely jaded in terms of being emotionally invested to any of the continuity nonsense (where does Birds of Prey fit into the timeline again?). Even when some of these aforementioned movies work (and most of them more or less do!), it's impossible to truly care about what's happening in the grand scheme of things, because no one seems to know where the hell any of this is going (and judging by Snyder's recent comments regarding the future of the Justice League, neither does Warner Bros).
At this point it's not fair to compare the bat-shit (no pun intended) insanity of DC's failures to Marvel's very well mapped out formula, but by the eight-year mark the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already passed their second Avengers movie (Age of Ultron), which despite understandable criticism (as well as timely Joss Whedon flack) the film was still wildly successful, both in terms of box office and a critically valued future as to where Marvel's franchise was headed. On the opposite end of the spectrum, with ten movies under their belt (not counting the solo projects), DC still can't decide if Wonder Woman can fly or not, let alone make the conscious effort to release the Mustache-Superman Cut of Justice League, rather than keep the CGI-upper-lip cut (#RELEASETHEMUSTACHECUTGODDAMMIT)
That said, flogging the failures of the DCEU in 2021 is about as timely as currently making Trump jokes. Sure, the horrifying realities are not only still inevitable but also comical (Kristen Wiig playing one of the CGI Cats from CATS in WW84 is a sight for sore eyes, to say the least). The point of all this is obviously in the value of the director's cut. We could sit here all day and debate the genuine political warfare of Batman v Superman: The Ultimate Edition; how America's perspective of the godlike Superman paints the hero as both a terrorist threat and a savior, and how Snyder's additional thirty-minutes of footage literally makes a world of a difference, but at the end of it all fans will still hold the "Why did you say that name" Martha moment as the Kryptonite bullet that Snyder shot himself in the foot with all those five-years ago. Fanboys will always find reason to complain because that's what fanboys do best, even when it comes to Marvel. Sure the branches of the MCU may have swayed a little too haphazardly in 2015 when Joss Whedon clashed with the studio over Age of Ultron in regards to whether or not Vision has a penis, but Kevin Feige eventually shushed audiences' criticisms with warm bottles of childish laughs and boner jokes. The bigger picture here of course is that comic book movies seemingly have absolutely no idea how to treat their audiences like adults, leaving no one knowing what they actually want from a comic book movie anymore, but we'll save that conversation for another time.
PART 2: The Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon Porks the DCEU)
Speaking of Joss Whedon, this whole #SnyderCut business is, in a way, sort of the man's entire undoing, for better or worse. Save for the fact that folks have recently been attacking Whedon for all kinds of allegations (make of them what you will), Whedon's involvement with the Justice League creative process can't go unmentioned. Obviously once tragedy struck during the filmmaking of the 2017 film, due to the death of Zack Snyder's daughter, DC needed big shoes to fill despite any (and many) criticisms against Snyder's vision up until that point (folks have not been too kind to Batman v Superman, even with a director's cut), so naturally WB figured the guy who did Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the obvious choice (unfortunately no James Marsters to be found). Enter Joss Whedon: The man who directed The Avengers and thus helmed one of the most successful comic book movies ever made. It's understandable why the dude was called to save the kitties from the tree when shit hit the fan, but at the end of the day Whedon's cheeky and colorful filmmaking characteristics are vastly contradictory to Snyder's dark, brooding and almost entirely humorless approach to making movies, which of course is why WB not only should have never hired Joss to finish Zack's movie, they should have hired just about anyone else. Paul goddamn W.S. Mortal Kombat Anderson would have been a better choice! Not because he's a better filmmaker, but because he knows how to capture iconic characters in a dark (albeit silly) action movie, and in the end, isn't that sometimes all the fanboys need? After all, this is the same audience that not only inherently accepted Jonathan Kent's death by tornado, they welcomed Superman breaking Zod's neck with open arms!
Love him or hate him, Snyder will always be Snyder, Sucker Punch and all (sorry to bring it up). The dude goes 110% all in whether we like it or not, and his detailed visual cues are unmistakably artistic, even if too on the nose. Martha Wayne's pearls caught on the barrel of a firing gun (in slow-motion of course) make for an unforgettable blood-soaked opening to the grim BvS, but being that this was also a graphic novel adaptation panel-for-panel is that not just further example as to why Snyder is the perfect filmmaker for the look of a comic book movie? Snyder's visual style alone is one entire debacle worth debating, but no one can really deny that the man knows how to make a movie look. With his vibrant portraits of caped heroes masqueraded like greek statues posing in painstakingly slow-motion (stop complaining and just enjoy the damn frame!), painted against the gritty, desaturated world of a violent evil, it could even be argued that Snyder's visual approach to filmmaking has captured the most comic-book-accurate design for cinema since Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films (easy now, we're only wanking the visuals, the clunky dialogue is a whole different abomination).
So of course in hiring Joss "puny god" Whedon, who knows how to respectfully keep the room colorful and bouncy for Marvel movies, his signature tone is almost an antithesis to the "dark and gritty" DC that Snyder began painting the halls of Justice with when he started Man of Steel. In layman's terms, in hiring Whedon to finish completing Justice League 2017, WB had inevitably (and irresponsibly) stabbed themselves with a Kryptonite spear straight through the heart all those four-years ago. This isn't just evident through apparent accusations from actor Ray Fisher (Cyborg) on how Whedon treated him on set. Just go and watch the original 2017 cut. Fisher's hardly in the movie! Even despite characters and grandiose moments getting the axe, the movie is an absolute nightmare (not Knightmare - we'll save that for later, of course). The film's tone is conflicting, the pacing extremely shoddy, and needless to say Whedon's ill-fitting jokes (oh look, The Flash landed on Wonder Woman's chest and we're supposed to laugh), let alone the studio's neon red color correcting is more mutated than a horribly mangled Ninja-Turtle-Doomsday shoehorned into the third act of the second movie of a brand new start to a DC franchise (look, we can't all be winners).
PART 3: Beloved Nerds, Beloved Tweets #ReleaseTheSnyderCut
So the year is 2017. Justice League comes out, it astronomically bombs, and now fanboys are at war with Marvel for not just doing better than DC (at this point Thor: Ragnarok was doing laps around the box office numbers), but for letting their poster-boy director sabotage a franchise (as well as the first live-action Justice League movie) by un-porking household names like Batman and Superman from the already porked fetal position Zack Snyder positioned them in, only to make things about as bad as Jesse Eisenberg fondling a Jolly Rancher into another man's mouth (please bear with me, I dig BvS as much as the next fan). Listen folks, nothing can be said about it that hasn't already been said. The first Justice League run was bad. Henry Cavill sported a CGI upper-lip the whole time and that wasn't even the worst of it. Things had hit a new low for DC, and it was only a matter of time before whispers of a rumored director's cut flooded the internet.
So the story goes, Snyder would invite cast and crew members to his house to watch an extremely rough cut of his version of the JLA, exactly as he had intended it, fleshed out plot and characters and all (given the unfinished special effects, of course), and in the final result people apparently raved about the new edit. As soon as fanboys caught wind of this, the bandwith of parents' basements across the nation began to thrive. The internet hype became real, so what did the fanboys do in their moment of scorn? They took to the high seas: Twitter! (the cesspool of internet complaining!), and they backed the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. These fanboys went so goddamn hard, and rallied so ridiculously loud (virtually of course) for SO many years, that they actually caused a legitimate ripple effect, and they created a genuine impact. This part of the story cannot be stressed enough. WB made a real deal with HBO Max to release this thing, strictly due to fan service. The fact that this sort of agreement was even allowed at all is a practical streaming miracle, and amidst the enormous success Snyder's Justice League is currently raking in, this is going to completely change the future of streaming comic book content (at least for DC), and perhaps it's happening about eight years too late but this just might be the exact boost the DCEU has been begging for.
PART 4: Rotten Tomatoes Change Machine: 40% < 73%
If the last near-four years have been a testament to the patience of DC fanboys everywhere in terms of getting even a remotely better version of the once doomed Justice League film, March 2021 has delivered fans an extremely bladder-challenging dose of a better movie (right on HBO Max for all your paused pee-pee breaks!). Split into six parts (though not in episodic format), and at a thick-ass four-hours-and-two-minutes, Snyder's vision has been all-too completely restored, and as stated, it's a lot. Although, it's not just a better movie than Whedon's 2017 version (a ham sandwich is a better movie); it doesn't just run speed-of-light victory laps around the original. The comparison between the two flicks was never in question. What makes Zack Snyder's Justice League so remarkably special is that the film is the result of a completely independent vision; no studio interference, no bullshit (and seemingly no editor). The final product is very full, and it's a genuinely complete movie, even if folks still feel it might not be a very good movie (but Warner Bros. will be having none of that blaspheme).
Just from the opening credits, ZS Justice League is a movie that is immediately extra. We begin with a dying Kal-El being crushed by Doomsday (in slow motion!) amidst the chaos of the third act of Batman v Superman, and Superman's death screams can be heard 'round the world. The feared Mother Boxes (Infinity Stones in Marvel terms) have been awakened! We then follow a shadowy figure on foot through the snowy mountains; a fleshed out scene of Batfleck attempting to recruit Jason Mimosa for his team, trading out the jokes about Arthur Curry being able to talk to fish in favor of an extended song from a bunch of Icelandic women who are sad that Jason Mimosa has to leave them (and who could blame them?). This isn't exactly an even trade, but it's nevertheless what Snyder wanted. Nearly every single scene plays out like this (now presented in glorious 4:3 framing to see the heroes stand up better!); Brand new footage, dramatized old footage, darker and more natural colors, all filled to the brim with Snyder's divisive trademarks (staged to a new booming soundtrack!), and above all else, the film flows at an endlessly coherent pace that takes its unabashedly sweet time setting up a gigantic story. This is the key ingredient to all this rambling nonsense: Pacing.
The pacing of Snyder's DC epic is both its greatest blessing and most terrible curse. On the one hand, the film is four hours, and holy shit, that's long. On the other hand, it's four hours! Now we have time to see a fuller story! The happy medium for sure would have been a mini-series, leaving episodic breaks to the devices of the viewer, and this thing arguably would have soared to even greater heights having been split up as a mini-series, but we can't Flash to the past with this one despite it being a miracle that this movie happened at all. The pacing is ultimately the biggest testament to the entire film, and it's a testament because for the first time the audience has the room to breathe, and therefore the time to care (isn't that precious).
PART 5: Most of the King's Horses (the Other Horses are Still Bitching)
In terms of caring in 2017, Cyborg was a minimized robot with decent character development (and terrible CGI) at best. In 2021, the dude is the heart of the story (CGI still not great)! The fact that a core character with so much history can just end up on the cutting room floor, perhaps because he's the lesser known of the DC names, just goes to show how hard the ball was dropped with the first cut. Yet caring about Cyborg is only just scratching the surface of Snyder's vision. The Flash is given numerous additional scenes. Save for extra time with prison-daddy Doc Manhattan (my man Billy Crudup) Barry Allen's introduction alone in saving the life of future love interest Iris West (in slow motion!), bursting sneakers and stolen hotdogs and all, is a scene with more genuine humanity than any nameless Russian family living in an abandoned house during a red-CGI-sky apocalypse (no disrespect). That doesn't even cover Flash's breathtaking speed-of-light time-travel moment during the climax, which just hits all kinds of emotional beats.
The characters are not just better this time, they're relatable. Aquaman has multiple bubble interactions in Atlantis with mentor Willem Dafoe who demands Arthur Curry embrace his family heritage with immediately memorable lines ("Take up your mother's trident!") in a way that only Dafoe can deliver. All the Themysciran ladies have an extended battle sequence in their shiny undies, and Wonder Woman herself has extensive scenes not just saving innocent civilians and giving inspirational speeches to little girls (and murdering the bad guys!), but also in discovering the inevitable prophecies of Darkseid (of course the whole thing is ridiculous, but it was also ridiculous the first time).
Speaking of bad guys, even Darkseid being in the movie at all, carrying an obvious Thanos-like aura to his smug evil-doing, is a huge upgrade (even if in exchange of ripping off Marvel to try and catch up)! Darkseid is a legit presence in this, included with his own Lord of the Rings style flashback battle sequence (it's literally just like the opening of Fellowship, only instead of Sarumon fighting elves it's now a bunch of superheroes and the dudes from 300, eight-pack abs and all). No longer does PS2 Steppenwolf operate as the solo baddie, with CGI which makes him look like a character that appears on the screen of a bowling alley when you get a strike. Steppenwolf now reports directly to Darkseid and his cronies for more fleshed out backstory, and doing so while actually looking like a badass in shiny armor, who gets shot with a bunch of arrows only to flex them off! The film is filled with all kinds of upgraded sequences and elongated absurdity, delivering moods that finally feel like they fit the film instead of feeling comically awkward (albeit the scenes between Amy Adams and Diane Lane are still unfortunately dense).
There are entire moments now changed which just hit a little bit different; moments like black-suit Superman showing up late to the final showdown blocking a giant battle axe before freeze-breathing it into crumbles, as opposed to the original cut when colorful Superman sneaks up behind the villain delivering a punny line about "justice" or some shit; moments which focus on the absurdity of Supes' freeze breath rather than the absurdity of a corny bit of dialogue; moments such as these don't just hit different, they keep this thing feeling like a completely different movie. And that doesn't even begin to cover the origins of black-suit Superman (or the resurrected Frankenstein Superman), OR the evil Knightmare Superman, let alone the Knightmare vision sequence in general, or any of the scenes that allude to the Justice League sequels that will probably never see the light of day (there's just too goodamn much to cover!). Sure the biggest difference between the old cut and the new cut is just an additional two hours, but it's two hours which allows us to be legitimately invested in the characters and their stories. Even when the film is being extra, as stated, this is some of the best extra HBO money can buy (with the exception of more Curb Your Enthusiasm, of course).
PART 6: Something Darker (For Anyone Fatigued by Disney Shit)
ZS Justice League is for sure a better movie, but does that make it a good movie? Given the miracle of its history, it almost doesn't matter. It's a landmark of a comic book movie, despite fans declaring it good, great, or "still terrible but now twice as long." It's significant because it stakes its claim as a Zack Snyder film, just as it boldly reads before every one of his movies, but the film also dies on the hill of feeling so unabashedly "DCEU." It's bizarre to mark the identity of a franchise that seems to have so much trouble identifying itself (this is a far cry, after all, from Shazam! being the superhero equivalent of Tom Hanks' Big). By Justice League 2021 being very "Zack Snyder" and feeling all too "DCEU," the film is living and breathing as an extraordinarily dark comic book movie, at least one as dark as the image of "look, up in the sky!" Superman holding the burnt skeleton of a dead Lois Lane in a grim apocalyptic future (an even farther cry from Christopher Reeves' Superman all those forty-plus years ago).
This Justice League is clearly for a new generation with an earned R-rating, and all of its uncensored glory goes far beyond Batman and Cyborg dropping a couple F-bombs. The film is not just violent and bloody but often straight up grim, and in Snyder fashion almost completely humorless, though not without the occasional comical bits thrown in when they fit the tone (only The Flash could pull off that hotdog bit). Gone are the days of Batman throwing a "Pow!" to his punch (now he just shoots people I guess?), and wasted are the hours of Superman saving cats from trees (like we said, this dude breaks necks), even if nostalgic comic book fans will cry that these were the glory days of DC. It may be a controversial bar, but the bar that this new Justice League sets is a violent one; a bar aimed at Frank Miller fans; the youthful readers who were scarred when they read the bleak pages of "The Killing Joke" for the first time. The tone isn't always smart, but we can't argue it's hella dark.
Even despite some of the silliness, this is a Justice League film aimed at adults and more or less treats its audience like adults. This is a moody, bleak, desaturated, over-dramatic version of the Super Friends. It goes completely against the stereotyped feel-good atmosphere that comic book movies have been known to attract. This is the very antithesis to the MCU and it is everything Marvel is not, and for that, good or bad, Zack Snyder's Justice League is exactly what it needs to be in order to function properly: A DC movie. No jokes, no snappy dialogue, no censored PC-kid-friendly bullshit, no nonsense (Well, there's still some nonsense. I mean, Aquaman still surfs down a building, stabbing Parademons with a giant pitchfork, and still gives his signature "My man!" line after being caught by Cyborg in a giant CGI stormy sky. There's only so much dark and gritty we can do, folks). Despite it all, the film is ultimately a celebration because this was a rare opportunity for a filmmaker to be given total creative freedom to release their vision of such enormous comic book heroes to the world, and to do so in such weird, long, bleak, unadulterated fashion. Even if the film was given in some respects to Snyder's late daughter Autumn (whom the film was dedicated to, along with a giant suicide awareness banner as an Easter Egg in the film), ZS Justice League just feels personal, and the fact that it feels personal towards the likes of characters such as The Flash and Cyborg for the first time, the film has done more than meet its mark, even if it doesn't stick all the landings (we didn't need that much slow motion). It's just a shame that Jared Leto's Joker was brought back at all if we're not even going to see how any of that grim future ever does play out (not that Jared Leto is exactly the cream of the crop here).
EPILOGUE: A Final Cut (and Former Turd) Twice Over
All this to be said, Snyder's restored vision (or The Snyder Cut) is a green-lit miracle, and the fact that it's doing as incredibly well as it currently is (it's currently Snyder's highest rated movie!) speaks volumes for the film's success. Of course the movie won't leave the lasting impression as a "must see" event for comic book fans everywhere, but for diehard DC fanboys who have been waiting to see some kind of payoff for sticking through all the bullshit over the last eight years; the patience for even a decent Suicide Squad movie amidst the chaotic failures of this expansive franchise (here's looking at you, James Gunn), at the end of it all, good, bad, or anything in between, this new Justice League feels like a remarkably well earned achievement both for DC and for the future of comic book movies, and in some ways it feels like this might be as good as the DCEU is gonna get (which is a toss-up depending on whether or not you're one of those poor, hapless sons-of-bitches who shelled out money for the Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition blu-ray). In the end, it's truly a shame we'll probably never see Zack's five-movie plan come to fruition (despite hopeful fans already firing up their hashtags again) but for everyone else, if anything else, Zack Snyder's Justice League just might be the most ambitious comic book movie ever made (aside from Howard the Duck of course).
#RestoreTheDuckVerse
