‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ is here, and it’s long, forgiving, and better than the original

After four years, a prolonged campaign on social media on the Internet and allegations of mismanagement in the studio, director Zack Snyder’s cut of “Justice League” was finally unveiled, and yes, it is an improvement over the version that came out in 2017.

The theatrical cut to “Justice League” was an impromptu movie that Snyder was unable to finish due to the suicide of his daughter Autumn. He had already worked with significant pressure from Warner Bros., who desperately wanted a team of superheroes to compete with Marvel’s Avengers movies and was appalled at the poor critical reception of Snyder’s previous effort, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016. – The director finally left the project. Warner Bros. spiraled into disaster control mode and brought “Avengers” director Joss Whedon on board to finish the movie.

Whedon’s version featured a mix of old scenes and freshly shot footage filled with witty jokes that seemed straight out of Marvel movies and out of place in the comparatively harsh DC Comics cinematic universe. Punctuated by a dated Danny Elfman soundtrack, Whedon’s “Justice League” challenged Warner Bros. ‘hopes, leaving most critics, including those at HuffPost, calling it mediocre at best.

In the years since, rumors that Whedon underutilized Snyder’s footage and undermined the director’s original intent sparked a #ReleaseTheSnyderCut fan campaign that, while admirable in its desire to see artistic integrity restored, also veered toward him. realm of dangerous fandom toxicity. Allegations that Whedon engaged in abusive behavior on set and greatly downplayed the role of actor Ray Fisher, who plays the Cyborg, the man turned into a machine, amplified this call.

Finally, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, theaters paused long enough for Warner Bros to shrug it off, say “Well why not” and allow Snyder to finish what he started for an HBO Max debut. .

And now we have “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”, a large film, with a duration of 4 hours and 2 minutes, that should not exist, but that was my love in existence.

Thanks to its gigantic length, the rhythms of the story are more coherent than in the theatrical premiere. The focus continues to be on Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Godot) forming a team that includes the likes of The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and a resurrected Superman (Henry Cavill). ). ), but there are several additional scenes to develop the motivations of the villain Steppenwolf, who is behind MacGuffins called Mother Boxes and wants to reshape the world to please his otherworldly master, Darkseid.

Steppenwolf and Darkseid are complex comic characters created by legendary artist and writer Jack Kirby, but you wouldn’t know it from the stage version, which was completely devoid of Darkseid and made Steppenwolf look like a villain designed by the most boring committee on Earth. In Snyder’s new cut, Steppenwolf not only sports a brighter, more animalistic design that my girlfriend described as “foil-wrapped doo-doo,” but they portray him as an intergalactic middle manager asking for his boss’s approval. In other words, it’s still relatively boring, but at least it’s a identifiable something boring.

The other character with significantly longer screen time is Cyborg, who seemed to have about five minutes of characterization in the theatrical cut, however, here he is featured as a cornerstone of the Justice League as he accepts his ability to manipulate. the world’s technology and data intelligence systems. (Roy Fisher, who has reportedly been sidelined for future DC Comics movies, was right to complain about how his run time at the theatrical release was drastically shortened.)

The Flash also gets extended scenes that paint him very well as the team’s extremely powerful yet realistic fool, while Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Batman get more subdued parts here and there, including a pretentious exchange between Ben Affleck and Jared Leto, who plays a Joker who no longer has the word “DAMAGED” tattooed across the top of his head, as in 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” but is still one of the less subtle characters I’ve seen in a movie in recent memory.

And that’s the thing about Zack Snyder: he’s never liked subtlety. After all, this is the man who repeatedly struck audiences with the allegory that “Superman = Jesus” in his first DC Comics presentation, “Man of Steel,” as well as in “Batman v. Superman,” a movie. It revolved around its pivotal plot hook on the mothers of Batman and Superman who have the same name.

Snyder’s version of “Justice League,” from its runtime to an indulgent 4: 3 aspect ratio, is fantastically unsubtle. The intro takes too long on Superman’s death from the previous film, the epilogue is pure fan service hinting at Snyder’s uninhibited plans for “Justice League” sequels that may or may not come true, yet. there are too many metaphors and instances of wooden dialogue. of Snyder’s signature slow motion, and if you’re watching it with subtitles, the words “Ancient Lamentation Music” appear on the screen every time Wonder Woman does something, to the point that now it’s a meme. Zack Snyder surely loves his grandeur and pomposity, and he always hopes the public will take him 100% seriously.

Yet for some reason, possibly due to the fact that it’s easier to consume four hours of superhero pomposity on HBO Max than it is in a theater, it’s possible to accept and even appreciate the overwhelming swagger of this movie. Perhaps it’s also because in the midst of his excess, Snyder’s cut presents a sense of hope appropriate for a team-up superhero movie, which is surprising considering it’s from the same filmmaker who featured a pessimistic Superman in “Man of Steel. ”And always has been. most fascinated with deconstructing comic book characters as brave and imperfect individuals.

With that in mind, it’s worth celebrating that a director was given the rare opportunity to achieve his original vision. While Snyder may never get a chance to film sequels, his version of “The Justice League,” the result of fan outcry, movie studio antics, and a global pandemic, is likely his job. more powerful in a long time. Even if he frequently drowns in his own delusions of grandeur.