Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) Review
“They are a primitive species, unevolved and at war with one another, too separate to be one.”
After 5 years of clamoring from the fans, the much-fabled Snyder Cut has arrived.
For the uninitiated, Zack Snyder left the project due to his daughter’s passing. Warner Bros resorted to Marvel sensation, Joss Whedon, who had assembled a group of heroes in Marvel’s Avengers in 2012. I for one thought he could do it again, but as 2017 proved, you couldn’t combine Snyder’s style with Whedon’s without having problems. Namely, cohesion, which was lost when the 4-hour movie was cut in half to appease studio needs.
There were murmurs that there was a director’s cut from Snyder, and after much clamoring from the fan’s campaign: Release The Snyder Cut, he was able to secure an additional 70 million to finish the movie.
In terms of the theatrical cut, let’s give credit where credit is due. He elevated the project by bringing Danny Elfman alone, which is better than anything Junkie XL can muster. But most importantly, Whedon’s script had some merit. It explores the idea of Superman being gone and the hopelessness that comes when humanity is left behind to fend for itself. Wonder Woman is challenged for choosing to go underground for a century instead of being a beacon of hope like Superman was. She counters, by explaining that leaders get people killed. Whedon likes to focus on the conflict within teams, which amounts to compelling arguments on both sides. He did it to great effect in The Avengers movies, but here he simply did not have enough time to make it his own. He did however provide a compelling argument for coming together: Individually, they are not enough — they are held back by their own limitations — but together they can achieve wonders.
Now, for the director’s cut, I was excited to see how it would compare to Whedon’s cut. What I found is that the theatrical cut had a lot of Snyder’s original vision. For example, Whedon chose to use “Everybody Know’s” by Sigrid for the sequence that covers the aftermath of Superman’s death around the world. Which meshes well with the footage Snyder shot. There is no denying it is Snyder’s footage because it is reminiscent of the opening he did for Watchmen. If you go back to the theatrical cut, it has a lot of Snyder in it, when tasked to do a director’s cut he had to focus on scenes we didn’t get the first time.
By restoring 2 hours’ worth of footage we get a more cohesive experience, wherein we see the character development that was missing the first time. Things got out of hand with the slow motion, however, since the style was overused. While cool in certain moments, I am not sure that we needed a whole 24 minutes and 7 seconds worth of slow motion. Data shows most households didn’t even finish the 242-minute engagement, but that’s a conversation for another time.
One of my biggest gripes with the script is the idea that Justice League uses Batman’s guilt to assemble the team. But anyone who knows the character, knows that despite being part of the Justice League, he prefers to work alone, and always has. Batman is arrogant, he would’ve stood by his mistake and fought the incoming threat on his own if he had to. Having Batman assemble the team is going against the grain of who the character is, it should have been Diana choosing to be the beacon of hope.
Warner Bros wanted a more hopeful sequel after Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman lacked the optimism Superman represents. Snyder delivered on that, with positive messages throughout the film, but most importantly with a voice-over that wraps up the story neatly. Where Snyder begins to stumble is his epilogue, an amalgamation of story threads he was interested in pursuing should he get the chance. One scene teases the Batman movie written, directed, and starring Ben Affleck, which of course is now off the table. This scene would have played great as a button scene at the very end of the credits during a theatrical run. It becomes overstuffed with the next two scenes, however.
Batman is featured in two scenes of the epilogue and neither work,s unfortunately. One of them continues the Knightmare sequence, the apocalyptic storyline first teased in Batman v. Superman. In it, Superman has been consumed by the antilife equation and serves Darkseid as his master. It was heavily marketed that Jared Leto’s Joker would make a return for said sequence. It was a huge opportunity for Leto to redeem his take on the Joker, after fan backlash for his efforts in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. I thought under Snyder’s vision he might be able to redeem himself, but it amounts to a poorly written sequence and a wasted opportunity.
When Bruce Wayne wakes up from this nightmare he meets the Martian Manhunter. While it may be that Affleck was great at playing someone who just woke up and probably has a hangover, he mostly looks unamused about the lines he has to say. I don’t blame him, there is a moment when Martian Manhunter tells him his parents would be proud, and he responds with, “I hope so.” But sometimes you don’t need words to drive a point home, all we needed to see is his reaction, and the scene would have been all the better for it. Perhaps the scene comes across as half-baked because it was; it turns out it was originally intended to feature a Green Lantern but Warner Bros refused to allow this.
In any case, the epilogue is Snyder’s way of teasing fans about what he had planned next. This showcase is likely to inspire fans to persuade Warner Bros once more to green-light the project, but it overshadows a strong ending, one that took us 4 hours to arrive at.
