Riot’s Movie Reviews: Zack Snyder’s Justice League
It’s important to say this outright because it will inform the attitude/bias I had before revisiting Justice League: the original release was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. So imagine my surprise when I started to see positive reviews popping up about the Snyder Cut. Being a consistent visitor to a meme site called 9GAG, I usually find myself aligning with a lot of the things the community finds positive in entertainment. (I’ve “discovered” many new anime series in this way) If the 9GAG community could forgive the original release in favor of the “new” one, there had to be some legitimacy to it, right? Nope! It would prove a lie to say that there weren’t improvements, but to say it’s a drastically better film would be just as untruthful.
I’ll go into this short review with the assumption that many of you have at least seen the original cut and remember how the events of the story played out. Regardless, I don’t have the energy to try and summarize a 4 hour film. Yup, you read that right, 4 hours. I’m no stranger to the long-running movie, I own and have watched the extended versions of The Lord of The Rings multiple times. Unlike the Snyder’s Cut though, those are all masterfully crafted pieces of storytelling and film. So what does the new release have going for it that the old one didn’t? Most importantly for me, character development. The extended hours left opportunity to give the audience more behind what drives its heroes, notably expanding on the backstories of Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) and Victor Stone (Ray Fisher), the latter of which had the most added influence to the events of the story. Adjustments to the design of the villain, Steppenwolf (voiced by Ciaran Hinds) lent to a more convincing and menacing antagonist. The expansion of the role of Darkseid (voiced by Ray Porter) gave the entire story a lot more depth than the original release as well, providing a deeper history to the conflict. The extended cut also delivered more opportunities to flex the action scenes and the elaborate special effects that came with them. Visually, the entire film is stunning, as should be expected from a director that brought us 300 and Watchmen. Still, I would 100% recommend either of these films before I would recommend Justice League.
Stronger character development, dazzling special effects, and new character cameos simply weren’t enough to deal with the glaring plot holes and non-sensical choices made by this batch of Earth’s mightiest heroes. (I essentially am calling Darkseid a cameo here, lumping in the strange involvement of The Martian Manhunter and Deathstroke with it) Story writers understand that there is no such thing as a perfect character, but it doesn’t make it any easier watching people like Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), a character so brilliant he can build impossibly advanced technology, make such stupid choices. This definitely wasn’t limited to Batman. By expanding Cyborg’s story, they unwittingly opened up his character to the same pitfall. The vast majority of the film is spent watching five super powered beings and two advanced societies being manhandled by a single enemy in Steppenwolf all while trying to resurrect the deus ex machina that is embodied in Superman. (Here’s another admitted bias on my end, I think Superman is the most overpowered/overhyped superhero ever created) Watching this film confirms that argument though when the last battle finally comes around and Superman makes short work of Steppenwolf almost single-handedly. It also helps to have a time-reversing character in The Flash to help fix the unending blunderings of the “smartest” heroes on the planet. In the end, I was just happy to see Flash use anything but his index finger to accomplish something (seriously, they were obsessed with this). Each major plot shift left me exasperatedly questioning “why,” which made it all the more difficult to maintain interest.
As it stands, the DCEU has turned out so many terrible films that anything past mediocre stands out amongst the rest. In that sense, I will admit that Snyder’s Cut improved the film to a position past that ever-shifting line. Placed against the backdrop of the DCEU’s Wonder Woman (not WW1984, that movie was terrible) and Aquaman, Justice League still fails to live up to the quality that these films and characters are clearly capable of. It was interesting to see just how much Aquaman was forced to adjust to ensure that they could tell a decently compelling story. It essentially rewrote history on a similar level that X-Men: Days of Future Past did to try and reset the atrocities of the first three X-Men films. Understanding the massive scope of the dream that Snyder had for the DC Universe is admirable to be sure, as he made references to multiple popular storylines like Anti-Life Equation and even the Injustice series, both of which fit well to the overall darker feel of the film. Essentially though, having this access to his dream is a bit more depressing to me than anything else. Snyder is reportedly unlikely to return to these projects. Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck are questionable to return to the roles (for various reasons I won’t go into here, look it up). Jared Leto’s Joker is also unlikely to return, which I personally think is unfortunate. At the very least, it is an opportunity missed for an incredible actor to portray one of the most famous psychopaths in history (check out The Little Things for proof of his capabilities). There should be no doubt that Snyder’s Cut is the superior version of this film and the DCEU would have been better off if the WB had stuck with the original dream and saw Snyder through the personal tragedy he was going through. This is a unique case of hindsight in which nothing really changes though since its release is unlikely to affect the current path that the DCEU is on. Only time will tell.
Riot’s Rating: 4.5/10: If you’ve seen the first one, you’re probably not missing much by not watching Snyder’s Cut.
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