The good, bad and lengthy of 'Zack Snyder's Justice League'
It's an improvement, but is it good?
Hey all, sorry this is coming out later than usual. I’m aiming to get these out on Fridays or Saturdays, but the topic at hand took me longer to wrap my brain around than usual.
Well, it’s here. Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the director’s cut of the much-maligned 2017 superhero flick, debuted on HBO Max this week following years of begging, cajoling and bullying from an often-toxic fanbase. It’s a victory for those fans, and I assume it’s also a moment of catharsis for Snyder, who left the beleaguered project following a family tragedy.
I have not been shy about my disinterest in the “Snyder Cut.” It’s not the release of a buried and hidden film; rather, it’s a shrewd marketing tactic from Warner Brothers, who threw $70 million at it for reshoots and special effects hoping to goose streaming subscriptions. I worry about the precedent it sets for studios, who may now be pressured to obey the whims of every loud, angry fanbase. And it’s $70 million thrown at releasing a movie that was part of a franchise full of films I’ve either severely disliked or downright hated.
I want to be clear that I don’t dislike Snyder. By all accounts, he’s a nice person and a stand-up guy. I actually like his Dawn of the Dead quite a bit. I was one of those 25-year-olds who walked out of 300 on opening night pumped full of adrenaline, even if I’ve cooled considerably on it over the years. And while the HBO series has proven that there are better ways to adapt Watchmen, I think Snyder’s take has some moments of visual splendor. His aesthetic is often too self-consciously edgy, and he’s never met a shot he didn’t think could be improved by slow motion and a dour song, but he has a clear vision. I’ll take his grim-dark, faux-adult approach over Michael Bay’s steroid-addled juvenelia any day.
But man, have I disliked his take on iconic DC characters.
From the moment he was announced as the director of Man of Steel, I worried that Snyder was a bad fit. Superman has traditionally been a figure of aspiration and uplift. There’s a reason why directors like Steven Spielberg have often been spoken of as a good fit for the character. Snyder has always been more obsessed with badassery. He seems suspicious of optimism and hope in his movies. It’s not that he’s cynical — if anything, what causes audiences to titter are his film’s nakedly emotional moments — it’s that he’s more attracted to brooding and destruction.
And so, Man of Steel is a mess. While it has moments that work, mostly in its first hour, and Henry Cavill is a solid Clark Kent, Snyder ladles on the Christ images while also constantly trying to make Superman badass. He’s allergic to the Americana and folksy charm that make up the mythos, and instead steers into a headache-inducing story that includes Johnathan Kent telling his son not to save people, Clark snapping the neck of his enemy, and a final hour in which Superman destroys an entire city without saving a soul. The previous Superman movie, Superman Returns, had been described as a Superman movie where Superman never punches anything; it’s as if Snyder said, “this time: he punches the hell out of the world.”
That disinterested, dark take led to big problems for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Because he’d made Superman an angry brooder, Snyder had to readjust Batman to be even angrier, to the point of being a sadistic killer and torturer. It’s not hyperbole to say that the press screening for Batman v Superman was one of the worst experiences I’ve had in a movie theater; for more than two hours, I felt like I was being battered into submission by the film’s nonstop destruction, ludicrous plot twists and whatever the hell Jesse Eisenberg was doing.
I’m sure Snyder was done no favors by Warner Brothers, a company whose approach to superheroes has ranged from reacting to what everyone else is doing to throwing every idea at the wall to see what sticks. When Snyder was brought in on Man of Steel, the hope was to take what Chris Nolan had done with Batman and apply it to Superman, creating a more grounded, realistic story (about superpowered aliens). By the time that disappointed at the box office, DC was already being lapped by Marvel, which had released 12 films in the space of DC’s four between The Dark Knight and Batman v Superman. When BvS didn’t set the world on fire, it’s no wonder they brought in Avengers director Joss Whedon for Justice League, first to punch up the script and then to take over directorial duties after Snyder left.
I didn’t hate the Whedon cut of Justice League. It made me laugh and it was a somewhat painless two hours. But it was very clearly a compromised film, with Snyder’s brooding sincerity clanging against Whedon’s fast-paced irony. I gave the film a tepid review, and it evaporated from my mind. When the Snyder fans began clamoring for the director’s fabled cut, I rolled my eyes; why would I be interested in something that didn’t work for me the first two times, especially when it’s replacing something I liked (slightly) better?
Well, after all that indulgent preamble (which, given the subject, seems apt), I can say I was wrong. While I don’t know that I can quite call Zack Snyder’s Justice League “good,” I don’t think it’s bad. I actually think Snyder’s third at-bat for these characters is his best, and there are some things I quite like. And seeing how much different and coherent this is from Whedon’s version confirms that Justice League’s bungled theatrical release is less a fault of Snyder making a bad film and more about Warner Brothers’ reactionary approach to the superhero genre.
I can understand why WB panicked. Snyder’s approach is not the Marvel approach. His Justice League is less an Avengers-style romp and more a Lord of the Rings-esque epic, going forward and back in time, spanning various countries and kingdoms, and treating its heroes less as relatable human beings and more as gods walking (or flying) among men. It’s huge in scope, with Snyder giving full arcs to several characters who were largely sidelined in the theatrical cut and relishing every moment to slow things down for his characters to get Very Serious.
From a plot standpoint, it’s not much different than what was released four years ago: Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds), an alien warlord, wants to get three mysterious Mother Boxes so he can destroy Earth and please his master, Than...er, Darkseid (I like that in this cut Steppenwolf is like an overeager employee, kind of a cosmic Dwight Schrute). Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), still feeling a bit guilty over picking a fight with Superman (Henry Cavill) that led to his death, has a premonition that something Darkseid this way cometh, and attempts to assemble a team composed of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), the Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to stop him.
Despite all its pretensions, epoch-hopping and moments of grandeur, Justice League is still just a “get-the-glowy-things” story, culminating in lights from the sky and riddled with sequences where people in suits punch CGI demons. Why I’m okay with this when it’s Captain America search for magic rocks but annoyed when Batman’s trying to find high-tech Rubik’s Cubes is just a matter of preference. Marvel took time building its stable of characters and the films have a light, brisk tone, even when the stakes are galaxy-defining (Endgame mixed the danger of genocide with gags about Chonky Thor). In Snyder’s universe, no one’s having a good time. Everyone’s morose or angry, and attempts to lighten the mood, such as every quip coming from The Flash, feel out of place, which is why Whedon’s attempts to graft his sensibilities onto Snyder’s template never worked.
Justice League’s story and tone is still pure Snyder, deadly serious and filled with portents of doom and attempts at badassery. But in some ways, it also represents growth from the filmmaker. For the first time, there are hints that he understands the aspirational nature of these characters. Gadot relishes Wonder Woman’s nobility, and Miller brings a childlike glee to the Flash, who simply is happy to get to hang out with other heroes (I just wish the script had cooled it on the sub-Whedon quips). Affleck’s softer as Wayne/Batman this time, less an angry reactionary and more a leader, the paternal role Batman’s often played in the comics. Snyder leans more into the idea that coming darkness needs committed heroes, and there are moments where he even seems to acknowledge that part of Superman’s appeal is his essential goodness; an angry Superman is not Superman.
The director, however, also has a tendency to undercut these instincts. These may be aspirational heroes, Snyder says, but they’re no sissies. They won’t hesitate to slam a trident through a bad guy’s heart or cut off his head with an axe. Cyborg and Batman drop f-bombs (the R rating for this is such a ludicrous bit of “look how edgy this is” marketing). And Snyder follows up an inspirational, uplifting montage that could close the film (and, indeed, did close the theatrical version) with a 20-minute dream sequence that indulges in his worst edge lord tendencies and sets up a sequel that I’m sure Snyder Bros are going to be crying for (the sequence was the only scene Snyder shot specifically for this cut, making me want to walk back what I said about this being an evolution for him).
And yet...I still can’t call this bad. Few directors do over-the-top bombast as gloriously as Snyder, and there are moments when his vision is compelling. A sequence that shows the Flash’s power in all its glory is beautifully composed, focusing on a million different things occurring in a split second, lingering on shoes splitting apart under high speed and thousands of items floating in the air (I’d feel a bit better about this sequence if the Flash didn’t also spend time obsessing over the woman he’s saving; his actions seem innocuous and even romantic, but he’s basically playing with the hair and caressing the face of a stranger who, for all intents and purposes, might as well be sleeping). Snyder leans into the idea of these characters being gods on Earth, and he brings that to the table in nearly every fight scene.
Most strikingly is the way he builds out the story of Cyborg, a teenager who died in a car crash and was brought back to life by his father (Joe Morton), who fiddled with the same technology that came to Earth with Superman. In the theatrical cut, Cyborg was an accessory; a character whose biggest attribute was one glowing eye. In Snyder’s cut, Cyborg’s arc is the emotional centerpiece, and Fisher and Joe Morton do solid work, and if anything, this cut shows just how much was lost when the studio cut back Snyder’s vision.
There’s no question that, despite its flaws, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a much better version that what appeared in theaters in 2017. It’s a hefty, unwieldy thing, and yet it’s more tonally consistent, not only in the space of its run time, but with the other films Snyder has made in this franchise. Because it’s not constantly shifting gears, the pacing is quicker, and it’s possible the four hours are easier to endure than the two-hour original cut. It’s still indulgent and bloated; there’s no way this would ever played on a big screen. But split into seven chapters on a streaming service, it feels in line with bingeing an expensive miniseries. There’s likely a three-hour cut that could be made that works really well, and I assume that whenever Warner Brothers evolves to whatever comes after streaming, we’ll see the Compromise Cut or whatever they want to call it.
Snyder’s vision of the DC heroes is still not for me. I’ll likely always prefer the zip and joy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But I appreciate that Warner Brothers, following Justice League’s failure, decided that they need to find an approach that isn’t copying Marvel — even if they have yet to figure out what that approach is. Some of their swings, like Joker, I’ve found unbearable. Others, like Birds of Prey or Shazam, I’ve quite enjoyed. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is probably nestled between the two approaches. It’s a big swing, and it doesn’t quite connect. But I appreciate the attempt.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.
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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Review: One day after Zack Snyder’s Justice League hit HBO Max, Disney+ debuted its WandaVision followup. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, of which I’ve seen the pilot, is a more grounded, familiar Marvel story than the previous, and a pretty straight continuation from Avengers: Endgame. It opens with a fun action sequence, features solid work from Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, and sets up some intriguing developments for the MCU. Unlike DC, which as I said is still figuring out its superhero approach, Marvel moves forward with the consistency and precision of a McDonald’s franchise. Is it great? Nah. Is it nutritious? Probably not. But for those who like it, they know what they’ll get every time, and this is no exception. Read my review at Far From Hollywood.
Chrisicisms
The pop culture I’ve been enjoying
Hercules: Last weekend, my wife and I watched Disney’s 1997 animated comedy with my daughter. I hadn’t seen it since theaters, when I was fairly underwhelmed, but the recent Musker and Clements discussion on the Blank Check podcast made me curious to revisit it. Well, I’m still underwhelmed. It’s a zany attempt to recapture the Aladdin magic, and it includes some fun songs, enjoyable animation and a pantheon-level villain performance from James Woods. But Tate Donovan’s take on the main character is so dull, and the film is missing a richness and beauty that the best Disney renaissance projects had. It’s fun, but forgettable.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: It’s my favorite movie of all time, the film I’m always in a mood to watch. And so, this weekend, I decided to share it with my 9-year-old son. He was into it, and I once again appreciated how skillfully Spielberg assembled this. It’s a perfect piece of craftsmanship, moving with assured pacing that never sacrifices exposition or emotion. When we got to the face-melting finale, my son’s reaction was perfect: a startled gasp, an “oh!” and then a torrent of giggles. This is a great movie.
Patrick H. Willems “Why Baseball is the Best Movie Sport”: I think Patrick Willems may be creating some of the most enjoyable and insightful film criticism over at his YouTube channel. He’s not a critic sitting in front of his DVD wall talking about a movie; he creates funny, visually intriguing essays that know when to insert footage and when to take a break for silly skits. This week’s essay about baseball movies is fantastic. Like Patrick, I’m not a sports guy, but I do love sports movies. And I wholeheartedly agree that baseball is the best movie sport. On YouTube.
A Promised Land by Barack Obama: It took me two months, but I finally finished the first volume of Obama’s presidential memoirs. After four years of chaos, it was refreshing to recall that we previously had leaders in charge who, even if you disagreed with them, approached things with an attempt toward wisdom, humanity and compassion. Obama talks about his first presidential campaign, his work addressing the Great Recession, the trial to get the Affordable Care Act approved, his tumultuous approval rating, and the raid on Osama bin Laden. Obama’s the first to admit that he can be too fond of words, and he indulges that habit repeatedly. But all the things I liked about him during his presidency — his self-deprecating humor, his honesty and his intelligence — are also on display. It’s a lengthy read, but a compelling one.