Zack Snyder’s Justice League has had a long and eventful road to its release on HBO Max. After Zack Snyder’s daughter Rose tragically passed away, the studio saw it as an opportunity to replace him with Joss Whedon, who had previously directed the first two Avengers movies. What is now being called ‘Josstice League’ arrived to mixed critical reaction and widespread fan rejection. Soon, fans began campaigning for a Snyder Cut that would do justice to the director’s vision.
After three years, the Snyder Cut is finally here, and it’s a whopping 4 hours long. Is it better than the original cut? Definitely. But, as mentioned before, it’s also 4 hours long, and as such it’s unfair comparing that with a 2 hour theatrical cut. Also, the film still has problems of its own, but if you are a Snyderphile, you’re probably going to ignore them.
At the moment of his death, Superman (Henry Cavill) unleashed a planet-wide cry that woke up three powerful entities known as Mother Boxes. Soon, an emissary of the tyrant Darkseid, Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) arrives on Earth, seeking to unite the Mother Boxes into the ‘Unity’, which will reshape the planet into a copy of his homeworld, Apokolips. Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) get together to build a team of superheroes to combat this world-ending threat.
Almost everything in the narrative has been fleshed out more, though some of the scenes are perhaps longer only for the sake of contributing to the 4 hour runtime. The most obvious beneficiary of this expansion is Cyborg, who gets a full arc where he comes to terms with his condition and embraces the hero within. Aquaman also gets more screen time and allusions to characters from his solo movie, although there are some strange discrepancies such as the Atlanteans not speaking normally underwater. The Flash also gets an iconic scene where he has to race against time to undo the world’s destruction.
Surprisingly, Zack Snyder’s Justice League maintains many of the humorous bits from the original cut, which makes the studio directive to make the film ‘funnier’ seem even more misguided. The action is also better, though it retains some of the confusing choices from the original cut, such as when Diana dives after her sword instead of fighting Steppenwolf.
The best thing about Zack Snyder’s Justice League is that it feels like a natural evolution of Snyder’s work process.
It’s not as relentlessly drab as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Junkie XL’s new score is competent, although a bit generic sounding. However, the ancient lamentation music used for Wonder Woman gets old after the first few times.
Make no mistake, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is still heavily fragmented. Some may even go far as to call it bloated. But it works mostly due to how firmly Snyder’s aesthetics are embedded into its DNA. The epilogue sets up future installments in the series, which is bittersweet, since Warner Bros. has stated since the movie’s release that this was the finale to Zack Snyder’s ‘trilogy’. Still, at least Snyderphiles have this extravagant celebration of the director’s vision. The DCEU itself is now in a more encouraging position than it was in 2017, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad set to arrive later this year. Let’s hope that movie is also firmly entrenched in its director’s unique sensibilities.