Greta Gerwig nailed it in Little Women. There’s a relationship between art and business. Tip too far in either direction and the result is usually bad for the audience. Ishtar‘s “artistic vision” was hot garbage, and the joyless Amazing Spider-Man 2 only existed for studio monetary gain; what do both have in common? They sucked. With this Justice League, Zack Snyder has pulled off the impossible with his cut: he’s gotten a studio to go for HBO Max monetary gain by investing in his myopic artistic vision. The double whammy of both ends of the spectrum in one!
The Snyder Cut takes 2 hours of the original Justice League film and doubles up the run time. That’s right. 4 HOURS of DC comics heroes (even Ben-Hur didn’t have the balls to be that long!). This new version starts out with Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) trying to find other superheroes to help him in the upcoming fight coming to Earth. The Thanos-like Darkseid (Ray Porter) has sent his servant Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) to Earth to assemble the 3 recently awakened motherboxes (funny every time you hear it) so Darkseid can invade Earth and find the anti-life equation (also unintentionally hilarious every time). Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) helps Bruce with research and recruitment in this fight, since the two alone cannot stop world conqueror Steppenwolf from completing his mission.
Let’s start with the good, because in a 4 hour cut of a movie, there’s bound to be some good stuff in there. Gone is the tug of war between two director’s movies crammed together. We’re fully in Zack Snyder’s world now. Yes it is bleak, cruel, and desolate, but that consistency thematically fits together better when it comes to most of the heroes, who are equally dour and brooding. Though Joss Whedon’s 2017 reshoots made the original Justice League more quippy and fun, he famously treated everyone like garbage, especially Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, whom Whedon totally sidelines in the movie. The Snyder Cut rectifies that mistake: not only is Cyborg integral to the 2021 version, he’s probably the most fascinating character in the movie, with a decent backstory that comes out in the runtime that fits perfectly into Snyder’s world of sadness. With that additional $70 million for reshoots for his vision, Snyder certainly doesn’t slack when it comes to action sequences, of which we get one roughly every half hour. That’s right. 8 epic Snyderfied (action is normal speed, then it slows down for a few seconds, then speeds back up again) battle sequences in air, on land, and under water, complete with gorgeous helicopter/car/scuba shots to put the BIG in big budget. At least The Snyder Cut can be a fun travelogue from time to time right?
Just because Joss Whedon’s awful tendrils have been removed from Zack Snyder’s vision doesn’t mean that Snyder’s cut is perfect. By giving into his every whim and desire, the producers of Justice League 2021 magnified all of Snyder’s bad instincts as a director to the extreme. For all he brings visually, Snyder sucks as a storyteller, constantly diverging from his main storyline for large chunks of time. Some of those scenes (Diane Lane talking to Amy Adams) overexplain pointlessly, and more infuriatingly others just turn out to be dream sequences which serve no real purpose at all other than for Snyder to visually flex his director muscles. This movie conflates serious and important for dour, sad, and dark. The dialogue reflects this simplistic vision: heroes and villains speak tersely and/or preachingly for the most part, which might work for 11 year old boys, but looks hollow to everyone else. That surface level dialogue means we mostly get a host of surface level heroes and villains, totally good or bad, with very little interesting about them and unexplored relationships between each other. Ezra Miller mercifully brings something different to the table, but every other hero or villain is left at the end of conversation or a fight staring into the void, with a woman singing in the background, in Snyder’s attempt to elevate his story into something important. There’s also unnecessary chunks of this movie devoted to “fan” service, which come off very condescending, as if Snyder knows what every fan of these movies wants, so those fans can bully the studio into giving Snyder more money to make more Justice League. Just tell me now please HBO if I need 8 hours to watch the next Snyder Cut of Justice League II: Justicer!
But hey, every parent needs a babysitter right? If you need a romantic night out from all this pandemic fatigue, plant that 11 year old kid of yours in front of the TV, turn on Justice League, and go have a lovely night together, and you’ll come back to a kid asleep from boredom. Maybe Snyder hoodwinked us all: $370 million to craft the perfect kid distraction so parents can get some work done! Plus, when kids play cops and robbers, they now will use the phrase “Snyder Cut” to tear down their enemies!