It’s been a long and unlikely road to Zack Snyder’s Justice League. The underwhelming mess that is 2017’s Justice League— which saw Avengers helmer Joss Whedon step in after Snyder left mid-production due to personal tragedy — is better remembered for a bizarre CGI upper lip than any iconic superheroics. It also felt like the product of two competing visions: one from a filmmaker, and the other from a studio trying to course-correct after the lukewarm receptions to Man Of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Almost four years and an unrelenting fan campaign later, we now have a four-hour cut that lives up to its title. For the most part, it’s for the better.
With no mandate to make a two-hour movie, Snyder has the time to dig into his team of heroes. The biggest addition involves Victor Stone (Ray Fisher), aka Cyborg. Where in 2017 his arc was significantly cut, here he is the heart and soul of the movie, with greater focus being placed on his strained relationship with his father Silas (Joe Morton) to occasionally moving effect. The fleshed-out through-lines simply allow the story as a whole to breathe: small character beats add humanity (a scene involving Jeremy Irons’ Alfred, Gal Gadot’s Diana and some tea is charming), extended scenes (there’s a surprising amount of the original cut here) provide clarity, and the absence of the broadest humour in the Whedon cut helps keep the tone consistent. With the grim-darkness we’ve come to expect from previous DCEU offerings mostly relegated to a fan-servicing epilogue, a more hopeful Batman (Ben Affleck) means that tone is lighter and more optimistic.
Typically for a Snyder movie, a big chunk of the hefty running time is spent in super slow motion. Sometimes, the director overindulges — a rescue involving a flying hot dog (no, really) feels overlong — but generally it’s used in the service of accentuating action beats. At times, it feels needlessly violent — Wonder Woman goes overkill on some terrorists in an early re-edited scene — but more often than not it feels satisfying, especially in a crowdpleasing final act. More synergy comes from a pleasingly bombastic score from Tom Holkenborg that harkens back to previous Snyderverse themes established by Hans Zimmer.
Whether this will garner enough hype and money to gain traction on the #RestoreTheSnyderverse movement remains to be seen.
Unsurprisingly, not all of the added material in this four-hour, seven-chapter film is effective. For one thing, there is still far too much exposition concerning ‘Mother Boxes’. If you’re not a DC fan, prepare to be confused by what is going on in multiple new scenes, especially where Thanos-a-like Darkseid (Ray Porter) and his acolytes are concerned. Additionally, while we get more of Lois Lane (Amy Adams), her identity is still far too wedded to Superman (Henry Cavill) for it to matter much. Speaking of the Man Of Steel, Snyder and Cavill still haven’t been able to tap into what makes him special beyond his brutish strength, and if you were hoping for an in-story explanation about a certain costume change beyond ‘it looks cool and it’s what fans want’, you’re out of luck.
Then again, that’s partly understandable. The Snyder Cut wouldn’t have become a reality without a fervent fandom and it makes sense for Snyder to assuage them in some form. Whether this will garner enough hype and money to gain traction on the #RestoreTheSnyderverse movement remains to be seen. But there’s enough here to inspire intrigue at those possibilities, rather than the apathy that greeted the Justice League’s 2017 bow. That’s not nothing.
