I respect the hell out of Zack Snyder’s hustle. I really do. This guy has managed to keep his name at the top of SEO for four years on the idea that he’s got a definitive cut of an unremarkable movie burning a hole in his pocket. He got the world so riled up about this thing that Warner Bros–a studio which fired him off the project–shelled out at least thirty million dollars and total creative control to put “The Snyder Cut” into the world. He got them to spend more money on a film that was a huge loss for them. You cannot buy press like this, folks.
But then I actually watched Zack Snyder’s “Justice League” cut, and my respect for him went up even more. Not as a director, mind you, but as an expert controller of his own PR. Because this… this is kinda the same movie, guys. Four years of hype for this? Some extra backstory, a new villain that’s the same as the old villain, and a little color job? Hell, some of the biggest changes are reshoots that they pulled out. Zack just bluffed the whole table with a pair of twos.
Let me be absolutely clear: if you’ve seen “Justice League” in the form it hobbled into theaters in 2017, you have more or less seen this. Oh sure, some new scenes got added, a few backstory things tossed back in, a new score that sounds the same as the old score, some better color work, and a 4:3 ratio that I swear they put in there just so we’d talk about it. But all the major things wrong with the theatrical version are still wrong here, there’s just a bunch of other little changes buzzing around those problems. The core of what made “Justice League” unsatisfying–bad villains, bad MacGuffin, rote plot, characters with no opportunities for interesting choices, bad dialog, miscasting of key roles, overly dour tone–hasn’t budged an inch.
(SPOILER)
Now I know people will show you long lists of changes, and you might feel like I’m being harsh. And it’s true, a lot of things are different! But many you won’t notice, and most don’t fix anything wrong with the movie. Let me walk you through some highlights…
- “Darkseid is in it! And Steppenwolf has a new look and dynamic!” Yes, there are now two villains for the price of one. But they have interchangeable personalities and abilities, and one of them just sits off in the distance and growls for the whole movie. Neither forms an interesting relationship with any of the heroes, and they both still look like CGI Gumby. Is this a better version of Steppenwolf? Arguably. Is it still a bland, underwhelming villain chasing after something you don’t care about? Sure is.
- “Cyborg’s Backstory Tho!!!” Now you too can watch Cyborg win a high school football game for two minutes of your life that you’ll never get back. You can also watch some terrible dialog with his mom before the world’s most hackneyed car accident refridgerators her right out of dodge. In the spirit of intellectual honesty, I will grant that Cyborg’s climax is more emotional and he doesn’t feel like a footnote anymore. But all that’s really changed is you actually watch a bunch of backstory that it took two seconds to tell you about in 2017. Cyborg isn’t better here, he’s just more.
- “It’s Four Hours Long!” It sure is. But most of that length isn’t new content, it’s scenes you’ve already watched edited in slow motion. They dumped every second of coverage they had into the edit to pre-emptively dodge the exact accusation I’m leveling here: that the movie is just not that different. There’s no flow at all, scenes could be rearranged in any order and it wouldn’t change anything. The Flash gets a rescue scene that has no purpose whatsoever and goes on forever. Had they released this in two-hour form–which would be vastly superior–everyone would be saying what I’m saying. The length dupes you. It makes you think there’s more than there is, and that’s not an accident.
- “There’s A New Scene With the Joker!” I wish there wasn’t. After spending a whole movie rolling back BVS’ pointless bleakness, Zack swings back in right before the credits and goes in on the darkness even harder. He literally just had Bruce Wayne tell Clark that trying to kill him was a mistake, and now he’s confirming it wasn’t. I guess Zack is gonna Zack, he just can’t help himself, he wants that evil Superman and psychotic Batman so bad. It’s tonal whiplash, and it It plays like bad fanfic.
- “There’s A New Third Act!” Sort of. It’s the same setting, characters, and outcome, they just execute it a little different and, frankly, better. This is one part where Zack actually crushes the theatrical version. This climax is way more emotional (albeit still hacky), the action looks and plays way better, and the garish red color tone of the original is mercifully gone. It’s a better resolution on every level.
The difference between a Director’s Cut and a Theatrical Cut cannot be measured in minutes added or removed. Pulling Deckard’s voice over from “Blade Runner” seems like a small thing, but it completely changes the movie. Likewise for the ending; removing one scene completely rewires the emotional beat the film resolves to. On the other hand, the Director’s Cut of “Aliens” adds a substantial amount of content but is ultimately the same film, just a bit longer and with a few grace notes. I’m not saying “The Snyder Cut” is the same movie because they didn’t change enough. I’m saying it’s the same movie because nothing that was changed amounts to a substantially different viewing experience.
A lot of people I know have told me they really enjoyed “The Snyder Cut,” but didn’t respond to the original theatrical version. I actually think I agree with them, if I had to choose between the theatrical or this, I would take this. So how can that be, if I’m arguing the movie isn’t really any different? I can’t speak for other people, but here are three things I suspect played a role for me…
- Novelty. It’s just a cool event to see a movie reborn like this.
- Generosity. We entered the theater in 2017 with our arms crossed, hot off of a very bad “Batman V Superman,” whispering “Dazzle me.” Whereas “The Snyder Cut” just needed to be interesting and not worse than what came before, and that’s a much lower bar to clear. The original “Justice League” had to be good on its own terms, and failed. “The Snyder Cut” only needed to be good relative to something to be seen as a success.
- Familiarity. I watched the theatrical cut of “Justice League” the night before “The Snyder Cut,” but most people I assume hadn’t seen it in a while. I think this creates a fuzzy and pleasant familiarity with a lot of the key beats of the story. It’s like hearing a song the second time, you sort of remember how it goes and that makes it sound better.
But that’s just my guess. To Zack’s credit, and perhaps to counter my own argument, I’ve only heard one person tell me they started the movie and didn’t finish it, and considering it’s four hours long, that is seriously impressive. And here’s another thing that runs against my thesis: whatever you think of this version, it is a more complete and honest film. I think one of the reasons the 2017 movie got so much hate was that it felt insincere. The actors seemed checked out, the writing never aspired to anything, it felt compromised and thin. It’s one of the least ambitious films I’ve ever watched. Zack Snyder’s version is a bloated tone poem, but there are moments where it is trying for something, and I think a lot of people would prefer that to bland competence.
I think the time has come to admit that “Justice League,” as it was written and shot in 2017, was never going to be a good movie. It was never a few deleted scenes away (like “Kingdom of Heaven” was), the rot was at the core. The allure of a “fixed” version is powerful, and I feel it as much as the next person. If “The Avengers” was such a knockout classic using a very similar structure, why can’t we devise a version of that with the DC gang? I don’t know. Art is mysterious. It’s completely fair to point out that a lot of the accusations you could level at either version of “Justice League” are also valid against “Avengers.” And yet the latter–despite the toxic jerk who made it (and was obviously involved with JL too)–lifts off immediately, while any permutation of the former falls clumsily to the Earth.
There’s a moment in both versions of “Justice League” where Wonder Woman lassos a bank robber and asks who he is. He replies, “We’re a small group of reactionary terrorists.” That’s the problem right there. “Avengers” would never have a human being speak like that, because that’s not how people talk. That is language copy-pasted from a story treatment. And even if you account for the lasso’s power of truth, it’s not even how people think. No group of terrorists have ever seen themselves as “reactionaries.” This is why Zack Snyder cannot accomplish what Marvel does regularly. Despite all his visual skill, he struggles to see his characters as people. They are walking plot devices, inevitably verbally announcing the completion of their emotional arc during the climax. They never demonstrate insight into their own nature, or surprise you with a choice. Everything they do comes from whether Zack thinks it would look cool. That’s why he’s obsessed with showing you a deconstructed evil Superman that audiences have been rejecting since “Man of Steel.” It’s why he gets off on having Batman kill and drop F bombs. All he knows how to do is pull apart. He can’t build anything up.
While the theatrical version of “Justice League” is probably the inferior film overall, it contained small moments of depth that Snyder unwisely tossed. The best one was a scene where Bruce Wayne admits Superman is more human than he is, despite being an alien. For just a second, Batman was a character, thinking about himself, the world around him, and his role in it. And then it was over, and back we went to hunt for more Mother Boxes.
-AA
PS: Joss Whedon is trash. I tried to mention him as little as possible.