Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

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[SPOILER WARNING]

Part-way through production on 2017’s theatrical version of Justice League, director Zack Snyder suffered a tragic loss in his family and had to step away from the production. Joss Whedon (The Avengers) was then called in to finish the film and oversee re-shoots (Snyder retained sole directing credit). I suspect the studio also wanted Whedon to tighten up the pacing and bring Snyder’s four-hour movie down to a more mainstream length.

After watching the newly-restored four-hour version, christened Zack Snyder’s Justice League, I have to say Whedon did a commendable job making the two-hour theatrical release more palatable for a broad audience. As a lay person with little knowledge of and no particular affinity for comic book characters, I prefer the shorter, theatrical version. It’s not a great film, but it’s fast-paced, and features enough charming character moments to keep me engaged. The outrage from fans over that theatrical cut, and the years-long campaign on their part for Warner Brothers to release the ‘Snyder Cut,’ had me expecting the four-hour version to be a drastically different movie. But all the key plot points and order of business are essentially the same.

First, the good. The ‘Snyder Cut’ has a far more relaxed pace — and I don’t mean it’s slow-paced. The characters get to breathe more and we get to absorb the story better. Other Snyder films, like the wretched Man of Steel and more tolerable Batman V Superman, are edited so choppily and rapid-fire, that they end up being an assault on the senses. If this is indeed the true ‘Snyder Cut,’ I hope this is a trend he continues. It makes all the difference between experiencing a story and suffering through a feature-length trailer.

At twice the length, you’d think there’d be a lot of new scenes that really stand out and improve the storytelling in the ‘Snyder Cut’. I can only vouch for one — but it’s not a single scene, so much as a whole subplot. And it concerns the character of Cyborg/Victor Stone (played by Ray Fisher). Cyborg’s back story is intricately connected to Justice League‘s central plot device, the existence of three ‘mother boxes’ that when brought together can destroy worlds. I can see why Cyborg’s character got short-changed in the theatrical version. Condensing the exposition means condensing Cyborg’s story. The consequence is that Cyborg is severely underdeveloped in the theatrical version, whereas he’s a full equal personality — and I would argue the most compelling character — in the ‘Snyder Cut.’

On the minus side, I didn’t care for the addition of scenes involving a big bad guy named Darkseid. Since Darkseid never actually shows up to do battle, his subplot really just boils down to several check-ins between him and Steppenwolf, the next-biggest bad guy in the ‘Snyder Cut’ and the only big bad guy in the theatrical version. I can see why Whedon and Warner Brothers removed Darkseid from the theatrical cut — in doing so, you save several minutes of runtime and nothing else has to be changed in the story. And for all us non-fans, one CGI bad guy is interchangeable with the next — another minus for both movies, really.

There are also a handful of codas tacked onto the end of the movie that exist only to set up for other potential sequels — Lex Luthor, the Joker, Deathstroke, and Martian Manhunter are all thrown in at the last minute, in a fashion more confounding than exciting. I also have to say I preferred Danny Elfman’s energetic theatrical score over Thomas Holkenborg’s quasi-ethnic drones. And while Whedon contributed surprisingly few original moments in the theatrical, he is responsible for my favorite scene in either version — when Aquaman (Jason Mamoa) unwittingly spills the beans while sitting on Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth.

In my estimation, the best version of Justice League is probably somewhere between the theatrical and ‘Snyder’ cuts. But both versions still suffer from a case of esotericism. Even though the destruction of the world is at hand, you never feel it. The citizens of the world never know the ‘mother boxes’ exist or that all life is in peril. The climactic showdown takes place in remote area where no one lives. The stakes never escalate as much as they probably should. Joss Whedon tried to course-correct by incorporating a handful of scenes featuring a poor family who live near the site of the final battle — but the additions come off more insipid than affecting.

Even though I prefer the theatrical, I’m glad the ‘Snyder Cut’ exists. It’s rare that we get to see two versions of the same movie. Comparing and contrasting them can be an education in the power of editing and post-production in the filmmaking process.

See original 2017 Theatrical Cut review.