Movie Review - Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

[Dave Gray]

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

Premise: In the wake of Superman's death, Batman attempts to bring together a super team to fight a cosmic force that's been lying in wait since early civilizations first banded together to defend Earth.

Rating: A great experience, if only for comparison to the original release.

I don't think you can watch this movie in a vacuum and get near the amount of enjoyment.

Here's the basic back-story.  Zack Snyder started this epic idea and filmed most of it.  His daughter committed suicide, and while Zack thought he could lose himself in his work, he could not.  He left the project to be with his family and the studio scrambled.  They picked up Joss Whedon to craft together some semblance of a film, through a severe cutting down of the plot and bigtime reshoots.  The result was uninspired.  I didn't hate the movie, but it was completely forgettable and definitely lacked any kind of grandiose feel.  On top of that, Wheadon has been mired in controversy with accusations of racism and bullying on the set.  Overall, not a good situation for fans or the studio.

There's been a movement to "release the Snyder cut", something that nobody really knew if it even existed.  It was fanboy toxic bullshit, but it turns out that Snyder had a massive cut of his original footage on a laptop.  In an effort to get subscribers, HBO Max dropped a ton of money to finish Zack's project and allow him to release his original vision.

This version uses only footage Snyder shot, has some small amounts of reshoots, redone special effects, includes redesigns of some characters, different color grading, Zack's specific slow-motion/speed-ramping style, a completely new score and composer, and even the aspect ratio is weird (It's in 4:3, meant for IMAX.)

The short version is that I can't believe this is the same movie.  I mean, it's not even REALLY a movie, but a 7 part miniseries.  It's 4 hours long (literally double the original runtime.)  It is incredibly grand and epic.  It's almost like Lord of the Rings, in its scope.  It's about ancient men teaming with Gods to fend off this threat and then banding together to try to do it again.  The Atlanteans and the Greek Gods fighting side by side feels a lot like Elves and Dwarves.  ...and fragile men are still fragile, but are at the heart of the conflict and sacrifice.

And it mostly works.

I don't know that if this just existed by itself and I went and sat in a movie theater for 4 hours that I'd be giving such a glowing review.  But as a phoenix that rose from the ashes of a discarded blockbuster, I'm amazed that this exists.  The format is right, the scale is epic, it has lots of surprises that tie this story into a larger DC Universe.

There is an overly CG style that I just don't prefer.  The effects are sometimes floaty and odd like you see in the most recent Wonder Woman 1984 and that's just not for me.  When you have Gods fighting each other, you need a fair amount of CG punching, but I prefer a more grounded delivery.  Also, just a personal preference, but I prefer a virtual camera that mimicks a real camera.  High-speed rushing over fake landscapes is not my speed, but this also makes it feel like Lord of the Rings.  The Helm's Deep battle often does the same thing.  Additionally, there are some voice-over exposition segments that feel jarring.  It starts as a character telling a story to another character (the one that is the most noticible is Wonder Woman explaining history to Batman).  But it quickly devolves in Wonder Woman reading out of a chapter book....and then finishing the story to Batman.  It doesn't feel natural.

The big winner here is the story.  It's epic.  It's large.  It's meaningful and it feels like it has a lot of lore.

There are also plenty of seeds planted -- little things in the background (like Lois Lane has visible pregnancy tests in her drawer) -- that will never have the chance to grow.  That's too bad.

This is an enjoyable experience through and through, even if you're just looking at it to compare how two projects with the same footage can be completely different.  I recommend not sitting and watching a 4 hour slog, though.   Break it down by its chapters.  I watched it all in one day, but took breaks and it went down easy.

It's available on HBO Max.

[Phishfan]

I'll give it a shot but I'm not overly excited about it. I never was able to finish the first one.

[Tenshot13]

I really enjoyed this movie, I can't believe how bad Joss Wheadon fucked up the one they released a few years back.  Snyder went on in an interview what was in store for future movies and how he was going to wrap things up, wild stuff.

[Dave Gray]

The epilogue alone is pretty crazy, if that was what was in store.