It seems at first counterintuitive to offer people substantially more of something they didn't very much enjoy in the first place -- like a chef who follows up an unsuccessful meal by giving the unhappy patrons more entrees in take-home boxes -- but, in the case of Zack Snyder's long-agitated-for extended cut of "Justice League," HBO Max is offering highly anticipated fan service of the highest order.
After all, returning to the above analogy, it's more as if patrons had gone to this restaurant specifically for the chef, who halfway through making their dinner had to abruptly leave and was replaced by a new cook, nabbed from a totally different restaurant down the road.
When Snyder was in the middle of his would-be opus back in 2016, a tragedy involving his daughter forced him to abandon the film in order to be with his grief-stricken family. Desperate, and on short notice, the producers quickly plucked Joss Whedon, the director of the first two "Avengers" installments, and, as an emergency screenwriter, the savior of struggling features for decades before. As has been pretty famously chronicled at this point, it was, shall we say, not a good match. Whedon grated on members of the crew and cast, and rewrote many sections of the film to try and lighten the dark, dour mood of Snyder's original, which left the film feeling like a horror show mishmash of ideas and tones.
Now, four years later, Snyder has finally returned to recut, reshoot, and restore his original vision. The result is certainly mixed -- largely dependent on how much Snyder you enjoyed in the first place -- but at least the still-grieving director has been allowed a chance at redeeming his passion project. That many of the original flaws are still there, some exacerbated, doesn't take away from his dedication under obviously excruciating circumstances.
That said, to separate the artist's anguish from the art, with a film, at a staggering 242 minutes, literally twice as long as the hybrid original, you have to ask whether this new cut was worth the effort. The answer depends largely on your perspective.
It is at least improved: The story, as hackneyed as it remains, makes a good deal more sense, each character gets more screen time and at least some sort of backstory (with certain stories working more effectively than others), and there are a great many more characters and subplots involved as a result. There's also an extended, multi-scene epilogue that serves to set up multiple further DCEU installments, providing enough fodder for obsessed fan-folk to chew on and speculate over for months to come. But even though Snyder has added another film's worth of material into the first one, his movie still feels choked with too much happening too fast and too little time for any of the characters to breathe. As amazing as this may sound, even at four hours, it feels rushed.
The story mostly follows the MCU "Avengers" formula for uniting a disparate super-team: Throw a bunch of MacGuffins over the earth (in this case, a trio of square cubes called "Motherboxes," an indestructible technology from a distant alien race that has the ability to reshape matter) and send an alien emissary to retrieve them and achieve global dominance. Only, in place of Marvel's baddie Thanos, ruthless while also philosophic about his purpose, we have Steppenwolf (voice of Ciarán Hinds), a giant, hammer-headed being who speaks in dull, evil platitudes ("I will bathe in your fear," and "The great darkness begins!") and who's only there to get back in the good graces of his ultra-baddie leader, Darkseid (Ray Porter), a Thanos-dead ringer save for the lack of purplish hue and scrotal chin.
In order to protect the Earth, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) have to scour the globe to make pleas to other superbeings to join them, especially in the wake of the death of Superman (which occurred in the previous "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), leaving the planet vulnerable. Eventually, they convince several other supes to join the fold, including the Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and Aquaman (Jason Momoa), which still proves no match for the heavily armored Steppenwolf, until the heroes get the idea to use one of the Motherboxes to bring Superman (Henry Cavill) back to life to save everyone.
A lot more happens, as you can imagine, involving subplots with Cyborg's creator (and father) Silas Stone (Joe Morton) and his assistant Ryan Choi (Ryan Zheng), a lab worker who will eventually become DC hero the Atom; Wonder Woman's home island of Amazonia, lead by Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielson); the Flash's falsely imprisoned father; Superman's beloved Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and mother (Diane Lane), grieving his loss; and a mysterious additional hero I won't reveal, who begins to make his presence felt as the story proceeds.
At its engorged heart, however, Snyder's film is all about the resurrection of Superman -- the single best scene, as with the original, arrives when the reborn Kal-El, confused and angry about his rebirth, does quick battle against the rest of the League until Lois Lane comes to comfort him -- a momentous moment, both for the DCEU, and, it turns out, the rest of the planet.
Indeed, as the film comes to its action-packed climax, it becomes pretty clear having Superman (returned, eventually in a jet-black and gray uniform that makes him look like he tapped Batman's tailor) on the team is the equivalent of putting LeBron James on a high school JV squad: With the Man of Steel on board, the team makes remarkably quick work of the danger threat posed against the planet, without much breaking a sweat.
And, here is one of the ways this new film falls prey to one of DC's oldest bugaboos: Having a character so omnisciently powerful as Superman creates an enormous problem for writers hoping to craft a narrative that successfully puts its heroes in danger. The MCU handles such matters by making sure each of its heroes, even the cosmically enhanced members, are still vulnerable, either emotionally, mentally, or physically, enough to be threatened (see the Hulk in the last few "Avengers" films). Superman is so bloody unstoppable, when he's on your side, it's near impossible to lose, unless the villain in question happens upon a brick of green kryptonite.
It also has the effect of making most of the other superheroes totally superfluous, save for Cyborg, whose father somehow gave him total dominion over all things tech or internet-based (so, more or less like a digital native 5-year-old), and whose superhacking ministrations help use the motherboxes against Darkseid when it matters.
There are also the usual plethora of aggravating Snyderisms -- visual details intended to further punch up dramatic impact that make no earthly sense, such as Aquaman emerging from the raging depths of the ocean in jeans and untied workboots, and Cyborg's dad, who heads a lab that utilizes the most modern technology available, recording a loving message to his son on an older-than-OG microcassette recorder -- that seem innocent enough, but add to a growing sense of unreality in moments that could use more grounding. In Snyder's largely CGI creations, everything's always at peak drama -- if there's rain, it's a deluge; snow, a near blizzard; if a city seems burned out and decaying, it's relentlessly so -- leaving every moment overladen and overwrought.
It's an adolescent sort of conception, in which every moment must be brought to its fullest possible level, that starts out wearisome and becomes absolutely distracting after several hours within its overripe confines. Ironically, it's also the natural outcropping of what people used to think of with kids comic books -- an unsophisticated, melodramatic artform combining pulpy narratives with soap opera emotional beats -- but it does a serious disservice to the genre, which is vastly more sophisticated in the modern era.
Unfortunately for the DC Extended Universe, the Marvel Comic Universe has set the standard for superhero flicks -- for better and worse, it must be said -- and their managing to balance emotional weight and all-out battle soirées, at their best, can be a masterful exploitation of the medium. Snyder, to his credit, doesn't just want to copy the MCU codex, but create something of a different flavor from the Disney-spawned behemoth -- this is certainly more notable in Snyder's cut, as Whedon, fresh from his adventures behind the camera for the "Avengers," angled things much more in the Marvel vein, leading to much of the tonal dissonance in the first place -- but after this, Snyder's third film in the DCEU, the limitations of his grim vision are pretty clear.
Still, it's vitally important not to lose sight of the deeper significance with this release: The director movingly dedicates the film to his lost daughter, rolling the credits under a spare version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and one hopes the completion of the film has offered Snyder a chance at some semblance of solace. As an act of defiance in the face of unimaginable grief, it's commendably brave, which might ultimately be more meaningful than any of its artistic merits.
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‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’
83 Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Ezra Miller, Joe Morton, Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams, Connie Nielsen, Diane Lane, J.K. Simmons
Director: Zack Snyder
Rating: R, for violence and some language
Running time: 4 hours, 2 minutes
Playing theatrically and on HBO Max
