“Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” out now on HBO Max, bears
very little resemblance to the version of “Justice League” released by Warner
Bros. in 2017.
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It’s well known at this point that the theatrical version
was released after much behind-the-scenes drama: Snyder found himself fighting
over the creative direction of the movie with the studio, which was eager for
an “Avengers”-style hit that would be the beginning of a billion-dollar
franchise. Fed up and grieving the recent loss of his daughter, Snyder walked
away during postproduction; Joss Whedon, who had already been brought in to add
touches of humor to the screenplay, finished the job. Although the resulting
movie earned more than $650 million worldwide, it was lambasted by critics and
disappointed fans. Their vocal campaign to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut persuaded HBO
Max, an arm of WarnerMedia, to let Snyder do just that.
It took him four years, $70 million, and hundreds of hours
of shooting and editing to finally realize his vision. This isn’t simply a
director’s cut. It’s an altogether different movie.
Free of cringe-inducing gags about podcasts and alien
probes, the movie feels liberated from a certain brand of popular mainstream
filmmaking and more like the work of one artist: Snyder, who clearly takes this
superhero stuff very seriously. It emphasizes big emotion and earnest,
heart-on-sleeve displays of masculine feeling.
Snyder has said he never saw the version of “Justice League”
that Warner Bros. released, but he is aware that most of what he had intended
to put in the film was changed or discarded. Although the broad outline —
Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman (Henry Cavill) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa), among
other comic book heroes, band together to defend Earth from the evil alien
Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) — remained the same, Snyder’s distinctive style was
made unrecognizable.
Whether you love Snyder’s style or hate it, it’s clear that
this version, divided into six chapters and an epilogue, is all Snyder, uncut
and uncompromised.
What Has Been Added
Snyder’s love of balletic action and big, slow motion set
pieces is on display in a number of new sequences, including a striking,
snow-dappled high school football match that sets up Victor Stone, aka Cyborg
(Ray Fisher), and an alternate introduction to the Flash (Ezra Miller), whom we
now meet using his super speed to save the would-be victims of a car crash. (In
the Whedon cut, he’s drawing on a bully’s face with a pen.) An entirely new
villain called Darkseid, meanwhile, is depicted with menacing grandeur,
smoldering extravagantly before towers of flame as he conspires to enslave the
planet.
Some of the most immediately noticeable changes are essentially
amendments or corrections. Whedon’s reshoots with Cavill, for instance, were
ridiculed at the time for some incredibly wonky CGI mustache removal, which
made his chin look like Plasticine. The actor’s face, in Snyder’s cut, has been
restored to its ordinary flesh-and-blood glory.
There are new cameos from, among others, Vulko (Willem
Dafoe), the Martian Manhunter (Harry Lennix) and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg).
Some of the Whedon version’s less-convincing visual-effects shots have been
redesigned or fine tuned, and the aspect ratio in which the movie is presented
has been altered from a conventional wide-screen format to a boxier,
eye-catching “academy” ratio, which, Snyder said in a recent interview, he had
always wanted “from the start.”
Snyder is known for staging scenes to popular music, and his
cut is littered with new needle drops. A moment in which Aquaman chugs a bottle
of whiskey and struts from a dock into the roiling sea strikes a forlorn note
with a Nick Cave song, where it formerly had the trailer-friendly rock jam
“Icky Thump.” Another moment is set to a plaintive cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song
to the Siren.”
The Snyder cut’s four-hour running time greatly expands on a
plot that in the theatrical version felt cursory and rushed. Much more context
is provided to explain the origins of the Mother Boxes (all-powerful devices
with distinctly Freudian undertones whose theft imperils the world and sets
this story in motion), as well as to clarify the motivations of Darkseid and
his horned minion, Steppenwolf, whose efforts now have an added dimension of
centuries-old vengeance. There’s also an in-depth flashback revealing former
battles between the forces of good and evil, and two extended dream sequences
showing the fate that might befall the world should the bad guys prevail.
What Has Been Deleted
For as much new material as has been added to the Snyder
cut, the biggest differences are in what has been removed. Whole scenes
conceived and directed by Whedon have been taken out, including almost all of
the slapstick comic interludes, whose upbeat, madcap tone felt at odds with the
seriousness of the rest of the picture.
Gone is the early sequence in which Batman strings up a
crook on a rooftop to entice an alien out of hiding, as well as a later, painfully
unfunny scene in which Aquaman, inadvertently sitting on Wonder Woman’s Lasso
of Truth, begins to confess his secrets and share his feelings about his crew.
One of Whedon’s first jobs on the film, before Snyder left,
was to add jokes that were spliced into Snyder’s first cut of the film. Quirky,
irreverent sitcom riffing is ubiquitous in Marvel’s superhero blockbusters, but
in the middle of “Justice League,” it felt incongruous.
Snyder has excised Whedon’s punchlines, so that the Flash no
longer kids about brunch and so that Superman, back from the dead, no longer
jokes about his coffin itching. In Whedon’s version, after Batman is beaten to
the ground by Superman, he dryly quips, “Something’s definitely bleeding!” In
the Snyder cut, he just stays down, bruised and broken.
A New Ending and an Epilogue
A refined finale in meltdown-ravaged Russia leans into the
emotional undercurrent threaded throughout the movie. The heroes still battle
Steppenwolf inside a nuclear reactor, but instead of the Flash being relegated
to a passive role saving civilians, as he is in the Whedon cut, he now must
race around the city building speed to allow Cyborg to enter the Mother Boxes
before they finish merging and allow Darkseid to dominate the world. And
instead of Steppenwolf simply being pummeled by the newly resuscitated
Superman, the villain’s evil plan momentarily succeeds, leaving it up to the
Flash to move so quickly that time actually reverses. It’s an emotional
sequence, and the stakes feel much higher than the Whedon version’s limp
fisticuffs.
After separating the Mother Boxes and vanquishing
Steppenwolf, our heroes enjoy a brief celebratory denouement, before the Snyder
Cut moves into its final chapter — a 40-minute epilogue that sets up enough
action for another trilogy of sequels, despite the fact that there is no plan
to follow through with those. Lex Luther, absconding from the Arkham Asylum to
a luxury yacht, courts the mysterious Deathstroke, another bad guy of comic
book lore. They talk about wanting to kill Batman and share a Champagne toast.
In a final vision of the future, Bruce Wayne dreams the
world has come to ruin. He and a motley crew of heroes are roaming the
apocalyptic landscape, “Mad Max”-style, and for some reason have the Joker
(Jared Leto) in tow. After Superman appears with an evil glint in his eye,
Wayne wakes up at home in bed, where he is visited by the benign alien Martian
Manhunter.
It’s a lot to take in at the end of an already long film,
but Snyder said he “felt like it needed that coda” to finish the movie right.
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