by William Moon

NOTE: This article originally ran on scifigangstas.com in March 2021

Right off the bat, let’s start with the admission that I’ll watch just about any DC movie (except maybe Green Lantern…or Catwoman…or Suicide Squad again – DC has made some very bad movies, but still I soldier on). I’ve always been cool on Zack Snyder’s work in general and his DC work specifically (his best film to date is still his unnecessary but enjoyable Dawn of the Dead remake from way back in the Early Bronze Age of 2004). We could be here all day asking ourselves how he continues to be given the keys to multi-hundred million dollar investments, even as he hasn’t made a truly successful box office megahit since 300 way back in 2007 (the late Bronze Age). But I come neither to bury nor particularly praise Snyder. This movie, as has been the case for every DC movie he’s made and despite all the sturm und drang they reliably generate, is more of the same from him – up and down, at turns very impressive and comically awful, with occasional sudden shifts from one to the other (usually from good to awful and not the other way around).

I suppose it’s the often jarring dissonance included in his films that draws at least some of us to them, perhaps not watching a true trainwreck, per se, but more akin to watching a train somehow repeatedly run off and then back onto the tracks at random for 2-4 hours. If anything about this particular Snyder project has drawn my ire, it’s the ludicrous cult of personality that’s built up around him and which he’s definitely fed into. The Snyder Cut truthers can be a pretty odious bunch, and I’m not sure the man himself has particularly considered the implications of courting some of the darker recesses of the internet during his crusade to get his version of Justice League released, but let’s also set that aside, as it really is a messy, occasionally ugly story all its own. (Same with the also ugly, likely career-killing accusations swirling around Joss Whedon. This movie has a lot of baggage.)

As has been well-publicized, this film is a behemoth, running an unwieldy four hours and two minutes. So I’ll try my best to examine its better and worse points without having this article also run an unwieldy four hours and two minutes, but, suffice it to say, there’s a lot here to discuss. There are plenty of observations about Darkseid, the general plot, some of the more comical sequences, et al below, but let’s dive right into the biggest problem with the movie. (And, yes, a big fat SPOILER ALERT for this extended version of a middling four-year-old film.)

You Can’t Cheat Time

This isn’t a new observation, or a particularly original one, but it’s still crucial. Even with this hilariously bloated running time, there still hasn’t been enough space for all these characters to breathe. Remember – this film was slated for release in the fall of 2017, i.e. before Aquaman or Wonder Woman 1984 had been released. And you also can’t really count having seen the Whedonized cut either, since that version supplanted this one. DC/Snyder’s grand plan was to have released Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Wonder Woman (and Suicide Squad, but that film only really figures into this one by way of Jared Leto’s much-ballyhooed/dreaded Joker scene, which I’ll get to later) prior to this movie hitting theaters worldwide. So, solo movies for two of the Trinity and a major role for Batman in one film. We’d seen essentially a readymade trailer for the other three original League members, courtesy of Lexcorp for some reason, late in BvS, and Ezra Miller’s Flash had made brief cameos in both BvS and Suicide Squad (where Ben Affleck’s Batman also briefly appeared). But there’d been no real time spent with them as characters – learning their motivations, relationships, general character traits, etc – before this movie was to be released. (For Flash and Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, the Whedon cut is still the only other meaningful appearance they’ve made.)

I say all that to note that, while characters taken from other media often have a certain level of familiarity in the audience’s mind going in, you still need to really get to know and feel the characters to get the emotional kick out of them you need for a movie like this to really sing. Oddly, perhaps, the only character I felt that with here was Superman. Henry Cavill’s take on the character has come in for some pretty heavy criticism over the last eight years (that’s right, Man of Steel came out eight years ago), with of course much of that derision being directed at Snyder or perhaps screenwriters David S. Goyer or Chris Terrio as opposed to falling at Cavill’s feet. I still feel there’s a good Superman movie with Cavill sitting out there in the ether somewhere, but who knows if he’ll get another chance. If his presence here has any say in it, perhaps he should, as this was the first time I think his Kal-El has really felt like the Man of Tomorrow. (And, yes, I know about the JJ Abrams/Ta-Nehisi Coates project, and I don’t expect Cavill to be involved in it.)

Now, there are several possible reasons for this. One is that he spends most of the movie dead. Limiting his screen time, coupled with most of the other characters in the film only speaking about him in reverent tones, does a lot to get him over, to borrow a pro wrestling phrase. Another is the glorious return of Hans Zimmer’s wonderful Man of Steel theme, which is hands down my favorite thing to spring from the Snyderverse. But I’ll get to that more later. But the key thing to me is Superman’s the character we’ve spent the most time with. Despite those films’ many warts, we saw him emerge as a superhero in MoS and then sacrifice himself for the greater good in BvS, and we also saw several little moments scattered throughout that attempted to define him as a person, make him a familiar face to the audience. These weren’t always successful (the random priest scene and the general lameness of Jonathan Kent’s death in MoS being notable examples), but simply putting the time in makes a hell of a lot of difference.

Tony Stark’s actions in Avengers: Endgame or everything we see with both Wolverine and Professor X in Logan don’t hit right if we haven’t seen Robert Downey Jr, Hugh Jackman, and Patrick Stewart playing those roles for so many years beforehand. For an arguably better non-comic book movie example, watch Creed and see how you react to Rocky Balboa’s arc in that movie, a character we’ve been watching Sylvester Stallone play for over 40 years now. That’s perhaps an extreme example, but the point stands – these movies are about mythmaking if they’re about anything (something Snyder has talked about on more than one occasion in interviews). But myths don’t just spring into existence overnight. Only the passage of time can really create a myth. (For a good example of how this gets screwed up, watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, then watch Star Trek into Darkness and compare how you feel about Spock’s sacrifice in the former versus Kirk’s in the latter. One of those had embodied his character for over 15 years, the other had only played him in one prior movie.)

So, everything above speaks to how effective Superman’s arc is in this cut, but also speaks to how ineffective the introductions of Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg are. A lot of press has singled out Cyborg in particular as the heart of the movie (which we’ve been hearing basically since Snyder was replaced by Whedon and Cyborg’s role was subsequently reduced). And while the Stone family dynamics here give him more of a character to play, they don’t really land the way the movie intends. Even Silas Stone’s sacrifice just ahead of the final act only sort of hits, and that’s supposed to be a crucial emotional moment for the entire League to some extent, considering their involvement in the events that led to his demise. You can’t rush that kind of emotion, that sense of connection. I know DC didn’t want to overtly copy Marvel’s “give most everybody their own movie, then bring them together” plan, both for the optics of so clearly aping their rival and because they wanted their billion dollar movie and they wanted it now, but Marvel didn’t do it that way for no reason. Even though most of the phase one Marvel movies are kind of lousy, they contributed to the larger whole in a way that Justice League, in any incarnation, was sorely lacking.

And now that you’ve sat through my TED Talk, let’s move more briskly through the mountain of other bits and bobs of note.

Darkseid Is

No, those words are never said in the movie, which I think was a missed opportunity, but let’s dig into Ol’ Red Eyes for a bit. Anyone reading this probably knows who Darkseid is, but in case this is your first exposure to him (aside from the Easter eggs that run through the prior Snyderverse movies), here’s the gist. Darkseid is, essentially, the best candidate to stand as DC’s overarching big bad, a villain who can anchor a whole raft of movies in much the same way Thanos did for Marvel. (And Thanos, prior to the MCU making him a household name, was basically seen as a riff on Darkseid, who Jack Kirby had created for DC a few years before Mike Friedrich and Jim Starlin introduced Purple Nurple to Marvel’s cosmic universe. Starlin has admitted he and Friedrich borrowed from Kirby’s ideas pretty liberally, but that’s just how the comics game is played.) There are other beings perhaps more powerful in the DC Universe, but Darkseid is the best mix of power, presence, and recognizability. He’s brilliant, brutal, and megalomaniacal in the extreme, all qualities that the Snyder Cut mostly gets across. But…

OK, just a few quick hitters here…

• Given everything I just wrote in the previous paragraph, it’s absolutely bonkers to me that Darkseid, DC’s ultimate heavy, got introduced to movie audiences in what was essentially a very expensive Blu-ray special feature. During the whole interminable wind-up to the Snyder Cut’s release, I always felt that the main reason why Warner shouldn’t and wouldn’t actually release this version is because they’d abandoned Snyder’s long game and wouldn’t want to waste Darkseid’s intro on a financial boondoggle of a project. It’s one of those baffling decisions that reinforces idiot fanboys everywhere who always yap about how “they just don’t get these characters, bro”.
• That said, here he is, stomping around our screen for a couple of minutes at a time here and there. He looks fine enough, I guess, but to go along with the above point, it’s particularly odd to me that Ray Porter (AKA some guy) was the actor chosen to bring the Lord of Apokolips to CG life. Ditto for evil flunky DeSaad, played by Peter Guinness. I don’t want to slam these guys too hard or anything, because their work is fine enough, but neither character (particularly Darkseid) makes quite as much impression as it feels like they should, given how super duper uber-evil they’re presented as being. To be fair, in Thanos’ first appearance (in the mid-credits scene in The Avengers), he’s played by uncredited stuntman Damion Poitier, but also all he does is turn his head and grin. The Apokoliptians have to actually act here. (Buy, hey, that’s Granny Goodness!)
• Maybe losing to the super old-timey Earth alliance is what makes Darkseid seem a little weak. That was Steppenwolf’s defeat in the Whedon version, but the big boss man takes the L here, mostly being done in by Zeus and Ares (David Thewlis from Wonder Woman cameoing in CG form). We’re told all about how hardcore awesome and powerful he is, but the only time we see him actually do anything, he loses. (The brief bit where we see his Omega Beams was pretty cool, though, in a Mars Attacks! sort of way.)
• Also notably, the Anti-Life Equation (or just Anti-Life in the movie) appears. I’m a bit puzzled here, as both Darkseid and Steppenwolf each rip the Earth a new axe-hole, with what I was taking to be Anti-Life laid out before them after the resulting destruction scorches the ground. Darkseid sees it before his defeat in the good ol’ days, but I guess doesn’t recognize it? Steppenwolf realizes what the pattern means in the present and tells DeSaad, who then tells Darkseid, with neither letting on that they knew it was on Earth, which is odd. It was right there in front of him. I’d say I need to watch it again to clear this up, but I’m not gonna do that. It’s four f***ing hours long.

Odds and Ends (in Super Slow-Mo)

• Along with hearing “Darkseid is”, the other main thing I wanted from either version of Justice League was a triumphant appearance from Hans Zimmer’s wonderful Man of Steel theme. To me, it’s still the best thing the Snyderverse has produced, and I think it holds up against John Williams’ iconic Superman theme from 1978, though they are very different pieces of music that well reflect their respective eras. Whedon & Co. mostly ditched any existing music from either Zimmer or his protege/eventual DCEU replacement Thomas Holkenborg (AKA Junkie XL) in favor of bringing in Danny Elfman to create a score that tried and mostly failed to hearken back to Williams’ work with Supes or Elfman’s own excellent work on the two Tim Burton Batman movies. Holkenborg’s score is restored here, and while it’s extremely hit and miss, they do indeed reuse Zimmer’s MoS work, if anything perhaps a few too many times. But still, when the piano notes started to kick in during the second half of the movie, the viewing experience immediately and significantly improved.
• The flip side of that is whatever the hell was going on with the music that accompanied the Amazons. There’s a scene late in Tropic Thunder that features music like this, but it’s a spoof. Now imagine someone missing the joke there about 23 times throughout a movie, and you have the Amazon theme in the Snyder Cut.
• Generally speaking, the first two hours were where most of Snyder’s worst tendencies were repeatedly on display. In addition to the repeated eyerolls brought on by the Amazon music cues, there were some pretty cringey moments including but not limited to the Icelandic waif singalong, Aquaman’s slow-mo dock walk, numerous slowed-down “meaningful” needle drops, and lots and lots of slow-motion. My Grodd, it was just so slow. Any illusions that we weren’t about to get the hell Snydered out of us were put to rest when Superman’s death from the finale of BvS was replayed for what felt like 57 minutes in extra-crazy “Ford Pinto driving up a mountainside” slow-mo, with the Man of Steel’s dying breath launching a shockwave that turns into an admittedly kind of cool “calling all stations” sequence, where every major and minor character seemingly hears it, and then the still vaguely defined Mother Boxes start getting all Mother Boxy.
• Editing a whale like this is near impossible (as previous Snyder movies of varying lengths have already shown us). The decisions here make you scratch your head a bunch. On more than one occasion, we’d cut from a scene to another scene with totally different characters that’s about something completely different, then jump back to the same characters in the same room continuing the same conversation. (Like, let’s break up this info-dump about Steppenwolf in Batman’s hangar by cutting to Lois being sad Superman’s gone, then rejoin the Steppenwolf info-dump already in progress.) That’s…bad. Also Aquaman’s music video-like dock walk referenced above doesn’t cut away from him when it’s over, instead playing right into his first encounter with other Atlanteans. That was also pretty weird. I also like the implication that Cyborg literally waits around in his dad’s apartment all day, then immediately after his father comes home from work, Victor coldly reminds him that he made his son into a monster, then walks off to brood in another corner of the apartment. I think that was Victor’s only line of dialogue in the first section of the movie. “Hi, Dad, just wanna remind you that you suck for the 47th straight day… All right, later.”
• Speaking of the Atlanteans, while their scenes weren’t anything particularly revelatory, it’s at least intriguing to see what was clearly an earlier interpretation of them, which apparently changed a fair amount after Snyder got the heave-ho. Most noticeable was Amber Heard’s British accent for Mera. Whoever decided to change that probably made the right call. Willem Dafoe’s Vulko’s also here, but with much stringier hair than we see him with in Aquaman. (This means Whedon edited Willem Dafoe out of the movie, which is always a mistake. He should be edited in to every movie.) The basic relationships between the two of them and Arthur are still mostly the same, but several details about Atlantis in general are different. Mera’s parents are stated to be dead here, but Dolph Lundgren is very much alive and beefy in Aquaman as her father, King Nereus. The rules about breathing and talking underwater and on land were apparently changed, too, as that’s shown completely differently. And the whole storyline about Arthur recovering the King’s trident from Davy Jones’ locker or whatever, guarded by Julie Andrews’ mongrel-hating crab monster, appears to have been invented entirely after these scenes were filmed, since it certainly looks like the old King of Atlantis’ corpse and trident are sitting right there in front of everyone, with nary a racist crustacean in sight.
• One scene that appears in both versions – though, as you would expect, is longer here – is Wonder Woman’s first act foiling of a terrorist bombing in London. Back when the theatrical version was released, Wonder Woman was probably the film’s biggest selling point, since her solo movie had just come out about five months prior and had been DC’s first critical and commercial hit in at least five years, maybe nine depending on how you felt about the reception to The Dark Knight Rises. So perhaps it made sense to leave a largely superfluous action scene featuring the character in the shortened version of the movie, if only for advertising purposes (and that scene was featured heavily in trailers and ads). But in neither version does the scene really amount to much. The sequence is perhaps the least essential bit even in this kitchen sink of a movie, as it doesn’t really show us anything about Diana that we didn’t already know and it just isn’t really all that interesting visually. Cool to see Michael McElhatton (who had just finished playing the deliciously vile Roose Bolton on Game on Thrones at the time, back when that show was still good), but this scene felt just as much like padding in this four-hour movie as it did in the earlier two-hour edition. I’d maybe feel better about it if Gal Gadot didn’t also get saddled with what felt like the lion’s share of the clunkiest dialogue.
• I’ve written a lot without writing much about Steppenwolf, which is kind of fitting, since I don’t even think this dude had a dedicated Wikipedia page before he was announced as the villain of the first ever Justice League (or at least the first one to actually get released – RIP Justice League: Mortal). Ciaran Hinds is a great actor, definitely more recognizable and commanding than either of his Apokoliptian brethren, mainly on the strength of his turns in Game of Thrones and The Terror. And this Steppenwolf (along with being much spikier – like, alarmingly spiky) is a far more fleshed out villain than the Whedon version’s was. I mean, he’s still basically Diet Darkseid, but at least we know, um, anything about him when the final credits roll. Also I did find it low-key hilarious when one of his dumb CG horn-things was just straight-up ripped off in the finale. That’s a bummer, man. (The question of how anyone at Warner would allow the first Justice League movie, in the age of the billion-dollar comic book crossover event movie, to feature Steppenwolf as its principle antagonist is one that will echo through the ages.)
• The general plot mechanics of the grand finale (i.e. the final battle with Steppenwolf, not the, like, 45 minutes of epilogues) are easily the biggest area of improvement. Everybody has something to do, there’s no random Russian family who are apparently the only people within 100 square miles, the visual presentation of Cyborg’s powers is infinitely better, Batman doesn’t feel less as useless as he did in the original, and the Flash doing Flash things and running so fast he turns back time all really worked. It’s the best stuff in the movie and shows that, yes, Snyder undeniably has talent and vision, at least to an extent.
• And now for the epilogues. (Dear Zod this movie is long.) The Luthor/Deathstroke scene plays out mostly the same, but some dialogue is different, with no Legion of Doom/Injustice League/Rowdyruff Boys being discussed. I think Jesse Eisenberg is a strong actor and was initially intrigued by his casting as Lex, but it’s still a whiff. His flibbertigibbet performance just doesn’t work. Joe Manganiello, however, would’ve been a hella awesome Slade Wilson. Not expecting much to come out of that anymore, but you never know. Slade gets to hang around for the Snyder Cut of the Knightmare from Batman v Superman, now sporting a trademark post-apocalyptic mohawk. Can’t have a post-apocalypse without one. In this edition of Bruce Wayne’s double-anchovy-pizza-fueled dreams, Bruce and his trusty Hell-on-Earth-resistant brown duster and goggles from BvS are leading a motley band of survivors post-Darkseid’s arrival. This, combined with Cyborg’s own Cyghtmare (?) from earlier in the movie (is Darkseid’s main power making dudes have bad dreams?) imply that Lois dies and Superman goes all space fascist on us, joining with the Dark God to take turns cooking fools with their eye lasers. As improved as I felt Superman’s arc and characterization were in this movie, I don’t love how all of humanity is basically dependent on Lois not getting run over by a truck or something (unnecessarily putting herself in harm’s way is kinda Lois’ whole deal in pretty much all incarnations). Lois dying and Clark going dark is the major backstory event in the Injustice games, and different riffs on it have been batted about in several comics (with Superman becoming more detached than evil in Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s magnificent Kingdom Come, which is a clear influence on these movies), but maybe let’s not undercut every positive Superman development with a reminder that he could turn evil and vaporize us all pretty much at any moment.
• Of course, none of that matters because the real attraction in the Knightmare is Jared Leto’s long, uh, awaited (?) return as the Juggalo Prince of Crime. He and Batman have an interaction that seems to forget about anything else going on and instead set up Batman movies we’ll never see. It’s…strange and easily the lamest part of the epilogues. I turned to get my wife’s reaction after the scene concluded and instead was greeted by audible snoring. As she slumbered, Batfleck shoots awake, gets out of bed and walks outside, as a familiar caped figure floats to the ground in front of him, except this isn’t Superman, but instead Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter. An earlier scene established him, when he poses as Martha Kent in order to get Lois Lane out of her apartment-based grieving stage. Now we see him again, just randomly popping by to say, “Hey, Bats, sorry I just sat around and did nothing while Zod and several other Kryptonians almost killed everybody, and then when Doomsday almost killed everybody again, and then when Steppenwolf almost killed everybody again again, but next time…next time I got your back.” OK, dude. (I really like J’onn J’onzz as a character, but this just feels like tacked-on fan-service BS.)
• I guess here’s as good a place as any to note that the cop who Lois kept bringing coffee to was played by Marc McClure, who played Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. He may have been in the Whedon version, I really can’t remember. But after you finish climbing this mountain of a movie, it’s worth taking the time to rewatch those old Superman movies, if only to remind yourself how weird they are. Fun if not necessarily good, but definitely weird.
• Of course Snyder has an endless, slowed-down, “important”-sounding cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” play over the end credits. You do you, man. (That’s still a good song, no matter how much Snyder, Aaron Sorkin, and Shrek have tried to ruin it.)
• As if often the case with these things, a lot of really good actors hang around the margins of this movie, getting not a whole hell of a lot to do. I mentioned Willem Dafoe above (the only shame is he didn’t deliver all his ocean man lines as his character from Robert Eggers’ bonkers, awesome The Lighthouse. Dafoe should’ve won an Oscar for that sea curse scene alone). Also here are JK Simmons and a swooshy hairpiece as Jim Gordon (doing just a little bit more than he did in the Whedon version), a still saucy Jeremy Irons as Alfred (or an Alfred/Lucius Fox hybrid who’s very particular about his tea and murder machines), Diane Lane as Martha Kent (who’s only extra scene that I can think of is the one where she’s actually Martian Manhunter), Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta (the Amazons kinda get a raw deal in this movie, seeing as how they mostly exist just to job to Steppenwolf), Robin Wright as Antiope (seen for about two seconds in the flashback battle with Darkseid), David Thewlis as Ares (basically the same as Wright), Carla Gugino as the voice of the Kryptonian ship (which she provided in all three Snyder DCEU movies), Billy Crudup as Henry Allen (who’s weirdly amazed by/happy about the phrase “foot in the door” at the end of the movie), and the requisite archive audio of Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner from Man of Steel (Snyder kind of pummels you over the head in that scene). Joe Morton easily gets the most to do as Silas Stone, and both his many years of being one of Hollywood’s most reliable character actors and the association I have with him playing Miles Dyson in Terminator 2 make his performance mostly land amid a sea of noise around him. All told, there are at least six Oscar-winners here and four more Oscar nominees. It’s a wild cast when viewed as a whole. And they star in a movie where a hot dog is rescued mid-air in super slow-motion. I can’t wait to see what happens in the six-hour cut. Hallelujah.