It is really hard to describe the Justice League movie released in 2017, but if I had to put it in one sentence, it would be “the culmination of a failed and rushed attempt to beat Marvel in their own game”. Even taking into account all the issues the production had, the final result was still something I can only describe as nearly unwatchable. Bad jokes, underdeveloped characters, rushed CGI*, weak plot…
*Small disclaimer about this blog: whenever I feel any kind of VFX doesn’t look good, I’ll refer to it as Rushed CGI because most of the time, that is the reason why it doesn’t look as good as it could be.
Does the Snyder Cut make things better? Yes… not because the Theatrical Release couldn’t get any worse but there are actual improvements in this version which makes this 4h (!) movie much more interesting. Let’s start with the obvious flaws and close on the good stuff.
Still extremely rushed: Maybe the biggest offender in all of DCEU is how this shared universe was pushed to catch up to Marvel as soon as possible. You don’t really need a lot of solo movies to establish a universe but you need good introductions to your cast and the world you are trying to build. But doing it justice (pun intended), JL is more of a victim of something that started in Batman V Superman;
Did we need 4h? Learning the full length of the Snyder Cut was curious, to say the least. If you think this duration was too much, I’ll tell you: I agree. There is a lot of new and enhanced content here but this movie could have been easily 30 minutes less than it ended up being;
4:3 aspect ratio: I really doubt this format was the original one Zack Snyder had in mind for this movie. You can make a case for this by stating these closed shots make these characters bigger, omnipresent on-screen, gods among men they have always been in the comics. However, we are talking about a big-budget blockbuster super-hero movie and I highly doubt he came to WB executives saying “Btw, this movie will be a 4:3 aspect ratio with big bars on the sides”;
Plot still a miss: With the latest info that Snyder planned the JL trilogy where the second movie would be set in the “Knightmare” future, he might have been a bit too ambitious with this project. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to see that and it has DC written all over it, but a simpler and more grounded plot to get the team together would have gone a long way. Trying to make too much without a solid foundation, the movie ends up being somewhat confused to a lot of people who aren’t that familiar with the DC universe.
Now the good stuff:
A miss, but improved: It’s undoubtfully true that the movie’s plot improved a lot. You can now watch through it all and understand what’s going on, even if it was a bit too much information for those unfamiliar with DC;
The team felt like a team: The chemistry between the team members was off in the first release, just didn’t felt like they were supposed to be together. The Snyder Cut definitely improves the dynamic here since you get a more mature (but still fun) Flash and a very interesting way the Aquaman x Cyborg relation develops over runtime;
Cyborg: Justice was done here. If Victor Stone was just there in the Theatrical Release, now we get to know who this person was before he became the hero. The whole football sequence establishing his stray relationship with his father (and the amazing payoff we get later on) is just pure, quality cinema. He is also much more important and essential to the plot which gives us the only bad thing about this improvement, which is we probably won’t see more of this version of Cyborg. What a shame…
Steppenwolf: Not much to say here, it’s just a much better visual and he now has an actual motivation for why he is doing what is doing. It might be a bit cliche using the “trying to prove myself” card but it’s better than just wreaking havoc for no reason.