DCEU Review Series
Zack Snyder's Justice League
2021
Director: Zack Snyder
This film is four hours long and horrendous. Whedon has the excuse of working around what already existed. Snyder has no such excuse. He was on a mission to prove his version was superior. The problem with Snyder is his superhero films were too meta. He’s obsessed with the “what if” scenarios of comics which only super nerd fans would enjoy. He didn’t even try to make a film that the 40-year-old woman in middle America would enjoy. When making a film that absolutely needs to be a mega blockbuster, it has to have broad appeal. Fanboys be damned.
The film is broken into 7 agonizingly painful parts. Each part is equally drawn out, boring, and could be cut down to 10 minutes.
Part I
Snyder opens his film with everyone depressed about Superman being dead but takes 40 minutes to establish that. They hated him in his first two movie appearances but now love him because he's dead. There are some nice visuals but nothing to keep the eye and nothing of interest with the characters, dialogue, or story.
Some dudes go to blow up a bank but Wonder Woman is there to stop them. They take a bunch of people hostages, including children. Why would people listen to a guy with a machine gun after another guy sets a timer on a bomb to kill them all? The logic doesn’t make sense. If you’re going to die anyway, might as well make the best effort to avoid the blast, getting shot doesn’t matter. Also, why are there 30 kids hanging out in a bank? Kids don’t hang out in banks. Snyder’s version of “save the cat” is absolute bullshit.
The Amazons decide to fiddle with their glowing motherbox and the lamest villain for a DC film shows up, Steppenwolf. He’s so lame, incredibly lame. With the help of his parademons Steppenwolf beats up a bunch of women who are dressed like Russel Crowe in Gladiator. There’s a million slow motion shots that aren’t needed and Snyder might have forgotten that he’s not making a sequel to his film 300. The tag team amazon runaway with the glowing box is a bad rip-off of the infinity gauntlet being tossed around in Avengers End Game. Steppenwolf gets the box anyway which makes the entire sequence of events useless. Whedon cut all this crap and rightfully so!
Part II
Steppenwolf sends out his parademons to find other motherboxes. We are slowly introduced to all the major players, ones we know, ones we don’t know. The ones we know they flip through quick, they don’t need more character development. The ones we haven’t met yet, we get backstory. None of it is particularly compelling and it doesn’t really progress the plot but with Snyder the plot doesn’t matter and the villain is lame. Trying to steal a bunch of alien boxes is a lame story. Steppenwolf has a ton of lame vague chit chat with Darkseid’s lacky, Desaud. They are building up to Darkseid being the big bad in the DCEU like Thanos was in Marvel but it’s pointless when your movie universe sucks. We get our bad guy backstory and this all takes 30 minutes.
Part III
It opens with Flash’s introduction. The problem with speedsters in comic films now is that they’d been perfected in X-Men: First Class. Every film who does a speedster now just copy’s that film. Even prior to X-Men: First Class, the TV show Smallville did speedsters with the fast guy moving normal and everything else moving slow. It’s logically the only way to show it but no one is breaking new ground with the effect. Why over do it, which is what Snyder does in the Flash introduction. Billy Cudrup playing Flash’s dad was definitely a nice touch, he’s a phenomenal actor and belts all his performances out of the park.
Then we get Cyborg’s origin story. We keep getting character introduction and it’s so forced. These introductions are boring and it’s as bad a Suicide Squad reintroducing everyone a billion times in the film. Get to the plot! I’ve said it before, Cyborg’s design is absolutely ridiculous. He’s more robot than human, it doesn’t look cool. All he has is half a face, the rest is robot. Young Justice did a far better design of Cyborg and way better character development. Everything Snyder’s Justice League got wrong with Cyborg, season 3 of Young Justice got right. One might argue it’s unfair to compare a cartoon show to a feature film but given the runtime of this film, Snyder drags this story out longer than any TV season. Fisher clearly prefers this version because he has much more screen time. What’s really drastic is Cybrog is supposed to be aged 17 or 18 and Fisher is well over 30 when he made this film. He doesn’t even come close to looking like a teenager. His acting was also schlock. He sounds like he’s holding his nose whenever he talks. Fisher’s overly dramatic theater acting movements are cringe. It’s bad casting for no reason whatsoever.
Mercedes gets some product placement in order to fund the $70 Million redo on this fanbot requested film version. We get cameos from JK Simmons and Amber the turd Herd. Their acting is bad. Amber Turd because she’s a bad actress. JK Simmons is a really good actor who was the wrong choice for James Gordon. Simmons is too loud to play Gordon, too much presence.
This also took forty minutes.
Part IV
At almost the two hour mark we finally get the first fight between Steppenwolf and Justice League. Whedon’s version accomplished this in an hour. The extra hour in Snyder’s first half wasn’t any more interesting and wasn’t needed. Aquaman shows up at the end of this fight and in a much cooler way than Whedon’s version. He’s not too useful but it’s a nice reveal. Thirty minutes of my life I’ll never get back
Part V
It just won’t end. This film is absolutely painful. At this point the team plans to bring Superman back from the dead. It's a total ripoff of the creation of Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The sequence takes forever! I am watching this film regretting that I made the decision to provide reviews of all the films in the DCEU. Personal root canals are more interesting and entertaining than the Snyder cut.
Superman comes back from the dead. Cyborg’s dad dies. Steppenwolf gets all his motherboxes. He did this part in thirty minutes.
Part VI
Everyone but Superman tries to figure out how to track the motherbox to stop Steppenwolf. Superman reunites with Lois Lane and Martha Kent on the Kent farm. The farm scenes are so poorly shot it’s sad. It’s also clear a ton of effort was put into it to make it look nice. Snyder doesn’t have any clue how to do poignant and touching.
Steppenwolf unites the motherboxes to destroy the world or something. The heroes begin their assault for the big climactic battle. They win. The day is saved. It takes forty minutes and it’s all slow-motion action sequences. Why, why, why, why? Because Zack Snyder is a masochist.
Epilogue
All the heroes go their separate ways to lead into new movies in the DCEU. Cyborg’s "the big wrap up story" in the film. His dad does a boring voiceover trying to sum up the film. It’s all pointless words tied together but mean absolutely nothing. So glad Whedon cut Cyborg’s part down. Lex Luthor escapes from prison, he’s chilling on a yacht, Deathstroke visits him. Luthor cuts a deal to kill Batman, reveals Batman’s secret identity. No mention of an Injustice League which was exponentially cooler.
We’re thrust into the future, the world is a wasteland. Lots of boring exposition chit chat with Batman, Deathstroke, Flash, Amber Turd, Cyborg, and Joker. An evil Superman shows up, but oh wait it’s just a bad dream Bruce Wayne is having. Then we meet a really crappy CGI version of The Martian Manhunter. Stop changing comic characters to look worse than their original comic!
The dream sequence Bruce Wayne has is a crappy advertisement for a movie that will never get made. Snyder knows this, why did he add it as his closer? He must have been delusional to think WB would hire him back. Why would he even want to work with them again after doing him so dirty?
The mistake we made as a society was praising Zach Snyder for remaking Dawn of the Dead and taking out all the high art elements from the original. It somehow justified all his film decisions afterwards. How does a filmmaker get worse with age? This version does manage to show Darkseid multiple times but since the DCEU is thankfully dead who really cares about buildups to installments that will never get made? He really serves no purpose except to advertise movies that are never going to get made. The film was in a full screen format suitable for old school tube televisions. No clear reason why Snyder did this other than to be counter to Whedon’s version. Not a terrible choice, just a pointless one.
The ultimate assessment is Whedon’s version is better but only because it’s shorter. Both versions are horrible. A terrible film, with a lame villain, boring characters, bad dialogue, a dumb plot. Skip these at all costs.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
