So, yes. It is time to review Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021). And honestly? I got nothing. I have very little to say about of the film which isn’t painfully obvious from just hearing about the trivia surrounding it. The film is four hours long (it’s too long). The film had additional reshoots three-plus years after release (several scenes are tacked on and don’t work). The studio allowed the filmmaker to do whatever he originally wanted with the material (it is, at times, pointedly personal, and collectively, a thorough mess). So, I’m going to have my lovely wife, Lora (@BringToABoyle) pinch-hit, because, friends... She had opinions about this one. Enjoy.
Title: Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ciarán Hinds
Have I Seen it Before: Technically no - seeing as how this week was the first time anyone could stream this version of the film. However, as we will come to learn in the course of this entry, I certainly feel like I’ve seen this before.
Did I Like It: Ultimately, there wasn’t much for me to like. At four hours long, there’s a TON of content here, but it never feels cohesive. It’s a story told in several parts, which might have worked better as a TV series, but does nothing in service to the overall plot other than provide way too much material to sift through. There are at least four different movies here: a coming together of great superheroes to save the planet movie, a fairly decent Cyborg (Ray Fisher) solo flick, a high fantasy epic where disparate groups of people come together to destroy the object the Big Bad seeks to find, and a heartfelt movie about family, loss, and moving on.
As the coming together of heroes to save the planet, Justice League really falters for me. There’s nothing here I haven’t already seen across several Marvel movies. And while the Big Bad of the MCU showed us a lot about why he was out to blink a bunch of people out of existence, Darkseid (Ray Porter) offers us no such thing. Any time he or Steppenwolf or Darkseid’s acolyte person (the internet says he is DeSaad (Peter Guinness), but I swear the movie never names him), were on screen together they only spoke in exposition. Get the mother boxes together...for reasons. An equation for anti-life (huh??) exists and it turns out it’s been on Earth for a long time...for reasons. I have no idea why any of these things is happening, nor do I really care to find out.
The one thing this version improves over the theatrical version is in it’s service to Cyborg’s story. In fact, this could have a been a very solid solo film for him. It’s a thoughtful and interesting story of a father facing a tragedy and using his scientific knowledge to save his son’s life after losing his wife. In doing so, he turns his son into a cyborg with massive technological potential, but the son has to come to terms with what was forced upon him and how he will reconstruct his life. Not only is this a story about a dynamic and intellectual Black family, it’s also a story of disability and acceptance. I’ve seen many people on #DisabilityTwitter applaud Cyborg’s line in the film “I’m NOT broken!” as he finally starts to reconcile who he is and what his father gave him.
Ultimately, yes, I’ve seen this film before. A. Lot. There’s a really long scene, which is basically just the ancient battle in The Lord of the Rings where the armies of the Elves, Dwarves, and Men (I mean, Amazons, Atlantians, and Men) all come together or destroy Sauron (Darkseid) and take away his ring of power (mother boxes, also there’s a ring, but not the one you’re thinking of) and formulate a plan to keep the source of power away from the evil until the evil possibly one day returns. I hope Peter Jackson got some royalties for this film. Also, Steven Spielberg called and would like his Jurassic Park (1993) rippling glass of water back. Not to knock the Cyborg story, but James Cameron deserves a nice fruit basket.
There’s also a family film in here somewhere about moving on from loss. I know Zack Snyder suffered a profound loss in his own family while working on the original film. Amy Adams is phenomenal in her portrayal of grief. Diane Lane is also an amazing actor. I would watch the hell out of their film about moving on from Clark’s death. Instead of really leaning into this and bringing in a more powerful emotional side to the film, instead we get...Martian Manhunter? Ugh. Don’t get me wrong. I love him in Supergirl. But why is he even here?
To paraphrase from a different DC movie: Why so...many endings? Seriously. More endings than The Return of the King (2003). And some of these endings aren’t even endings to things that happen in this film. Jared Leto reprises his role at the Joker in one such ending scene - which takes place in...an alternate timeline? The future? There’s no explanation for it, other than it is yet another Dream Of The Future(tm) for Batman (Affleck). Leto feels like he’s trying to channel too much of Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix’s version of the character, and seems less interested in making it his own. Plus, he feels like the Joker for a different Batman film. Maybe something in the Schumacher oeuvre?
Some final random thoughts: Batman looks really silly fighting aliens. It just doesn’t fit for his character’s skill set. Alfred, in any iteration honestly, is great. Jeremy Irons is particularly fun here and brightens every scene he’s in. Finally, I dislike this version of The Flash. Ezra Miller is fine, and is doing his best with what he has here. But it doesn’t help that every scene in the film with The Flash being flashy is...SOOOO sloooow. Putting The Flash in all slow-mo just isn’t a choice I would have made. It also probably added fifteen minutes to a four-hour (!) runtime. Plus there are some implications that The Flash is going back and resetting time or something? It’s another thing in a long line of things in this film that is just never explained.