The long road to justice
For a while it seemed that you couldn’t log on to Twitter without seeing the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut trending for days on end. After a four-year-long campaign on social media, Zack Snyder’s army of dedicated fans have finally got their wish with the release of the director’s own version of the fifth film of DC’s extended universe (DCEU) which was first released in 2017.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is dedicated to the memory of the director’s daughter Autumn who passed away aged 20 in 2017. The tragedy was largely seen as the reason behind the director’s wish to step down from the original project during post-production, but in reality the film had already been marred by major changes by Warner Brothers before and during the shoot. Now we have a new version of this story, but was it really worth the wait?
The premise is pretty much the same as before. Following the death of Superman (Henry Cavill), Bruce
Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince/ Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) recruit the Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to form the Justice League and protect the world from Steppenwolf and his army of Parademons. To succeed in their quest, the League must stop Steppenwolf from obtaining all three Mother Boxes and destroy their world and everything in it.
The new cut is a vast improvement on the 2017 version which saw Joss Whedon (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Avengers) take over the production after Snyder’s departure. Tonally, the film is not only darker, but also seems to have more cohesion, structure and faithfulness to the DC canon. It’s clear that, thanks to some clever rewrites and the odd reshoot, Snyder has finally managed to tell the story he intended to tell all along, and I’m more than convinced.
At four hours long, Snyder’s version is double the running time of the original film which would explain why Warner Brothers is rumoured to have initially wanted to release it as a mini-series. Still, the film is divided by Snyder into several chapters, making it a lot easier to digest.
Snyder often resorts to his trademark slow-motion scenes and general sombre mood here. He gives us a film that is a far cry from the much maligned 2017 film which often felt like it was trying too hard, and mostly failing, to compete with Marvel’s more jovial tone. For fans of the director, this is undoubtedly the sort of stuff they’d expected from this new version and that is exactly what they got. It’s also worth saying that you don’t have to be a fan of Snyder or of his filmmaking techniques to appreciate the fact that he is indeed a bona fide auteur with a dedicated fan base and a definite signature and style. So whether his detractors like it or not, his films have remained sought after and much anticipated.
I found a lot more to enjoy here than I’d expected. The fight scenes are longer, more grandiose and more elaborate. Those who have so far remained unconvinced by Snyder’s body of work will find nothing new here to shout about, but fans are sure to lap up every single extra minutes of this mammoth fourhour saga.
Snyder’s fans are sure to lap up every single extra minute of this mammoth four-hour saga