A ‘Justice League’ of His Own
‘The Snyder cut’ is finally here — and it’s a radical revision of the all-star DC superhero flop
“The Zack Snyder cut” is finally here — and it’s a radical four-hour revision of the all-star DC superhero flop, originally released in 2017.
The possessive in the title says it all: It is Zack Snyder’s Justice League. This rerelease of 2017’s disappointing all-star DC superhero team-up is not merely “the Snyder cut,” as it has been called by both rabid fans and suspicious nonbelievers, all of whom doubted we’d ever see such a thing. The difference between the nearly four-hour cut that premiered on HBO Max and the beleaguered theatrical version (completed by the similarly beleaguered Joss Whedon) we saw almost four years ago is not merely cosmetic. Nor is it the kind of restoration and reordering of missing scenes usually implied by the term “director’s cut.” This is a director unmistakably reclaiming his territory.
It should be remembered that it was Warner Br ny now shelling o these upgrades — w over the futur Universe aft v. Superman kick-star that landed us her Before a personal tr y in Snyder’s life made his leaving the project final, the studio’s uncertainty over his vision made hiring Whedon a viable cleanup man. He was, after all, the director of the first Avengers movie — and Snyder’s vision of the superhero template is as heavy, grandiose, and self- ained as the MCU’s template was pliable and comparatively light on its feet, an extensive and canny exercise in franchise management. Snyder’s films have often made it harder to imagine where one might go from here. Where do you go once as in Batman v. Superman you've killed off Superman?
But that isn’t to say that the Man of Steel and his fellow major Leaguers aren’t given their due in this new version. That’s the supreme irony here: More than the 2017 cut (or even any of the massive Avengers movies), Zack Snyder’s Justice League makes a strong case for most everyone on its team of titular heroes. This is true for Ezra Miller's Flash, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, and by - a significant mar