Zack Snyder's Justice League

This is such an odd cultural artifact.

I’m not sure we’ll see anything like this again: A big film released by a major studio is re-cut, reworked, and released by the film’s first director, who had to drop out of the original film. That’s bizarre.

And that’s just the historical context. There’s a bunch of other quirky stuff in and around this thing:

• The Snyder cut is four hours long. FOUR HOURS. While that’s a bit much for one sitting, the running time does allow for decent character development. Cyborg and the Flash benefit most here, as both are far more interesting in the Snyder cut than in 2017’s “Justice League.”
• The entire thing is in 4:3. (I hate 4:3 as much as I hate vertical phone videos.)
• It re-uses some portions of the original “Justice League,” but it’s a remarkably darker and bigger and more interesting story.
• Because this beast isn’t technically DC canon (at least I don’t think it is), it’s allowed to dabble in plot points and character shifts that other DC films couldn’t dream of touching.

In the epilogue that takes up the last 30 minutes of the film, Batman has united with unusual allies to take on a very pissed off Superman. I think this is an alt-timeline segment (it’s been dubbed the “Knightmare"). While it’s fun to see Batman trade barbs with a certain “person” (I won’t spoil it even though everyone knows who it is), I don’t understand why they bothered with this part. Unless they’re introducing an entirely new story branch in the DC universe, an alternative timeline is only interesting if it intersects with the core timeline and characters.

Superhero movies need humor: Levity isn’t Snyder’s thing. I get it. But humor in superhero movies maintains the masquerade. If you’re laughing–even a chuckle here and there–you’re not paying as much attention to the silly people in silly costumes spouting silly gibberish.