Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

By now, everyone who is interested in this movie knows why it exists. In case you don’t, I’ll try to explain but, bear with me, it’s a long story.

Zack Snyder, director of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, was working on Justice League in 2016. Based on audience response to the somewhat dark atmosphere of those previous films, studio pressure to make a more accessible and lighter-in-tone superhero film caused the production to be fraught with creative issues. When the death of his daughter caused Snyder to step away from the production, Joss Whedon, director of Marvel’s The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, was brought in to finish the film. Whedon wasn’t credited as director when the film was released in 2017, but his fingerprints are all over it. Snyder’s dark vision and Whedon’s more humorous approach did not mesh well.

In the rush to meet a previously announced release date, Warner Bros. did not allow time to fix any issues with the characters’ chemistry or the rushed nature of the plot. As a result, reviews were poor and the film bombed (relatively speaking) at the box office. A movement appeared on social media almost immediately urging Warner Bros. to release a “Snyder Cut” of Justice League that would preserve the original director’s vision of the film.

Until early 2020, it seemed unlikely that a “Snyder Cut” even existed and even less so that it would ever see a release in any form. But, it was then that Zack Snyder himself confirmed that he would release Zack Snyder’s Justice League in 2021. Now, after retooling the film, shooting new scenes, and restoring scenes that were cut from the 2017 theatrical release, Snyder’s version has arrived.

While retaining the same basic plot of the original version of Justice League, this new version allows the characters to breathe and evolve into what they should have been. Warner Bros had demanded that the 2017 version have a running time under two hours which obviously eliminated any chance for character development or much of anything else. With all of the elements that had to come together to have the story make much sense, the film’s chances of telling a coherent story were severely restricted. By contrast, Snyder’s version runs just slightly over four hours.

Both films revolve around the events following the death of Superman in Batman v Superman. His death has awakened three mysterious “Mother Boxes” that, when placed next to each other, combine into The Unity, a death machine that will do the bidding of whoever arranged them side-by-side. These boxes are currently scattered across the Earth and each one guarded by a particular faction: one by the Atlanteans, one by the Amazonians, and one by mortal men.

In both films, a villain named Steppenwolf appears to retrieve the boxes with the intent of creating the Unity. In the original film, Steppenwolf appeared to be acting on his own accord. In the Zack Snyder version, Steppenwolf, voiced by Ciarán Hinds, is trying to get back on the good side of the more powerful Darkseid (Ray Porter) by delivering the boxes. (Steppenwolf’s appearance is also considerably altered and, I might add, improved, with new CGI effects.)

To thwart Steppenwolf and his parademon minions, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) attempt to assemble a group of “metahumans” including Aquaman (Jason Momoa,) Cyborg (Ray Fisher,) and The Flash (Ezra Miller.) Most of the film details the attempt to round up the new members of the team and get them to play nice with each other.

Cyborg and The Flash receive boosts in screen time in the new version of the film. In particular, the Cyborg story line is significantly fleshed out making the character much more interesting and sympathetic. The brooding character from the 2017 version makes sense now and his actions are more justified. I would say that the once criminally underutilized Cyborg now becomes the most fully realized character in the movie.

Other characters are also more given more time to become familiar. Aquaman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are all featured in additional scenes that fix some (but not all) of the rough edges left in the 2017 film. Other upgrades include an improved score by Tom “Junkie XL” Holkenborg, the complete elimination of all of Whedon’s sequences (including those featuring Superman’s digital upper lip), and a few surprise appearances by several characters that did not appear in the original version, including The Joker (Jared Leto.)

Many scenes that appeared in the original version are expanded or re-edited to change their context. For example, the initial action sequence with Wonder Woman foiling a museum heist is substantially improved with better pacing and additional expository dialogue.

Even with all of the new changes and improvements, Zack Snyder’s Justice League remains at the mercy of its predecessors, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. Both were good but not great films that left unanswered questions to which this movie has to provide answers. Viewed as part of that trilogy, the Snyder version of Justice League succeeds where the Whedon version failed spectacularly. This isn’t a perfect film by any measure but it does allow the audience to see where Snyder was going with the first two movies. The story is still suspect and the DC Extended Universe shouldn’t have thrown their characters into the Justice League after only four films.

Snyder’s trilogy is finally complete. However, this new movie creates questions of its own with an odd and tacked-on-feeling epilogue that foreshadows a direct sequel or series of sequels. With the way the DC Extended Universe was shaken by the failure of the original Justice League and the departure of Ben Affleck from the role of Batman, as well as the uncertainty of Henry Cavill remaining in the role of Superman, I don’t want to get my hopes up that these will ever see the light of day.

Is Zack Snyder’s Justice League worth seeing? Absolutely. Does it improve on the original version. Absolutely. Should it have been the version released in the first place? Absolutely.