The Recut Justice League

There’s a mini music video in the new Justice League cut where Jason Momoa slow-mos it down a dock to stare shirtless at the crashing ocean waves. And we stare at his chest… I mean his face and lovely eyes while his hair just perfectly gets all tossed around and the music plays on and the water crashes.

It is everything beautiful in the world.

And really the perfect approximation of a Zack Snyder movie for good and bad.

Yes Zack Snyder’s Justice League is finally here and surprising myself perhaps I made it through the four hour film in one day. Two settings to be fair but nevertheless.

I must say I mostly enjoyed it as well. I agree with those that say the fleshing out of the story and characters was a huge help. (Shocking.)

It also looked way better than I would have thought. Especially the action scenes. I remember being really put off by the Amazon scenes and the finale particularly in the theater version and they just looked so much better here it was so much easier to follow. I mean they were still over the top but in a way that worked.

Everyone gets a time to shine and I remembered (Amber Heard aside) how much I like the character of Meera…

But did she always have an accent???

Steppenwolf was fine I suppose. He seemed to have Googled generic villain speak but again a lot of the dialogue was pretty cringe so I’ll accept. But I do give the recut credit that this time around his motivations, the whole of the villain’s motivations make more sense which also helps the film overall.

Again shocking that clear character motivations help an overall film??? What a world!

But the interesting to thing to me is Zack Snyder’s Justice League works really well streaming but I don’t think this version could have ever worked in theaters at least for a general audience hell even streaming I couldn’t help note there was a lot of over indulgent stuff that could have been cut or at the very least trimmed.

Oh man the slow motion shit!

I’m sorry but it’s so overused that it takes away from The Flash and it’s like with the music video he doesn’t know when to stop. I actually liked the scene where we meet Barry for the first time but it goes on way, way too long like a bit of food slow mo’s its way to the ground as we watch and then with Victor (Cyborg) we get his slow winning touchdown for the football game and that comes after an absolutely pointless scene where his mother is guilting the principal because Victor changed a poor girls grades.

And all of this is not far before we get the scene of Victor watching this poor mother go about her life and get evicted and have a breakdown before we see him helping her.

I get it.

Victor is a fucking Saint.

I was far more fascinated by the fact that his father straight-up says he’s turned him into one of the most powerful beings on Earth with our lives literally, financially and everything else in his hands.

Good thing Victors just a precious teddy bear though they kind of just gloss over the implications of what his father did.

And then you have the scene with Lois and Martha that wasn’t really Martha and so was fairly fucking pointless but I think the most annoying decision here is the epilogue. Because I really liked the ending of this film. I was actually tearing up and there’s a great visual and then… it keeps fucking going.

While I think the Snyder cut proves you can never say never it’s very unlikely any of those things are going to move forward so I don’t see why they were added. (And at least the Nightmare/Joker stuff was added in reshoots last fall so it was a very purposeful decision.) Like on the one hand it’s what Snyder wanted it’s his vision on the other hand you could have chosen to leave the fans with a stronger ending.

I mean I’m sure some fans are going to love it. And I thought some of the implications were interesting though some are truly dreadful and I could have done with the return of one character. I think the epilogue was pointless after a pretty strong finale and that only made me mad.

Recommend: Yes.

While this is not the second coming of comic book movies that some Snyder die-hards might insist it’s a fun and entertaining film. It was enjoyed. Faster than I thought and as someone who wasn’t big on Snyder’s Man of Steel or Batman v. Superman I do feel like Justice League is a step up and worlds better than the original theater cut.