Back in 2017, Marvel was deep into its reign as king of comic book movies and DC was playing catch-up with financially successful but critically panned blockbusters like Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad. Where Marvel went with a family-friendly, light, quippy tone, DC was set on being the dark and gritty cinematic universe—a place where some of the most famous caped heroes were broken, sad people who were never eager to do any heroic stuff and always seemed very put-upon and depressed. Oh, and Jesus metaphors. Lots and lots of Jesus metaphors.
This is mostly because the DC cinematic world was ruled by Zack Snyder, a man who loves nothing more than dark, desaturated action scenes playing out in super slow motion. It’s not that Snyder is a bad filmmaker, he’s has some very inventive ideas and his films have a distinct style, it’s that he likes stories that are dreary and miserable, which doesn’t always fit for traditionally hopeful and upbeat characters like Superman or Wonder Woman.
Then, of course, came Justice League. DC was skipping all the origin stories and jumping right to the superhero team-up movie, combining Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman (Henry Cavill), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) into the crime fighting dream team. It didn’t matter that the only time audiences had seen the majority of the team was via email attachment in BvS. The philosophy seemed to be: who needs an origin story when you can see ripped superheroes kicking some alien bad guy’s ass in slow motion while potentially spouting f-bombs and being all dark and cool?! DC was trying to bill itself as comic book movies for grown-ups, with many DC cast members openly mocking Marvel for not being dark, gritty and violent, for having colorful take on children’s movies about people in spandex fighting crime. This was…an interesting strategy.
I never understood why they chose the “fuck Marvel” route when comic book fans don’t usually have rabid brand loyalty that says they can’t enjoy Superman and Spider-Man, but apparently, DC’s whole thing was to make themselves distinct by shitting on something people liked, a bold move that didn’t pay off at all because critics hated their movies and, though there was a band of very loyal fans who immediately bought into the anti-Marvel marketing strategy, even audiences weren’t always in love with the DC films—looking at you Suicide Squad!
So the studio panicked. Superhero movies are all the rage, but people would rather watch Doctor Strange than sit through the convoluted, self-important, ridiculous plot of BvS, which features two of the most iconic superheroes of all time right in the damn title! They knew they had to try to pivot, but they’d done years of marketing their world as anti-quippy, so it was going to be a tough sell to completely shift the tone they’d been building into a Great Value version of Marvel. Then tragedy struck Snyder’s family and the studio saw an opportunity to bring in someone to shape their team-up movie into something more Marvel-like. And who better than the guy who directed 2012’s The Avengers, Joss Whedon.
The behind-the-scenes issues seem to have started pretty early on with Whedon being a notorious nightmare to work with and the infamous mustache situation. Since it’s almost impossible to make an enormous tonal pivot like that and still keep things even remotely coherent, the movie was basically doomed from the start. When it finally hit theaters, even people who had no idea about the shitshow behind the scenes could tell that it was a Frankenstein’s monster of corporate meddling, awkward comedy, confused performances and messy visuals.
Fans were livid and almost immediately, we saw #ReleaseTheSnyderCut start appearing on social media. The movie was bad, but it was bad because of meddling. It was bad because of color grading. It was bad because of that damned mustache. It certainly wasn’t bad because of the writing or the characterization. No, it couldn’t possibly be that. It definitely wasn’t something bad from the start that only got worse because of the messiness behind the scenes. It had to be a conspiracy, sabotage, someone jealous of how rad Snyder’s movie was who just wanted to make him look bad by releasing a giant turd instead.
From there, things only got worse. There were all the staples of toxic fandom: reply spamming, spiraling conspiracy theories, threats, harassment, the works. Snyder fans made the worst Rick and Morty fans look like angels. It got to the point where merely bringing up your dislike for a DC film on social media could make you a target. Questioning the mere existence of the fabled Snyder Cut was as divisive as the 2016 election and the continued fervor about it felt like it was fueled by the same hatred as much of the political landscape in the years that followed.
Then came coronavirus and the end of movie theaters as we knew them. AT&T, the corporate overlords of Warner Bros. and DC, were trying to come up with some way to make money off movies during the pandemic. What could they release on their flagship streamer, HBO Max, that wouldn’t require shooting tons of new footage and still be new enough to generate huge buzz and net them some new subscribers? Why, the infamous Snyder Cut, of course. So they dumped about $70 million into finishing the project under the guise that they were finally giving Snyder the chance to realize his vision and not at all that they wanted to put out something that could compete with the subscriber success of Netflix and Disney Plus. This decision poured gasoline onto the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut fire, leading to some of the smuggest social media gloating by many Snyder Bros. Journalists questioned why Warners would reward such a toxic fandom by caving to their demands, but realistically, money is money and they clearly just wanted to gain as many subscribers as possible. Snyder fans were a guaranteed audience and this would be HBO Max’s big pandemic release to secure all their subscriptions. As Michael Jordan once said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
Fast forward to the spring of 2021 and Zack Snyder’s Justice League is released on HBO Max. The movie is four hours long and bizarrely presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio “to preserve Zack Snyder’s vision” according to a disclaimer at the beginning. Why a film would need to be formatted for IMAX when it was only ever going to be released on a streaming service is beyond me, but I’m sure toxic fans will eventually demand a full theatrical release including IMAX exclusive screenings, so this is probably all just planning for the never-ending Snyder Cut future we’ll find ourselves in eventually.
So is this new version of the Justice League any good? Well, it’s complicated. On one hand, it’s definitely an improvement over the previous film. Every character gets motivations, development and some personality. This is particularly true for Fisher’s Cyborg, who is so much at the center of this story that it’s amazing to think how little he appeared in Whedon’s version until you consider what a terrible situation that whole shoot must have been. The plot is way more fleshed out, the backstory of the Mother Boxes actually seems somewhat interesting and the villains have motivations now. The visuals are also vastly improved and there’s tons of Snyder’s trademark slow motion—like, way, way, way too much slow motion. Still, it’s absolutely a better film overall.
But I definitely wouldn’t call Zack Snyder’s Justice League a good movie. Better than absolute garbage is great, but it’s still bloated, needlessly dour, and plagued by some of the issues that often appear in Snyder’s work. And honestly, is “not horrendously terrible” really a big accomplishment? Is it really a win when the most I can say about a movie is that it’s an improvement on something pretty universally panned as awful? The Flash doesn’t have as much horribly awkward comedy in this version, so…hooray, I guess? Superman’s face doesn’t look like something out of The Polar Express, so…mission accomplished?
I’m glad Fisher got to be in more of the movie and I’m glad a creative person got to do what they wanted without studio meddling, but this whole thing reeks of rewarding and perpetuating mediocrity (*cough* Chris Terrio *cough*) and I’m just kind of tired of that. There are so many fresh voices out there, so many creative people who will never have a chance to get their ideas made, and now we’ve got a studio over $300 million into another go at a not-very-good Justice League movie.
Where does it end? It certainly doesn’t seem like the studio is in a rush to exhume the Snyderverse, but a lot of us probably never thought they’d cater to the demands of toxic fandom and dump so much more money into a project that was such a failure the first time, so it’s not like it’s impossible. Frankly, at this point, all I’d like to see of the Snyder Cut is some kind of documentary deep-dive into how this whole situation came to be, maybe something along the lines of Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau. But no more Snyder Bros harassing people on social media, no more depressing Superman or bloated stories with the runtime of a coast-to-coast flight. I’d love for us to collectively just move on from this whole thing…but now that that Snyder’s base has gotten a taste of what they want, I know that’s probably not going to happen.
You really hit all the points of my dislike of the Snyder Cut. I also appreciate how you broke down the story of the film, it was a good refresher and helped clarify things, such as the logic behind the HBO Max decision. Great job with your piece Alexis.