Zack Snyder's Justice League movie review: #SnyderCut is similar to 2017 film, but still worth the wait

It isn’t often that an urban legend is manifested into reality by the will of the people, but that’s exactly what has happened with Zack Snyder’s Justice League, also known as the Snyder Cut. After the relentlessly trending hashtag and the exhortations of many (including the cast of the film) over the past couple of years, the Snyder Cut is finally out – on HBO Max in the US, and for purchase or rent on BookMyShow Stream and Apple TV in India. For reasons that were so far inexplicable, I’ve always liked the 2017 Justice League as well, which puts me in a minority. I’ve engaged with it over multiple viewings, enjoyed and even admired certain portions, picked apart the sloppy writing and patchy editing in others, and spent a whole lot of time wondering what was it that repeatedly drew me to the film despite so clearly being aware of so many issues. [caption id=“attachment_9424071” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Ben Affleck (Batman), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), and Zack Snyde on the sets of Justice League.[/caption] Zack Snyder’s Justice League goes a long way in making more sense of that film, because it is easily the superior version, even though the core storyline and so many of the scenes are pretty much the same. The fact is, this 242-minute version – which certainly wouldn’t have made it to theatres with that length, even if Snyder had full control over the original release – is unputdownable for the most. In whittling down Snyder’s film into a studio-friendly two-hour version with reshoots, Joss Whedon sucked out much of the art and soul of Snyder’s vision. The flawed but unfairly dismissed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which itself has a must-see three-hour long ‘Ultimate Edition’ for fans, available for purchase on Apple TV) took forward the brooding universe set in motion with Man of Steel; and Zack Snyder’s Justice League brings it to a satisfying fruition, while also setting things up beautifully for films that may now unfortunately never happen. The most significant difference in this new version is the storyline for Ray Fisher’s Cyborg. We see so much more of how he came to be, what torments him, and why he’s such a key character among the six that come together to form the first batch of the Justice League. In fact, after watching the Snyder Cut, it seems like the treatment of this character in Whedon’s film was almost criminally bad. There’s also a lot more of the magnetic Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, not to mention Henry Cavill’s Superman, without the digital mangling of his face to remove his MI:6 moustache.

The big win for this four-hour version is that it doesn’t feel like it is four hours long. Divided into six parts with titles of their own – and a spectacular epilogue that is perhaps the only part of the film that feels completely new – Snyder lets many scenes breathe and play out the way they should. You don’t miss the missing humour, neither do you really see the place for it.

Through the trailers, we already knew that Darkseid would feature prominently in the film. (He has a mere passing mention in the previous film.) However, his addition ups the stakes significantly, as the whiny, insufferable Steppenwolf is reduced to a mere pawn, a stepping stone if you will. (As a parallel that may annoy some, think Loki and the Chitauri in Marvel’s game-changing 2012 film The Avengers (2012) – sent by the big bad Thanos, who’s keeping track many worlds away, showing up only in subsequent films.) The entire backstory of the events in this film – the Mother Boxes, the Unity, Darkseid’s motives and so on – are clearly given the space they deserve, and it makes for fascinating viewing, which makes one wonder why they’d be so cavalier with it in the 2017 film. The more staid, mature approach also ends up doing justice to the character of Batman, who has been floundering in the DCEU, after Chris Nolan left his indelible stamp on the character. Ben Affleck’s battle-hardened, middle-aged billionaire, who believes he doesn’t have a soul left anymore after two-decades of crime fighting, finally becomes a character worth rooting for again. [caption id=“attachment_9424121” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Zack Snyder’s Justice League.[/caption] If there’s one track that I missed from the 2017 film, it’s the bit where Batman helps Diane Prince see that her Wonder Woman should be the natural leader of the group of metahumans that is looking to defend the planet after the death of Superman. It didn’t just make sense from a story point of view, it also led to a push-and-pull chemistry between Batman and Wonder Woman, something that’s almost completely absent from Zack Snyder’s film. Perhaps the greatest aspect about Zack Snyder’s Justice League coming to life is the fact that a major studio took the call to listen to the pleas of disappointed fans who wanted the best possible version of a film that they were eagerly looking forward to. The debacle of the 2017 version already underlines that studio executives rarely have a clue about the cinema they’re in charge of. Hopefully, better sense will now prevail, and we may now get to see all the immense possibilities raised by Zack Snyder’s Justice League lead to a logical conclusion. Rating: 3.5 (A longer version of this review will be up soon). Zack Snyder’s Justice League is available to stream on BookMyShow Stream, Apple TV, Google Play, Hungama Play and Tata Sky. Watch the trailer here:

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