The Stone, The Spear, and The Superman, Part 4: Zack Snyder's Justice League
Main developments since last time were picking up what I have to imagine will have been my favorite comic of 2022 in It’s Lonely At The Centre Of The Earth, and watching The Banshees of Inisherin as it was talked up by Sean. Wrenchingly beautiful ‘oh no is this me’ work from Colin Farrell anchoring a movie portraying the exponentially escalating consequences of a single act of casual cruelty, unfurling into an absolutely grueling portrait of loneliness and futility. Not my usual fare, couldn’t be gladder I made the time.
David: OKAY SO AFTER A COMPLETELY NORMAL LENGTH OF TIME BETWEEN ENTRIES IN THIS SERIES as well as after one of the most prominent instances of studio dicking in Hollywood history, 4 years, and $70 million, we got…a monster assembly cut first draft of a film that still ultimately doesn’t exist. First thoughts?
Sean: Assembly cut feels like an apt description. It’s not bad per-say. It’s certainly stronger than Man of Steel. The problem is… it’s less interesting. It’s a well shot action movie that could have been a lot of fun as a two hour movie that you don’t have to think about much. Goodies punch baddies, lots of mythology, Superman helps kill the Devil’s failson. Not much else. As is, however, it’s an absolute slog to watch in one sitting.
Ritesh: Y’know, I was really dreading watching this. Not because it’s bad, but because it is a gigantic 4 hour behemoth that when I first saw it, I thought was the weakest of Snyder’s trilogy. It’s definitely a less interesting and spiky film compared to the other two. At the time of viewing, when it first hit, I liked it and felt it was akin to the kind of older action blockbuster film that the MCU ended up replacing and taking the place of. It feels like a throwback of sorts. But I was definitely disappointed that it was not more…spiky and wild. I’d hoped for something much more unhinged. And yeah, it’s definitely hard to watch in one sitting. I had to break it up into two viewings to get through it.
But y’know…having rewatched it now? I think I kinda love it?? I was surprised to have that response. I figured by the time I got to that ending Jared Leto Joker trash, I’d be tired out, and to an extent I definitely was, but the response I had was also ‘Wow, that’s a fun movie!’ to an extent I wasn’t quite expecting. I had a great time. Good DC film.
David: I broke my own viewing this time up along the episodic ‘chapters’ suggested since this was originally going to be released as such, and I do think it helped; a lot of the Silas Stone material that was left in for instance I think makes more sense if it’s connective tissue basically acting as an unofficial recap. I imagine that version for instance is what this ‘opening credits’ sequence shown off shortly before release that didn’t make it into the finished product was for:
I enjoyed it the first time, and I enjoyed it this time; it’s the most ‘vanilla’ of Snyder’s movies, but I think this hangs together in ways Man of Steel didn’t necessarily. Still though…well, getting right down to it, Excalibur didn’t show the Knights of the Table getting together, and you can kinda feel that gap in terms of what he has to draw from here. The individual characters are largely well-handled, but this is infinitely more interesting as the unfurling of a shared universe than as the formation of a team. A movie more enamored with superheroes existing and being remarkable notions than them necessarily doing gripping stuff.
Sean: By contrast, as I said, I watched it in one sitting. Just as a complete cinematic experience. As such, I had a less positive experience. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t work as a four hour movie.
Now, a four hour movie can work. The most obvious example (in terms of modern American cinema) is Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. The movie, much like Justice League, is structured around a series of chapters/episodes. But the place where I feel Snyder’s Justice League stumbles and Tarantino thrives is in how it approaches the titular League. In The Hateful Eight, we’re introduced to our cast in small bursts that highlight the characters. First, we spend roughly a half hour with John Ruth, Daisy Domergue, and Marquis Warren. We see their dynamic with one another. Then a new player is introduced to the dynamic, Chris Mannix. And we spend another 15 minutes with him. After which, our other four principle characters are introduced alongside the familiar characters. Oswaldo Mobray spends time with John and Daisy, Sandy Smithers with Mannix, and Señor Bob with Warren. (The soft spoken Joe Gage is allowed to linger in the background.)
By contrast, the Justice League is introduced (sometimes multiple times) in ways that don’t build off of one another. We go from the cosmos reacting to Superman dying to Batman and Aquaman having an interaction to Lois going to the Superman monument to Wonder Woman having an action scene to herself to the Amazons dealing with Steppenwolf. And that’s in the first Part. Nothing builds from one character to the next or from one scene to the next. Things just happen, what the hell.
Ritesh: What the film is likely going for, and we can discuss its success, is a sprawling epic that contains numerous genres and ‘types’ of films all within it. So we go from the opening with that operatic music playing over Superman’s death, as reality is quite literally reeling from the impact of it. That’s quite a different flavor then to the next mountain-climbing and trek into town with Bruce/Arthur. Then the bank-robbery action with Diana is a different flavor. The movie tries to lean to noir everytime Gordon’s on screen, and all the Amazons stuff feels like it’s how Snyder remembers the experience of watching Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings films, and the Parademon sequences are done almost like clips from a horror movie. It tries to sort of get at an assembly of different types of movies into one weird expansive whole. It’s an act of tremendous indulgence, which is for once absolutely the remit given the entire reason this film exists, and it goes all in on that.
Sean: When doing a sprawl of genre, however, you still need to build off of them. You escalate and deescalate in the scale of the moment from the small to the massive. Thinking in terms of structure, a stronger approach would be to put the Lois scene immediately after the opening reaction to Superman’s death. Go from the cosmic to the mundane. Then move to Batman and Aquaman chatting, followed by the two set pieces with action. As is, the Lois scene feels like a speedbump. A non-sequitur that derails things to highlight Lois’ presence as a key figure in the film.
Still, the opening is truly spectacular.
David: That opening pan is the movie in a nutshell to me: we open on Superman in his dopey rubber movie costume dying at the hands of a 2006 special effects monster, and then pan way, way, way, way, WAY out to reveal that also Lord of the Rings stuff has been happening just off-frame these last two movies the entire time and now everybody’s gonna have to deal with that. It’s kinda great!
The core interest of the movie is an aesthetic one, to the point of my having a loose thesis here:
Superman - Sci-Fi, hence continuing to focus on the Krypton of it all for instance.
Batman - Classic movie superheroism, he’s a virtually unreconstructed square-jawed hero in here for the most part in sharp contrast with how BvS handled him, and of course he’s the only one wearing a ripped-from-the-comics supersuit.
Flash - I think he’s meant to be the MCU guy? Hence him being the “...so THAT just happened” voice in the room, and his suit being the ostensibly ‘realistic’ one with all the segmenting and the layers of explanation between the heat plating and the wires conducting the electricity that sparks off when he runs.
Wonder Woman - Classic fantasy, swords-and-sandals.
Aquaman - Fallen fantasy, the scion of ruins, he wanders around in sweatpants at the periphery of his sunken ancient kingdom but the majesty clings to him (and this is close enough to Diana’s deal that Atlantis and Themyscira are noted as having a shared history a couple times by her and Arthur). I’m pretty sure the dead king on the throne is even the one from the Age of Heroes sequence to drive it home.
The Fourth World of it all is kind of a mish-mash of all of these traits, sci-fi and fantastical and rusted-out and faux-realistic and elevated, which fits with them as being despite the title the ‘Old Gods’ relative to the League’s burgeoning deities. Even the Amazonian arrow being pulled into the wall like the Kryptonian command keys when the Age of Heroes temple is discovered kind of visually implies a shared heritage running back into Darkseid and his crew, textually reinforced later when the Kryptonian ship is able to interface with the Motherbox. Cyborg, in turn, is a purification and extension of their own aesthetic, this soup of CG steel and light that can be horrific or heroic for the demands of a given scene. I don’t necessarily care for all of these designs, but as a whole they make an interesting demonstration of the versatility of the shared universe space, and are honestly doing considerably more of the heavy lifting in conveying how remarkable these characters coming together is than the script.
Ritesh: If we’re doing breakdowns, please allow me to do one of my own. I’ve got something.
So for the longest time, I was unsure about the prospect of a Justice League movie without Green Lantern, just given what that character represents thematically on that ensemble. Green Lantern is the mortal blessed with the divine power allowing them to stand alongside these super-beings. Flash might seem to be an easy substitute, but it’s really not the case as he’s a superhuman whose very perception of time and reality are skewed and he has super-healing and all manner of wild powers. Green Lantern is just a person with a ring. The connection of humanity with the divine. The promethean hero, the one of the spark, of the flame, of inspiration itself. The Creator Hero.
But this movie makes a strong case, as good a case I can possibly imagine with Cyborg as the replacement for that. Cyborg very much occupies that niche, he is the modern Prometheus story, by being the modern superhero riff on Frankenstein and his monster. Victor is the mortal afflicted with the divine technologies of gods, who can do anything. He is the technological god of our new age. He is a new god.
Which brings me to my big realization and revelation in rewatching this film. Zack Snyder’s The Justice League is just The Authority with The Justice League in the wildest way. Let’s break it down:
Wonder Woman- Jenny Sparks
Superman- Apollo
Batman- Midnighter
Cyborg- The Engineer
The Flash- Jack Hawksmoor
Aquaman- The Doctor
Wonder Woman in this whole damn thing is quite literally The Spirit Of The 20th Century. She is that broken, tired soul who’s lived through that whole era and is still here, and wants a better world, like Jenny. Superman and Batman I don’t think I need to explain. They’re the gods of day and night, light and shadow. Cyborg is blatantly The Engineer, who was already a GL-replacement and updating by Ellis/Hitch. He is the god of technology. Aquaman is the shaman, the god of the natural world, while The Flash is the god of cities, the modern hermes, the romantic dancer of science. With his two little feet he makes the impossible possible and connects.
Grant Morrison called The Justice League outdated and outmoded after The Authority hit. And since then The Authority has reshaped so much of superhero fiction in its mold. But Zack Snyder and Chris Terrio’s iteration here feels like the most blatant, even though I highly doubt it was intentional at all. It’s just the natural end result of treading that same thematic terrain, exploring that same ground.
If BvS was the Stormwatch, with attempts at political statements or big Watchmen-esque bits, then ZSJL is The Authority. It’s all that shit thrown out in the dustbin for big scaled-up high octane 90’s action blockbuster shit.
Sean: Don’t really have much to add here. The Authority was my big Ellis blindspot. And, well, I haven’t been in the mood to read him for a bit.
David: I favor this interpretation because it basically makes the whole The Age of Heroes sequence…the Justice League. The big broadly-drawn archetypal forces beating back the ultimate nightmare, and here in the present their fucked-up conceptual descendants labor in their shadow but are also able to finish off said nightmares the way the old guys never could.
Also, speaking of Cyborg (who in this is only a year older than me, and in the timeframe of the movie is actually a year younger than me, don’t care for this at all): he is, above and beyond any other character, the perfect vehicle for Snyder’s vision of the capes and cowls. The endlessly modular man who this movie sells as a Superman-and-pals-scale force of nature in a way the comics have never approached, really almost Doc Savage as Frankenstein where he’s noted as fantastically omnitalented prior to his accident and even further omnicapable beyond the reach of any of his contemporaries once granted the powers of the gods even if he’s not the strongest or fastest in the room. The hero as inheritor to eternal greatness, as victim risen, as an ordinary man with a choice. And moreover the hero as noble monstrosity, the tormented figure vacillating between inspiration and agony who has to tip-toe to walk through the world without breaking it and somehow find a way to do some good as the impossible thing he is.
(While I’m here: always glad to see Joe Morton, and he and fellow live-action Silas Stone Phil Morris actually have a shared Smallville pedigree.)
Sean: As with all Snyder’s work, the visuals are something to behold. And I fucking love the way we see Cyborg’s mental vision of how the systems he works within portrayed. Where most films would do some cyberspace nonsense with green code or whatever, here we get a truly mystical realm made out of a ruined modernism that feels like a Frazetta portrait complete with a looming black sun.
Ritesh: Cyborg is the heart and soul of this entire damn thing! And Ray Fisher is great in it. Looping back to The Authority point though, The Authority was satire and had a political perspective and point. This is less of that. Every story in Ellis/Hitch Authority is about a different Western paranoia, and all 3 of them are about the ultimate Western fear- Invasion and the fall of their empire built on colonialism-capitalism. But this is none of that. This is purely just genre level engagement. The film ditches all the geo-politics of MoS/BvS to become far more abstracted and archetypal, the idea of individuals and humanity at large. It’s why it’s the idea of humanity and its archetypal forces against BIG Space Imperialist Steppenwolf.
That said, the film DOES have a political dimension to it wherein you see Cyborg get his powers and the first thing he does is see this poor working class single mother barely getting by and screws with the system to make sure she gets a 100k. That might actually be the most genuinely, truly heroic thing I’ve seen a hero do in one of these Big Two superhero movies. It gets to the essence of why people even like these characters to begin with.
And the darkly funnier inverse of that comes in the form of Desaad telling Steppenwolf that he still owes them 50k more worlds, that’s his debt. His credit score ain’t going up until he pays up, and the currency is planets.
So there is that.
Sean: And yet, those two moments aren’t contrasted with one another. The Steppenwolf scene where we discover he’s not so much a badass mother fucker who will destroy the heroes with a single blow as a failure of a man who can’t help but fail over and over again–that scene happens much earlier in the film. Instead, the contrast is played with the Flash’s backstory as a son trying to do right by his father. There’s still a degree of contrast to the ways in which our heroes are trying to work to undo injustices within systems of power, but it’s not as poignant and biting as the implication.
David: Structurally speaking, the movie’s a mess in a way I’d say is kind of endemic to trying to organize a monstrosity of this scale if not for you just having pointed out the likes of The Hateful Eight as a way of doing it right. I still dig it, but it’s easy to imagine a tight 2 and a half hour version of this where Snyder got to properly do reshoots the way he should have in the natural course of things.
Much more importantly though: STEPPENWOLF. MY BOY. One of the great DC movie villains bar none, god this guy sucks so bad and I love him. And of course Snyder got anyone he could from Excalibur he could in the form of Ciarán Hinds to pull him off, who does so with aplomb: genuinely intimidating in the original sequence with the Amazons, so endearingly pitiful in every subsequent one. It’s astonishing his design was changed as ‘too scary’, he has such powerful miniboss chump energy.
The only real problem is that, well, we know for a fact he was originally planned as a villain for Ayer’s Suicide Squad, where a failed criminal having to pay off his sentence with assignments as the baddie would make infinitely more sense, and then he was shuffled off into this one for reasons we’ll get into in the final part. But while he’s kind of whatever as the villain of this movie specifically - I guess his failed attempt at independence that he’s trying to redeem through the perverse ‘Unity’ of the Motherboxes is kiiiiiind of a parallel to what the League has going on? - he’s as an entity unto himself hilarious. Also his choice of lair in a nuclear plant with Soviet cosmonaut tableaux representing a lost tomorrow is a solid villain hideout.
Ritesh: Too many people mistakenly think that to have an effective bad guy people enjoy, you have to make them an absolute BADASS and that’ll tide you over. But Terrio/Snyder understand the truth:
Sure, they can be badass or whatever, but the key is this:
Make ‘em pathetic. Make an absolutely pathetic guy.
Just an absolute loser. He’s like ‘i’m so tough i’m so bad, i’m so cool and i’m so evil’ while fighting amazons or atlanteans but then one space phone-call from Desaad and Darkseid and he’s on the verge of crying each time, just fucking melting.
David: Look at that wet-eyed weakling. Beautiful. Again, they thought this guy was too scary! A perfect Level One Boss for the DCU, really. When Wonder Woman declares “I’ve never seen a being as strong as Steppenwolf?” You gotta laugh.
Sean: He is such a failson, I love it.
Ritesh: The failson bit gets funnier when you remember he’s not the failson, he’s FAILUNCLE. He’s Darkseid’s Uncle!! He’s the failed brother of dad that’s like ‘nephew, pls love me T_T I’m not a loser I swear pls invite me back to the family gatherings, I promise I’m cool now. God, pls call me, I’m so alone. I’ll do anything. I’ll beg even. Pls man. Don’t do this to me.’
David: This would work even better in the comics, because there he’s supposed to be the old ways of swinging dick conquest usurped by the horror of Darkseid’s fascism, so he really is the loser uncle watching the kid take off the way he never could. Here it’s mostly just to differentiate him from the upcoming ultimate baddie, but again he’s amazing so I can’t complain.
Sean: By contrast… Darkseid sucks. He’s the typical galactic conqueror that so much of DC writers try to make him when they’re not approaching him as an ‘Anti-Hero.’ He gets his ass kicked by the proto heroes of myth. And then when he finally appears, he gets shit lines like, “I have turned 100,000 worlds to dust looking for Anti-Life, looking for those who robbed me of my glory. I will stride across their bones and bask in the glow of Anti-Life. And all of existence shall be mine!”
Like, there’s the gem of a fantastic Darkseid line there. But it just keeps going into the galactic conqueror route. It simply isn’t as strong as, say, “But I am the revelation! The tiger-force at the core of all things! When you cry out in your dreams–it is Darkseid that you see,” or “See what I have made! Imagine what is yet to come! I take away confusion and give them obedience. I take away their fear of themselves and give them fear of Darkseid. I have liberated them from the chaos of indecision! I have given them one straight path! One clear purpose! One goal: To die for Darkseid,” or “Warmbo is no man! Warmbo is but a cosmic sensation of despair! The weight of dread in the pit of your heart! Warmbo is the shrill of the dying lamb! I was fostered from no womb nor act of fleshly desire!”
There’s no gravitas to this Darkseid. Nothing that demonstrates him to be the sort to run Happyland or deliberately walk over a flower he happened to walk pass or double dip. He’s just a run of a mill baddie.
David: The first thing Darkseid does is casually get his shit rocked, and the last thing Darkseid does is use one of the two Excalibur lines in this movie in “We will use the old ways” because Zack and Chris are scrambling for something, anything to attach onto a guy they don’t really care about. That Snyder said in interviews the young Darkseid in the flashback was still ‘Uxas’, citing possibly the most cartoonishly braindead pindick DC retcon of all time, says it all: Snyder’s not interested in Justice League vs. Fourth World. Snyder’s interested in Justice League vs. The Gods, and they’re the set on hand; I’d say it’s no wonder that without the foothold of Kirby he totally messes up the big guy, but c’mon, you’ve read Rock of Ages, you’ve read Final Crisis. No excuses.
Also, the actor here, Ray Porter, I see played Brutus on the CW’s Naomi, the discount Zumbado to Zumbado’s discount Darkseid. Amazing, perfect casting, chef kiss.
Ritesh: The depiction of Darkseid here is exactly on par with 99% of Darkeid depictions everywhere else, from the comics to animation, wherein he is Mongul, Lord Of Warworld, rather than Kirby’s more interesting figure or Morrison’s capitalist cult god. So it’s just about what we expect as standard at this point. It’s around the same tier as Geoff Johns’ Darkseid.
Sean: I will forever be pissed that Ava DuVernay wasn’t allowed to do her New Gods film. A Wrinkle in Time shows she would’ve been amazing at it.
Ritesh: Yes! Really wish that had happened. Shame that DC axed it because they were dipshit cowards whilst under the pretense of it being because of this film, when…c’mon, we know that’s not what got in the way.
The key thing here though is to go back to what David mentioned- this is Justice League vs The Gods. Whereas the comics Justice League is JL vs Starro, which Alan Moore would later interpret as Superheroes vs Cosmic Horror in Watchmen, here it’s not Superheroes vs Cosmic Horror. There’s nothing chilling or mind-expandingly dreadful or hard to understand about these guys. There’s nothing unknowable or scary about the Fourth World here. No, if anything they’re all too familiar and all too knowable. The story is, in essence, The Justice League vs Their Mirrors, for they are the gods to Snyder.
David: Minor note, glad Starro got a l’il homage(?) with the interrogation machine Steppenwolf uses on that one Atlantean.
Ritesh: ‘The Unity’ of the antagonists is the idea of uniting a divided people by making them ‘one’, with them being ruled, under the sway and cult-like control of a higher divine power- Darkseid. The Unity of the heroes then is the idea of uniting a divided people by bridging the gaps, with understanding and common causes, compassion, and the promise of a better, brighter tomorrow with nobody under control, but everyone getting a fair say. It’s equal, shared, and a unity born of respect, rather than domination.
It’s what the Justice League represents to Snyder/Terrio. They’re not here to be worshiped. They’re here to stand beside us as equals and help us out, because they need our help just as much as we need theirs. They’re messes, disasters, failures, people, just like us, but they rise above and do the impossible, reminding us we can do just the same. They’re beacons of inspiration, which is why they’re framed above us, as figures reaching out their arm for us to grab, so we can rise on up.
This is not Morrison’s Justice League that catches us when we fall. They’re people who fall with us, who suffer with us, and then get up out of the dirt and say ‘You getting up or what?’ They’re breakable, corruptible, human, and that’s what makes them interesting to Snyder.
David: It’s a very New Frontier-esque lens, even if this in spite of keeping them humble maintains a view of them as awkward young supergods finding their place with each other as opposed to Cooke’s palookas charging towards glory.
Sean: And yet, they still remain outside of humanity. For all that they are capable of breaking, of being destroyed–the people in the dirt, in the mud, the ordinary people are kept at a distance. We see the Flash try to get a job and save the girl, but we don’t see him at the job or with the girl (who was Iris). We don’t see much of the people of the various cities beyond the moments where they need saving. There’s nothing as small and wholesome as the bit in Dawn of Justice where the two men kiss. The epic is placed above all other concerns.
Ritesh: The failings of Snyder’s Watchmen reveal themselves once more. And with his other films really. Too preoccupied with the powerful people above. And looping back to the point on The Authority, given it lacks its pointed satirical quality…well, it sure doesn’t help!
Sean: With his Watchmen specifically (because I did watch the damn thing for another project), his attempt at tying in the newspaper vendor is weak. An excuse to have the animated comic have a reason to be in the movie. We don’t get a sense of who the people at the vendor are. Their scenes feel out of place in the overly stuffed Ultimate Cut. They distract from the epic rather than contrast it as the comic does.
David: ok Sean you make an important point - and it especially burns when the real ‘epic’ of it all was still waiting in the wings to boot, though the last Steppenwolf fight is at least better than the Doomsday finale was - but since you bring him up can we talk now about how Flash is both the best and god awful worst part of this movie.
Ritesh: I hate to say it folks, given they are a dipshit criminal (not the fun kind, but the ‘jesus christ what the fuck’ kind), but Ezra Miller’s The Flash kinda rules? Like from that theme music titled AT THE SPEED OF FORCE to the whole sequence with Barry Allen at the end when he travels back in time? Amazing. It nails the fundamental power, joy, and thrill of the character. It absolutely sells Snyder’s ‘mythic superheroes’ shit harder than anything else in the movie, for me.
David: With each of the trilogy, Snyder had a new visual preoccupation. With Man of Steel, it was obviously in selling the idea of Superman in a different way than we’d ever seen before. With Batman V Superman, the superpower action of it all is phoned-in while the Batman warehouse brawl clearly has his entire heart poured into finally getting a Batman fight ‘right’ on screen. Here that love goes to Flash, and him catching the rubble as it falls, moving so fast against the ionization he’s producing in the air that you see vague shadows of his movements like old paintings on the sides of urns? As Ritesh said, that’s the most “...oh. OH. They’re like GODS” moment Snyder’s ever produced, and that’s without the car crash rescue and him reaching through the glass, turning back time at the climax, or AT THE SPEED OF FORCE, BAY-BEE.
The problem is Ezra Miller is fuckin’ insufferable here. I’d be jaundiced regarding them in any case, but I’m pretty sure I found their schtick Way Too Much even the first time. Now? Goddamn unbearable, I can’t tell whether what they’re doing here is Snyder failing or catastrophically succeeding in like I said before boiling down ‘the MCU’ into an archetype but it’s painful to watch whether due to concept or execution, though “I do VERY competitive ice dancing” was a nice line. And if we’re talking genre mashup, Billy Crudup was transported here from the Geoff Johnsiverse where people only speak in blunt metaphors.
Sean: And not even that good blunt metaphors.
The Flash is very much something that made me not like the film on a second watch. Because spending three and a half hours with the guy is hell. I was miserable. Good god, why is this happening?
Ritesh: I suspect the rationale for Snyder/Terrio worked like this: We’re making mythology. Epic mythology. These are our new gods, as it were (even if I personally think the whole Superheroes are Modern Mythology/Gods to be a bunch of stupid horseshit, that’s the basis here, so you have to engage with and meet the work where it’s at to judge what it’s trying to do) and so it works like this:
Aquaman is hard, cold, unyielding and unrelenting, but also capable of warmth and comfort and care, because that’s the oceans, that’s the sea. He feels old, ancient and world-weary and yet young and primal. He is the god of the seas. He represents that. The Flash? The Flash is the Hermes, the god of communication, the god of speed, he leans young. He’s a passionate, excitable youth, full of quick remarks, attempted jokes, so on and so forth. I think it’s less the MCU as it were, and just a natural outgrowth of ‘what’s our god of communication like now?’, and so this is the end result of a communication god-hero for a social media generation.
Sean: The Aquaman/Flash dynamic is truly an underrated part of the film, though mostly due to Jason Mamoa doing a lot of heavy lifting. He’s an extremely charming guy even with the gruff exterior. Whereas Ezra… remains Ezra.
That said, Snyder’s use of The Flash’s speed is spectacular, but for my money the best moment for the Flash is when he realizes that Superman can keep up with him. Just the ‘Oh shit’ look as Superman moves in slow motion with him.
Which, I suppose, brings us to the resurrection. Which, god damn, is amazing. A Superman stripped of humanity, stripped of anything save power. Just a brute of a blunt instrument taking everyone down with ease. Cavill truly makes this a frightening thing to behold, showing absolutely no emotion as he brutalizes everyone as much as he can in a film with PG-13 level violence. No one’s arms get ripped off is what I’m saying.
David: Superman here is really solid! He’s one of the manifold compromises in play but Snyder still gets a kick out of playing him as Franktenstein’s monster fresh off the lightning strike, and playing a sort of reverse-rebirth arc as he goes from his death being undone and facing Batman again, to Metropolis and Lois (though according to a later interview that involves a choice on Snyder’s part I do not care for, but that’s another aspect to get into next time), to Smallville and Ma, to Krypton and Jor-El/Pa. Moving backwards through his life step-by-step to get back in touch with who he is and become as close as Snyder’s interested in doing to the ‘classic’ Superman, albeit with the black suit that I hate to admit looks significantly better than Cavill’s usual getup. This whole sequence lands WAY harder for me after watching the Ultimate Edition for BvS and seeing his character arc done properly, so this can come across as a conclusion to said arc rather than ‘well, it’s time for him to be the regular Superman now.’ And him pulling Batman literally out of the darkness and into the light as the way we get the big iconic shot of the team? Perfection. Plus, I’m just gonna say it: the Holkenborg remix of Zimmer’s Superman theme is way better than the original.
Ritesh: Zack Snyder’s advanced brain-logic of ‘Listen guys...The Resurrection Of Jesus…Jesus Rebirth…but when we do it with Superman…it’s the day of The Formation Of The Justice League’ is truly something. I just wanna sit down with the guy and chat to understand how he landed there. This man is hilarious.
Sean: Given that the resurrection contains the other Excalibur line (“The Future has taken root in the Present”), it might be less the Resurrection of Jesus and more the conception of Arthur.
Ritesh: The magic of Snyder’s madness is that it can at once be both. You gotta laugh and clap at all that T-posing after Superman awakes and sorta recreates that one iconic Ryan Sook cover of him in the stars, looking over the Earth, soaking up sunlight.
Also, the sort of riff/mirroring of his ascent (ft. voice-overs from both his fathers) from the first film in Man Of Steel? Chef’s kiss. It works great. Rips.
Sean: Moving to the big fight scene, I need to talk about the Elephant in the room. Mainly, the Whedon version of the film.
There are many, many, many changes made between the two versions of the film. But the one that has stuck out to me for years has been the fight between Superman and the Justice League. There are so many small moments that make the Snyder version so much better from the lack of a Batman lying on the ground after being beaten by Superman and making a line about how much pain he’s in to Snyder actually establishing the Justice League being there.
But the one change–the massive change that works wonders for Snyder and kills the Whedon scene–is the choice to have Superman remain silent as he dispatches the Justice League. There’s a degree of menace and horror to the way Henry Cavill portrays Superman without words. His curiosity for the grotesque humanity he sees before him followed by unrelenting contempt. But in the Whedon version, we get lines from Superman. He makes an abysmally terrible call back to the “Do you bleed” line from Dawn of Justice that just sucks all the tension away from the moment.
And that, ultimately, is what the Whedon cut did to the movie. Putting aside all the horrible, awful things that occurred to make this version be somewhat presentable, what we have here is a director’s vision of horror and grandeur. And Joss Whedon, as he is wont to do, sucked it all away with cheap gags and nerdy references. There is no respect to the awe, the horror of existence. There is only a ‘so that was weird.’
David: Keeping it brief: Liked Whedon’s version pretty well at the time, “He’ll get over it” is the one truly excellent inclusion and a killer Batman moment, and it has the edge of having reshoots able to wrangle the narrative a little more tightly. But there’s no THERE there, no grandeur or vision or soul that isn’t either inherited from Snyder or a hypocritical strikeback; it’s a focus-grouped clout-chasing homunculus that turns Snyder’s take on vanilla into oatmeal as it strips away the bizarre unselfconscious earnestness this vision of this world was built on. And even if this movie gave me a reacharound and slipped a few hundred into my wallet that wouldn’t make up for the behavior of Whedon and his accomplices or the career derailment Ray Fisher faced in uncovering it.
Ritesh: Whedon is unwatchable to me, I think. I just cannot. My brain dies.
I could get into a million reasons why, but I’ll just stick to one key difference:
Snyder’s film is sincere. Even amidst all the Ezra Miller-isms of The Flash, the film is deeply, completely sincere. We talked in the prior installments, especially the BvS installments about how much faith Snyder has in his heroes, even if those heroes have dark, broken, murky histories and blood on them and they’re total disastrous failures or fuckups. He just thinks that’s the nature of this world, and all we can do is try to rise beyond that, that America can rise beyond that. Now whether one agrees or not, it’s evident in this film. His absolute utter faith and commitment to that idea is all over it.
It’s such a pure HEROISM FUCK YEAH movie. We discussed Superman as almost an Earth Elemental, bound to the land, the land and the king…they are one, which is an idea pulled from Excalibur, when talking BvS, and it holds true here too. The Earth and The Man Of Steel. They are one. Only when he is healed is the Earth saved, only then does it have a chance. That his find fully recovers and he is truly restored only when he is on the field amidst the plants and the earth is telling.
I do not know how folks can call Snyder 'cynical’ after seeing this one. He is, if anything, a true optimist of the highest order. He loves this shit, and he loves his superheroes, truly. I don’t think you can ever take that away from him or accuse him of…some of the nonsense people tend to accuse him of. He’s got flaws, boooy does he have flaws, but lack of optimism or idealism or whatever people say sure ain’t one of ‘em. It just doesn’t filter out the way most people want/think it should per their criteria.
Sean: I think it’s because of the aesthetic he uses. Snyder gravitates towards a darker color palette, such that there’s a version of this film literally called Justice is Gray. As such, audience members associate that with cynicism whereas the more brightly lit Whedon cut (or the myriad of cynical MCU films about deferring to billionaires with god complexes) are seen as optimistic. What appears is good; what is good appears.
Ritesh: Speaking of which, I have never in my life seen a more optimistic, upbeat cinematic Batman save for Adam West. This is Batman as such an idealistic, positive hero. He’s a man of faith! He believes in and cares for people! He says faith like 4 times in this film with a happy smile! He’s silly, he’s goofy, and he’s fun as hell! He’s a fun guy.
What I dig here is that Snyder starts his Batman off like a psychotic vengeful pulp bastard and takes this Robinless tragic figure on an arc that turns him into a World’s Finest/Brave and the Bold Batman of the Silver Age. The Batman Of The DC Universe who’d grin and say ‘Sure, chum.’
The key difference between Batffleck and the other cinematic Batman’s is this:
This guy was, from day one, built to be A Batman Of The DC Universe, rather than just A Batman. He’s defined not against his own world or cast, but against the wider canvas of the DC landscape and tapestry.
When Bruce is departing to face the final battle and tells Alfred “He'll be there, Alfred. I know it” in regards to Superman, Alfred asks “What makes you so sure?”. And Bruce says, happily- “Faith, Alfred. Faith.”
It’s kinda great!
David: “I spent a lot of time trying to divide us, I need to bring us together.” Not even his dumb final-tacticool-assault new costume or him getting back to blowing dudes away with his Batmobile guns can change that this is the ultimate realization of James Bond Batman in the wake of his emotional healing. “I’m rich”; “Everyone, this is Alfred, I work for him”; the Burton-ass GCPD complete with Crispus Allen to reinforce that this is a Comic Book Superhero. He doesn’t have as much going on as you’d expect, yet another thread to be addressed another time, but he’s the most definitive evidence against the idea of Snyder as by nature a downer. This is a Batman in a movie where being Batman is the absolute coolest, and also a perfect counterpoint to Aquaman - also in here the absolute coolest as the guy who’ll surf a Parademon through a building - as the carryover of the destructive curdled masculinity that threatened to destroy Bruce in the last movie.
Ritesh: So cool in fact (and James Bond Batman is a good descriptor) and so silly in fact that he’s building a super-ship for all of the Justice League to travel about in, and he calls it THE FLYING FOX. It’s so stupid it’s amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. It’s the kind of thing you could 100% reasonably see in a Silver Age comic introduced by Otto Binder or Gardner Fox or Jim Shooter or what have you. ‘The Flying Fox, The Nightcrawler,’ he pulls out all manner of slick, silly gadgetry and vehicles like a 60’s hero. It’s so much goddamn fun. Honestly, that the comics have not introduced The Flying Fox into Justice League comics as their traveling base is kind of criminal. C’mon, guys. What are you even doing?!
Sean: Well, at the time of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the comics were being written by the other Snyder. And he was doing… whatever the fuck Perpetua was supposed to be. No room for the Flying Fox or the like.
David: Notes before final thoughts:
David: I liked Marc McClure having an extended cameo in this, that was nice.
David: The Gotham Harbor sequence is Snyder trying to do a classic multi-layer action setpiece and it sucks, palpably low stakes and the reveal of the Nightcrawler is half-assed. You can tell his heart’s really in the Age of Heroes-type full on brawls, that sequence itself being the thematic and aesthetic heart of the film.
David: Ryan Choi!
David: I liked that tracking shot up through a box into following Lois and then Clark, very well done.
David: Lots of return to the idea of choice and consequence between our three newbies.
David: Speaking of Aquaman, lots of fun with the ambient mythology surrounding him; him as this quasi-cult figure, the Atlantean ‘language’.
Sean: Willem Dafoe is always a delight.
Sean: If you’re going to use Hallelujah, use the full song.
Ritesh: I got a good laugh out of Sauronseid, The One Ring-Boxes, and the Para-Nazguls
Sean: Martian Manhunter: Did he really need to be here?
David: It kills a good scene stone dead!!!
Ritesh: Oh hey the whole Apocalypse Ending scene ft. Leto Joker is ass, who’d have thought! Dear god does that unbearably dogshit segment drag down the film. I just wanna get to the Martian Manhunter end, but it just goes on and on.
Sean: I think it’s because it spends too much time on it. In Dawn of Justice, we spend roughly four minutes in that bleak future. Here, we spend 10. Some things work better in moderation.
David: Affleck sells his one FUCK though.
Sean: Oh hey, Lex Luthor is a whole new batch of crazy than he was in the last film. From Mordred to Morgana, I suppose. And he’s setting up a Batman/Deathstroke movie that people want for some reason.
Ritesh: The Justice League stabbing and cutting up and throwing the beheaded corpse of Steppenwolf at Darkseid’s feet (only for Darkseid to step on Steppenwolf’s head) is extremely fucking funny. Only made even more so by Desaad being a true committed hater, like a bitchy PA, being all like ‘I told you he’d fail. He’s a loser, boss.’
David: Snyder mentioned he had Wonder Woman finish him off because “I use a god to kill a god”. At least the poor schmuck made it back home at the end.
Sean: He died as he lived: A failure.
Sean: I prefer Deathstroke’s trad eyepatch in the hell future to the shit metal one he has in the present. The mohawk is a bit much.
Ritesh: Fun fact- The exact month this cut came out? Bendis took over Justice League. And both their epics dealt heavily with the idea of The Age Of Heroes!
Ritesh: The truck that nearly kills Iris West reads GARDNER FOX on its container, which gave me a good laugh, I’ll admit. Solid dumb visual gag.
Ritesh: IT’S TOXIC. THAT’S GOOD is iconic. As is HE WILL BE PLEASED. HE WILL SEE MY WORTH AGAIN.
David: I do NOT like that in the big slow-mo team shot Flash moves at the same speed as the others.
David: Telling yet surprising we didn’t talk much about Wonder Woman. She’s no kind of narrative center here, but she’s got a ton of great bits - blocking the bullets is an all-timer bit, and then having an inspiring girl power moment with a kid who just watched her vaporize a guy in front of her is one of the few moments Snyder’s as unhinged as people think, kinda love it. Her mom muttering “Sky-torch. Hero-beacon.” The Alfred/Diana scene that would never have made it into the theatrical cut but does so much to let this world breathe. Also [ancient lamentation music] every time she does anything remotely cool should get old fast, but it does not.
Sean: That said, wow does Gal Gadot suck at this acting thing. She’s not as bad as that meme that exists of her from another movie, but wow is she not good here.
Ritesh: Gal Gadot is certainly an actor who has taken up the acting profession and stars in movies, this is true.
David: She is what she is here.
David: I’m sorry but sopping-wet Aquaman hauling the guy into the bar? So goddamn hot.
Ritesh: I enjoy how horny this movie is for Aquaman. That moment at the start wherein he leaves after taking off his shirt, and then the women show up to sing him off, and then a lady picks up his fallen shirt and smells it? Incredible.
David: BEST MOMENT IN THE MOVIE, SINGLEHANDEDLY JUSTIFIES GETTING A FOUR-HOUR VERSION WITH ROOM FOR IT
Sean: It’s a good song too. Also the bit where he’s shirtlessly walking to the ocean while Nick Cave plays is just chef’s kiss!
David: Zack Snyder’s Justice League: A movie so dramatic Flash and Cyborg fist-bumping in the group shot gets its own little dramatic sound-effect. The Flying Fox obscuring the big skyline shot at the end sucks though.
Sean: It took us three days to talk about Dawn of Justice. It took us three hours to talk about the Snyder Cut. I think that about sums it up.
David: Chris Terrio:
“For Batman v Superman, I wanted to really dig into everything from ideas about American power to the structure of revenge tragedies to the huge canon of DC Comics to Amazon mythology. For Justice League, I could be reading in the same day about red- and blueshifts in physics, Diodorus of Sicily and his account of the war between Amazons and Atlanteans, or deep-sea biology and what kind of life plausibly might be in the Mariana Trench. If you told me the most rigorous dramaturgical and intellectual product of my life would be superhero movies, I would say you were crazy. But I do think fans deserve that.”
The death of a damn dream. These people tried so dang hard, and all that’s left (the question mark raised by a recent Jason Momoa Instagram post aside) is to excavate the corpse. They really wanted to do a thing with these, and while this just doesn’t hang together like its brethren – we didn’t even bother trying to discuss this in any kind of chronological order – it’s an achingly sincere testament to a monstrously foiled vision. This was the movie that started to turn me around on Snyder, and it’s one that in every sense deserved better.
Ritesh: I love that The Avengers get a basic Joss Whedon movie, while The Justice League gets a basic Joss Whedon movie AND then a whole ‘no actually fuck that shit, that shit is ass’ counterpoint and alternative of a sprawling Justice League epic from a different director in the form of Zack Snyder. It’s kind of incredible. It captures DC perfectly, does it not? The very first vision of them is splintered into two, with people doomed to forever argue about the canonicity of it all. The multitude of visions and clash of perspectives encapsulated right in their very cinematic debut. Is that not truly DC down to the bone?
David: AND it’s a version that takes Geoff Johns’s boring dipshit take on ‘the Justice League fight off an Apokolips invasion and that’s how the idea of the superhero is born’ and powerbombs it through the crust of the earth. As a story about a bunch of folks getting together to fight a big problem, it’s middle of the road. As a story about The DC Universe being created, in every sense? Arguably perfect.
Also Martian Manhunter shouldn’t have been in this but I wish Affleck’s final line had been left out so the final line of Zack Snyder’s Bleak, Randian, Cynical Vision Of DC for at least the time being would’ve been “Some have called me…the Martian Manhunter.”
Sean: The starry heavens above me
The moral law within
So the world appears
So the world appears
This day so sweet
It will never come again
So the world appears
Through this mist of tears