Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Director: Zack Snyder. Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ray Fisher, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa.

First things first: I have never seen the original “Justice League” and to be honest after seeing everybody’s reaction to this director’s cut, saying that this is an improvement of the previous version, I don’t think I ever want to see it. So basically I’m giving you my thoughts on the basis of what I have just seen (almost 4 hours of my life I’ll never get back) and not on what they fixed improved or changed from the theatrical cut. First of all I should say that NO film should be 4 hours long.

This was an ill-conceived project to start with, whatever version you’re watching and to say that this version serves better storylines and characters because it has more time to do so, is just not enough of a good reason.

As it is this film feels like a compilation or a cut-down of an entire TV season about DC superheroes squeezed in 4 hours. With no beginning and no ending.It starts with a messy recap of a bad film I had tried to forget (Batman vs Superman) and after almost 4 hours it still managed to leave us with cliffhangers, unresolved plots and open ends: what an utter deflating experience.

In the middle of all that, a whole lot of GCI mess and then here and there some clumsy backstories for some of the characters which felt slightly crowbarred and tagged on. Let’s face it, no film should ever do so much weight lifting and introducing so many new characters in one go.

So let’s talk about its length really: did it need to be so long? Absolutely NOT. Speaking here as a (pretentious and presumptuous) film editor with almost 30 years of professional experience in cutting things down, I do honestly believe there is a better film (not a perfect one, mind you) to be made out there with some serious tightening, as I have said I have not see Weadon’s version, but I’m told that wasn’t the one.I thought the first hour or so was almost entirely expandable (and so were the last 20 minutes, which really belong to another film… or actually 2 other films).

So many scenes felt superfluous, while few others were pointless fan service, (including a pointless twist which actually ruins a potentially decent and poignant scene between Lois Lane and Clark Kent’s mother), but more crucially the internal pacing of most sequences seemed indulgent to say the least. A lot of that has to do with Snyder’s style of film-making, with those constant agonising slow-motion shots, often adding very little in my view (in fact they could have shaped off at least 40 minutes by running those at normal speed). But hey, once again, that’s Zack Snyder for you: self-serious, ponderous, downbeat, very few smiles, murky-toned-down-colours and lot of slow-motion. If you like that kind of stuff, this might as well be your thing. I just wanted to reach our to the remote control and make it go at least twice as fast (something very funny actually happened at one point: as I stretched my leg on my couch I accidentally hit the remote and shut off my tv just during one of those end-less slomo shot. It took me about 15/20 seconds to turn it on again, and guess what? It was still on the same slomo shot… haha).

I also have to say (and I know I might sound like an old man talking) all those dark grays and blacks in the film didn’t help much when it came to work out who’s doing what to whom an where… There’s a scene about half way through underground where I had some real problems trying to figure out what the hell was going on in terms of who was hitting whom? Not that it matter much. At the end of the day, it’s all the same stuff: people hitting each other and nobody ever getting hurt. In fact I thought one could play a nice drinking game every times a superhero (or a baddie) get thrown up in the air and against a brick wall.

The film is so over-stylised and CGI-heavy that ends up having the opposite effect of those Nolan’s Batman movies and feels artificial and removed from any reality. I rarely cared about anything that was happening on the screen. Not once I laughed or got moved or even went wow. Nothing. No emotion whatsoever, except at the very end when the credits came up, at which point I finally felt relived and said about “thank F**k for that”.

It doesn’t get the 1 star treatment because actually all the actors do the best they can with what they’re given ( I particularly liked Ezra Miller as the Flash), but as a film it’s an over-blown mess which should never have been made as a one-film. And that’s from somebody who’s grown up reading Superman and Batman comics. Potentially I was the perfect audience for this.

I don’t understand how can this film be possibly among the top 120 favourite film on imdb. Please enlighten me! Leave me a message and let me know.