Zack Snyder's Justice League (Mini-Review)

Zack Snyder's Justice League is a longer and much different cut of Justice League (2017). In this cut of the film Superman's final cries as he died waked up one of the Mother Boxes. This, in turn, causes Steppenwolf to come to Earth with his troops of parademons to unite all three Mother Boxes so that Darkseid can claim yet another world. It is up to Bruce Wayne/Batman, Diana/Wonder Woman, Barry Allen/The Flash, Victor Stone/Cyborg, and Arthur Curry/Aquaman to stop him. Zack Snyder's Justice League was released exclusively to HBO Max in 2021. The film is directed by Zack Snyder and stars Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot.

For everyone who doesn't know: while filming the original cut of Justice League, Zack Snyder's daughter Autumn died of suicide. So the directing reins were handed off solely to Joss Whedon. Both directors have two different styles so it's no surprise that Whedon decided to deviate from Snyder's original vision. After Justice League (2017) didn't do well, vocal Snyder fans cried out it only did poorly because of Whedon. Hence 2021 saw the release of the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

Of course that's the short version of the story as this is a short review of the Snyder Cut.

I think the Snyder Cut makes a lot of improvements to the original film. Though this could be due to the massive runtime of the Snyder Cut. How massive am I talking about? A little over four hours long. So of course small details could be put in this film that couldn't be put in the original. Of course things won't feel rushed when a director has four hours to show his vision.

One of the changes I really liked was that Barry Allen (played by Ezra Miller) became more competent. In the original film he seemed like an idiot and you continually wondered what he was there for besides mere comic relief. In this cut while Barry is still clearly the most inexperienced person on the team, he is shown to be able to hold his own. Such as in the end fight where his quick thinking pays off.

In this version of the film Steppenwolf is fleshed out more and his conquest of Earth is made even more important. I don't remember the original cut of the film featuring DeSaad. Steppenwolf regularly talks with DeSaad who, in turn, takes the information to Darkseid. To me this made Steppenwolf's role in the film become so much more. Not only he is trying to conquer the planet Darkseid failed to once before, but he is trying to redeem himself for a past wrong. Also Steppenwolf figures out a valuable secret hidden on Earth which adds even more importance to his conquest of the planet.

Coming back to the four hour runtime...I should have watched this film over the course of two days or I shouldn't have watched it at night. This due to the fact that I got extremely tired so I was falling asleep near the end. This is to say that while the longer runtime allowed a much more detailed story to be told, not everyone will be able to watch it comfortably in one sitting.

I would recommend Zack Snyder's Justice League to those who were disappointed with Justice League (2017). I would also recommend Zack Snyder's Justice League to fans of the DCEU. Hopefully some of the big plot points will be followed through in future films of the DCEU.