A four hour movie isn’t something that I would ever consider watching under normal circumstances. But, the entire history of this film is abnormal. This is the original movie before Zach Snyder had to leave the project due to a tragedy within his family. In it’s post-production phase, he was forced to turn over the movie to Joss Whedon. Under pressure from Warner Brothers, Whedon cut it down to 2 hours and made it “funnier and lighter”. Yuck.
Fans didn’t like the theatrical release all that much and started a campaign demanding to see Snyder’s version. After several years of petitioning and hash-tagging, they got their way. WB kicked in tens of millions of dollars to finish the Snyder version and released in on MAX (HBO) in 2021.
Now, I don’t really get into super hero movies that much. I think there are just far too many of them to keep up with and the CGI is a mess most of the time. I have not seen End Game, Iron Man 3, Flash, Ant Man, or roughly about half of the other ones I haven’t named. I really have to be inspired to watch one of these things. They are usually over the top and too bloated for my liking.
After seeing this title come up in my recommendations on Max I did a quick search to see what fans thought of it. Apparently, they love it and so I figured I would give it a shot, breaking it up over a few different nights because of the runtime. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.
The movie was able to create this entire backstory of the villains as well as introduce us to the protagonists one by one. When they were introducing “The Flash” it suddenly dawned on me who Zach Snyder was, based on a movie of his I already really liked. The Watchmen from 2009 (Baldy rating of 92/100) is a fantastic movie and you can definitely see glimpses of that movie in this one.
Anyway, I watched this four hour movie over three separate nights and thought it was thoroughly entertaining. I did roll my eyes a few times when they jammed in some woke stuff. Example: The main villain “Steppenwolf” (that name is an eye-roller on its own) says to his minions “Leave her to me, she’s mine!” while looking at Wonder Woman, as in he wants them to back off so he can fight her. The camera zooms into her face and she says “I belong to no one!”. Yuck! That’s not even what he was talking about. I’m 46 years and I’ve had to deal with this shoe-horned feminist message my entire life. Newsflash to writers and producers: it’s not 1940 anymore. No one is trying to own women and haven’t in a long time. The message is stale.
Anyway, another facet that wasn’t great was some of the CGI. Don’t get me wrong, we are leaps and bounds better today than we were 10-20 years ago in that department. But, some of it still looked cartoonish. The main villain definitely didn’t feel real at times. However, they did a great job with his voicework. The villains seemed truly evil.
The story moved along well. A few of the scenes dragged on just a little long though. With some very well executed editing, this movie could have been a tighter 3 hours or so. It should have ended when Clark Kent was walking toward the camera and starting to reveal the S on his chest. But Snyder thought he should do an entire end section setting up the next movie, which by the way will not be made, not with him anyway. Snyder and Warner Brothers parted ways after the fiasco revolving around this movie. There is a great deal of resentment in the studio. I side with Snyder though. When has studio interference ever improved a movie? Rarely, if ever.
Overall, I liked this movie. It wasn’t perfect or anywhere near perfect. But it was quality writing, direction and the effects were good despite occasionally looking cartoonish. I have not seen, nor will I probably ever see the 2017 theatrical release. I have way too many movies in my que to rehash similar material for two hours. Remember, the theme of this blog is “Life is too short to watch bad movies” and I plan to stick to that mantra. Zach Snyder’s Justice League gets a healthy 88/100 potatoes from me.
I won’t be sad that the next Justice League won’t be made by Snyder. I really don’t care that much. But I would love to see him make a sequel to The Watchmen.
