So after a little peer pressure but no real desire to watch it, last night I watched:
Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
I’ll start by saying this: Growing up I was a huge Batman fan. In fact I was way more into DC comics than I was Marvel.
I remember when DC owned the box office! I actually watched an entertaining interview with Stan Lee once where he said that Bob Kane (creator of Batman) used to call him up to tease him about how well the Batman films were doing at the box office. Stan said that he wished Bob Kane was still alive today so he could call him up to tease him about how well the Marvel movies were doing now. DC pretty much had the monopoly on superhero movies until the last Christopher Nolan Batman film then it all seemed to fall apart.
Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to understand that at heart I’m a DC fan and I want a DC cinematic universe as well thought out and executed as the MCU is. Hopefully all that will give more credibility to what comes next...
(Skip this next part if you know how the “Snyder Cut” came about).
If you’re somehow not aware, The Justice League movie we got back in 2017 wasn’t the original vision of the film. Zack Snyder who was originally at the helm had to leave the project after tragically losing his daughter, after which Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed such films as Avengers Assemble (2012) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) stepped in and finished the film. Unfortunately, this meant we got his vision of the long awaited DC hero team-up and not Zack Snyder’s.
Snyder had previously directed other comic book movies such as 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009) and Man of Steel (2013) so a lot of fans were understandably disappointed, especially when the finished film only received a lukewarm response. Fans started an online campaign to have the “Snyder Cut” released and amazingly, after a few years Warner Brothers coughed up $70 million and told him to go and make it. As far as I’m aware that’s never happened before.
Anyway, I’ve been following the progress of this film since it was announced, and as much as I was curious to see how different it would be from the 2017 version, I feel so worn down by bad DC movies that I would’ve been happy to give it a miss altogether - especially considering it’s run time of 3 hours 53 minutes! Nevertheless I watched it last night.
My “review” is actually pretty short and sweet, so if you’ve made it this far, thanks and you’ll be glad to know I’m nearly done.
I’d be lying if I said I remember the 2017 version scene for scene as it was a while ago that I watched it. I also disliked it so much that I think by the end I was on autopilot just waiting for it to end. Because of this it’s hard to know for sure what’s new and what was in the previous version.
Over all I thought the new film was a big improvement.
The first thing to get my attention (other than the 4:3 aspect ratio) was how much better the special effects are. For me the worst thing about the previous version was that the CGI was awful, especially on the film’s villain, Steppenwolf. They’ve done a really good job of sprucing everything up and Steppenwolf has had a full makeover and now looks totally different and way more menacing.
This new film also seems to flesh out the characters a lot more making you more invested in them and caring a little more about whether or not they succeed. This is also the case with the villain. I literally couldn’t tell you what his goal was in the 2017 film but in this one it felt a lot clearer what he was all about and what he was trying to achieve.
My main criticism about the whole movie is the run time. At nearly 4 hours long it does drag in places as it establishes some of the character’s origins/backstories etc. Why they didn’t just do what Marvel did and give each character their own film before bringing them together in an “Avengers Assemble” kind of way I don’t know. If they had, this film could’ve been a fairly epic, 2 hour, balls-out superhero extravaganza! Instead, it’s more drama than action. It’s split up into chapters though so that does make it easier to duck in and out of if you’re not willing to commit to the whole thing in one go.
All in all it’s a good film and I enjoyed it. I do feel though that if you’re more of a casual watcher and not really a hardcore comic book/superhero fan, you might struggle to make it through right to the end.
Am I likely to watch it again? Probably not.
Seen it? Let me know what you think. 👇