Justice is served!
Zac Snyder's version of Justice League is finally upon us, with most critics agreeing that it's an improvement on the 2017 original, at least according to those reviews cited by the BBC. The original was infamously fucked up, sorry, reimagined
by Joss Whedon, when he took over the production after Snyder's departure following a family tragedy. I have watched that version, described by one anonymous Warner Bros executive as a piece of shit
. It was…okay, but let down by a muddled plot and an anticlimactic antagonist.
Of the critics cited in the BBC's article, just one mentioned the role of fans in helping to make the recut version a reality and, even then, only negatively. In her two-star review, Hannah Woodhead concludes that the Snyder cut signifies nothing other than the potential of fandom to influence top-level creative decision-making
. Bitter. What's wrong with Warner Bros finally meeting fans' expectations of what could've been Snyder's creative vision? After all, they're not LucasFilm. And it's not a one-way street in servicing the fandom. Those fans have donated half a millions dollars to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, even before the film's release, which is itself expected to raise more through HBO Max.
Elsewhere, on social media, the bearded bonehead—none other than Jeremy Hambly of TheQuartering—was able to find problems in the media response to the film, and specifically the role of toxic fans
inspiring its genesis. Then again, they're all hacks for clicks. The reality is that although toxic fans
do exist, they're a small, albeit vocal, minority. Any large enough population has its fringe elements, but they're not as influential as they'd like to think they are.
Personally, I'd like to see an improved version of Justice League—if such a thing could be a thing, and it appears that it might—because Whedon's version left something to be desired. On the other hand, four hours? Oh wow!
I may have been misguided in my praise of WarnerMedia's fan service. The driver behind Zack Snyder's Justice League could've been AT&T's eye for the money, and specifically bolstering its HBO Max streaming channel. It appears that WarnerMedia itself has no shits to give.
Well, I've just finished the Snyder cut, thanks to the dying hours of my Sky trial. And I can see why it lasts four hours…plenty of padding. Long; plodding; pompous; verbose, all apply.
The antagonist made more sense, and the plot was less muddled than before, but it could've done with a better resolution than Flash turning back time. That physics-defying, faster-than-light bullshit really annoyed me; it's a lazy, unimaginative cop-out. Especially since Ezra Miller's Barry Allen is such a fey drip.
And Bruce's dream 'alternative ending', which added nothing, was just one of several places where Snyder's self-absorption could've been dialed back to make the runtime less taxing.
Overall, not terrible, but overhyped. I'm glad that I didn't pay for it. A strong 3/5, borderline 4/5. An hour less, and losing the timewarp, would've bumped it to a definite 4 though.