The moment has come that some had clamored for. The moment I never wanted to see happen. Let me start by saying this. I don't like that this exists because it validates all the toxic fan boys, angry over how Justice League turned out, who cried out for the Snyder's original vision of his movie. I hate that public pressure made this happen. If only people like this would use their power for good. How about more representation? How about better story telling? No, give me that thing that I don't have because I'm going to bully you for it. I love comics, but the community surrounding them can be very toxic and I hate that. I feel like this movie is the manifestation of that.
Clearly I have a lot of feelings before even coming into this movie. I will try to be as objective as possible, but remember, these are my opinions and I will feel what I feel.
To prep me, I took the crazy step of re-watching the theatrical release of this movie first, so I can have something to compare to. It is absolutely a mess. It is exactly what happens when you have two people with competing visions working on a movie, like what happened here.
Let me start by answering the question, is this Snyder Cut better than the theatrical. In one of the few nice things I will say about this movie is that yes, this version is better than the theatrical. However, that does not mean that this is a good movie. Before I go too far, let me say a few things about the theatrical version of the film that we initially got. Maybe the shine has come off Whedon, but he made some strange choices with the material he was given and what he decided to add. One huge difference right off the bat is how the movie begins. In the Whedon version, we get these kids taking a video of themselves asking Superman what is the equivalent of "Con questions". You know, dumb questions you would ask at a comic convention. It is such a weird choice. Are they trying to humanize Superman? Show how he is missed? It is out of context and weird. In the Snyder cut, we get Superman being killed by Doomsday and letting out a sonic scream that drives that version of the movie. It goes on for a while. I'll be honest, I hate this as well. Both beginnings are dumb.
Also, Whedon tries to inject humor into this movie at the wrong places. I guess he was chosen because of what he did with the Avengers movies, but I can tell you that is a wrong choice. It doesn't fit this movie. We get a couple of one liners from some of the characters that are forced. Batman in particular has some that don't fit how they made his character through this movie and BvS. For example, when they fight Superman just after middle of the movie, he quips about bleeding a little after Superman zings him with his own line from the last movie, "Do you bleed?".
As evidenced between the two hour running time of the theatrical version and the four hours of the Snyder cut, there is a LOT left on the cutting room floor. The disjointed nature of the theatrical version is evidence of that. Whedon seemed disinterested in most of this and just wanted to get it done. So things flow weird.
Anyways, I could continue to talk about new scenes, different musical choices and other things, but I'm here to talk about what I thought of the "definitive" version of this movie.
Any version of this movie should NOT be FOUR HOURS. I'm sorry, if you can't decide where to cut your movie to make it into a 2 and a half to three hour film, that problem lies on you. That is where Snyder fails. He needs to be edited. Left to his own devices, we get this movie. He meanders or creates scenes that are completely unnecessary. We do not need an explanation for every little thing. The entire epilogue is confounding and does not need to exist. It tells us nothing.
My biggest complaint is how overstuffed this movie is. This movie is trying to do a lot. It is a tall order to establish a world ending threat, bring together three characters we know and then introduce three new characters and give some of their backstory to get us up to speed. One of my big problems with both of these versions is it does what the Avengers didn't. We learned about Cap, Iron Man, Thor and Hulk from their own movies before they get thrown together. With that out of the way, they didn't have to try and weave in any backstory for them, you could just focus on how they mesh as a team. This movie tries to have it's cake and eat it too. I suspect that's another reason they brought Whedon in. Instead it does a disservice to every character involved, specifically Cyborg but also Aquaman and the Flash.
Let me get to some of the details of what I actually liked in this version before I go into more dislikes. For those of you that are fans, I'm sorry, but there are going to be a lot more dislikes.
I like that Steppenwolf is now positioned more as the lackey that he is and that he bows down to Darkseid. We even see and hear from Darkseid in this movie. So that is cool. What I didn't like is how Steppenwolf's new design looks. Somehow, they made him even more generic looking. He is wrapped in this silver armor and given the muted colors of this movie, it can be hard to distinguish him from the parademons or the Justice League he is fighting unless the camera is centered on him. I hate his new look.
So apparently Ryan Choi (another version of "The Atom") is in this version, so he was completely cut from the theatrical version. I wish I knew the reasoning behind that decision. If there is one thing this movie does RIGHT, is it is now starting to world build outside of the main group. This character is done a huge disservice. However, not as bad as how they did Cyborg. Let me just go into that real quick.
I totally get why Ray Fisher, the actor portraying Cyborg, was super pissed about the Whedon version of this movie. A lot of backstory that at least helps to flesh him out is completely lost in that version. As far as you know, he's some black dude that is mostly robot. In this version, you know he was a sports star, was actually smart and really had some deep seeded issues with his dad. None of that is contextualized in the theatrical cut. As much as they cut from him, you would almost be better off cutting him out of the entire movie completely. It's that egregious.
It is weird to see Martian Manhunter show up in this version, but ultimately he feels very fan service-y. When he does feels very weird and out of place. He is a guy you can leave until the next movie. This movie was already overstuffed as it is.
Another issue I have with this movie and the theatrical version is the treatment of Superman in the Snyder films. He is always regarded as a threat and we are shown many times in all the movies preceding this how people were afraid of him. Now that he's dead, the world seems to forget all that and mourns him. Like a LOT. These movies didn't earn that reverence, especially when he was always played up as dangerous and needing to be controlled. Don't forget Batman's whole deal in the previous movie was to KILL him. This movie goes a long way to trying to talk about how Superman is so important, but really he is the Deus Ex Machina in this film. At least in this version of the film we see a little more of him and the fight scenes play out a little different. I do not like that they put him in the black suit here. That is also more fan service we didn't need. Put him in the red and blue. This movie's color palette is already muted as it is, I don't need more monochrome nonsense on my screen. Also, everyone just treated like it was normal and made no mention of it.
Similarly, I think it is a weird choice to say that the invasion of Earth was held back by the presence of Superman and that once he was dead, Darkseid felt like they could invade this world. I truly doubt after conquering thousands of planets, this one dude is a threat to him. To put my last point on Superman, I am tired of Snyder always reverting to having Superman floating in the air with the sun behind him, making him feel like a religious figure. It's so tired.
I have much more I could say, but let me get to my last point. Some of you might have seen a meme or picture about how this movie has over 24 minutes of slo-mo shots. You may be like, "So what?". I absolutely hate how much slow mo is used in this film. It made me come to grips with the main reason why I hate Snyder as a director. When he did it in 300, that was fine. That movie was all about action and no story. I think he did it a lot in Sucker Punch. He absolutely did it a lot in Watchmen. He did it a bit in Man of Steel. He did it in Batman versus Superman. He does it even more here. You can see where I'm going with this. He overuses this a lot. I know that may be his "thing", but it is obscene. Not everything needs to be slowed down. We joke about JJ Abrahams always using lens flares all over the place, but at least he's not doing it once every 5 minutes. That is what this movie feels like. Snyder is a guy obsessed with these shots and he has not evolved over the course of all those films I named. He should be better than this by now, but he isn't. The only time I would forgive it's use is when the Flash is involved. However, look at X-Men: Days of Future Past and watch the Quicksilver scene to know how you SHOULD use slow-mo with a speedster. This movie fails. I'm sorry, but clearly this really bugged me. I'll finish by saying the Flash scene in the movie where he saves Iris (or I'm guessing that is her) is borderline creepy in how long it takes.
I could probably go on and on, but I will stop here. I subjected you, dear reader, to enough of my complaining. Look, Snyder did a good job setting up pieces to be used by other more talented (or competent) directors, so he will get kudos for that. I do not want him ever touching anything in the DC Universe. I hope this movie does not make Warner Bros. reconsider him because that is a mistake. Put him on cinematography because he knows how to create cool shots, but he cannot craft a cohesive story.
This is your warning to not waste four hours on this if you can help it. Take it from me. The crazy person that watched six hours of this almost willingly.
Test
ReplyDeleteI guess my original reply is too long. I’ll try breaking it down into parts
DeleteJust to offer a second perspective, I went into this movie having not seen the theatrical cut, or any of the other DCEU movies except for Man of Steel and Wonderwoman.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, let’s jump in:
I can tell you that I appreciated the concept of the first scene with Superman’s death, because I had no idea he had died. Well, honestly, I still didn’t understand he had died after what felt like forty minutes of watching him scream. I actually didn’t pick up on the fact that he had died until the movie outright said he had. Do, yeah, tone wise, I guess I kind of appreciated the sonic scream thing—but it went on waaaaaaaay too long (as is my main criticism for pretty much everything in this movie).
As far as I am aware, Whedon was hired and told to make the movie as much like an MCU movie as possible, which means pretty much one thing: quips! Now, I can absolutely see that clashing with the movie, because the only character I could see making quips in this cut would be the Flash, and maybe Batman in a wry sort of way, but if everyone was making the quips, I’d suspect that that was more due to the execs wanting the movie loaded with jokes rather than because Whedon thought they’d be a great choice. But I tend to give Whedon the benefit of the doubt in terms of his writing (or else he’s just always had a dynamite editor until his version of this movie).
I find it interesting that you criticize the theatrical version as having weird flow—personally, I thought the flow of this movie was horrendous, so I can only imagine how bad the theatrical cut was.
Absolutely agree about Snyder being unedited and awful. He meandered, he overexplained, he had the most BIZARRE musical choices which actually caused me to start laughing at the movie at times, and he for some weird reason decided to abridge the most interesting parts of the movie, while dragging out crap that was uninteresting for hours in a strange art house style that made me go “wow, what a pretentious piece of shit”. And that epilogue! 40 damn minutes of shit that had NO BEARING on the movie, was just slapped on at the end, and was horribly uninteresting to me—DESPITE the fact that I enjoy the Injustice plot line! It was spitting in my eye after already slapping me in the face... after forcing me to sit through photos of someone’s vacation. Cripes, I’m somehow more infuriated about that epilogue than I am about the rest of this train wreck of a movie.
I understand the difficulties of trying to have a movie about six characters where only half have had movies establishing a personality, and I would probably have to go back and watch the Avengers movies again for comparison in some ways. But the fact that in four damn hours, the ONLY personality I had a mild understanding of was Cyborg (and that solely being: “I hate my dad and miss my mom”)—unless you count Flash’s “I only use my powers to save attractive women, and also am young” personality (also, instantly making the character selfish and unlikable to me)— is unforgivable. If I have to watch a four hour movie, and there’s only six characters I really need to know about (hang on, let me list them: Batman, Wonderwoman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg, and Superman), along with a villain (Steppenwolf—Darkseid didn’t need literally any screen time, and could have just been teased by Steppenwolf by name or implication), a maguffin danger/deus ex Machina, and a plan, then why spend any time on peripheral things? Like wasting forty minutes on an epilogue that has literally nothing to do with the plot. Or wasting artsy scenes where Aquaman’s harem sings to him from the shoreline. Or spending more time on Lois Lane’s character than on any of the main characters, just in order to establish the fact that she and Clark love each other so that she can instantly snap him out of “evil” mode. You know what would’ve been a more effective use of time? Cut that out, and cut out the entire part where Superman comes back evil for about five minutes a d then has to go “find himself” until he’s needed. The fact that this much time was wasted on a character that wasn’t even involved in the story until the last scene is just asinine. But I’m biased on this, because I personally believe that Superman being dead gave the movie a chance to actually have a real threat—Superman is a terrible, overpowered character, and should only exist as a villain. He’s like Captain Marvel in that way. Just a plot hole to overcome unless they’re working on the other side—hence why Injustice is an appealing storyline to me.
DeleteI can certainly see the problem with cutting out Cyborg’s storyline from the other version, but I will say that I think leaving in this much of his story was also an enormous mistake. It introduced far too many plot holes: he can hack anything, and also has an entirely automated defense system that he can’t control? He can easily access the military weapons system? WHY THE FUCK DID HIS DAD GIVE HIM CONTROL TO ALL OF THAT?! And why didn’t he constantly have to struggle with that issue of his auto-defense in all of the other dangerous scenarios he came up against? How was he surprise attacked? Why didn’t his system simply not allow him to try to tear the mother boxes apart, which appeared to be dangerous to him? And if all those powers were simply all because of the motherbox rather than his dad, then why did Superman not change at all or get any weird computerized parts or anything?
DeleteSo, yeah, I think that’s a character that is better off skimming over—or better yet, get him his own damn movie to really do a deep dive into. Having him in this movie at all was frankly a problem, and his only real purpose was to introduce the concept that the mother boxes could probably revive someone. Taking a nuanced character with a lot of material that needs to be covered and shoehorning them into a role of “just don’t think about it” only works in one of two ways: with a full analysis of the character, such as by way of an entire movie dedicated to them; or by cutting the role down to the fewest details possible. The latter isn’t the best option, but it’s better than the absolute breaking of the audience’s immersion by discussing major plot holes and just not addressing them, in my opinion. I’d rather have gone “huh, what’s this guy’s deal? Oh, something about being part robot? Okay, sure” than what I actually went through by watching this terrible movie. And hey, while we’re at it, let’s talk about his only purpose in the movie: that seeding the idea that the box could revive Superman. That plan was so poorly conceived, discussed, and executed that I was just lost the entire time. A box of unspeakable power. Got it. It was drained in recreating Cyborg’s body (but he was still alive, notably) and converting existing parts of him into machinery for some reason. So they have the empty box which did that, and they have Superman’s dead body. Got it. What the fuck now? The leap in logic from “it recreated a new body for someone who was dying” to “I bet it could bring Superman back to life” is already nonsensical, but then having literally no conversation about “hey, what if it fills him instead with a computer AI, or recreates his existing body in machinery like it did to Cyborg?” and “hey Cyborg, can you be taken out by a single EMP? Because bringing back Superman as a machine that can be taken out by an EMP or who could be hacked would be worse than the current situation”. And why the fuck would they think that the Flash could charge the box? It’s unspeakable power. We don’t know how it charges or holds it. Are we really not even going to explain that by mentioning something about the dad researching it and leaving copious notes for them to go through and understand? This could’ve been Cyborg’s time to shine by really going through the science of it, or Batman’s time to shine in investigating and piecing together the possibilities.
Martian Manhunter just confused me. I didn’t know who he was in the middle of the movie, nor did the DC fan that I was watching it with, and both of us were like “is this a new bad guy? What the fuck was that whole thing with Lois just now?” Absolutely should have been cut.
DeleteAgreed with the overuse of slo-mo, and how poorly it was utilized. Agreed with the Flash being creepy as hell in his intro (yeah, it’s not borderline). Agreed with Superman being nonsense in this movie, both by the way people react to him and the absolutely lack of character he displays in the movie (he hugged his mom... so.... character development, I guess?). I will say that the only reason I won’t harp on the “bad guy is scared of Superman” plot point is because it meant that it made sense that everyone had a long sidebar with Superman and the box didn’t get stolen then, and that it provided an incentive for the others to be so desperate that they’d go “fuck it, resurrecting Superman is literally our only option”. Because without that understanding that he was the only reason they didn’t invade (this or other planets, since the boxes were all on earth, and they needed those to conquer places.... but they also forgot the boxes were on earth, somehow), then resurrecting him would make no damn sense at all (and it only barely made sense to begin with).
Hey, we haven’t even addressed the fact that Aquaman didn’t do a damn thing in this movie, or that Wonderwoman is apparently far more effective when working not in a team than she is IN a team (deflecting bullets, making explosions, moving about as fast as the Flash and Superman, unless either of them has a story reason to be going faster).
In summary: this was a movie that should have been an action movie. You can’t throw three incredibly short action sequences into a movie (totalling maybe 30 minutes?) into a movie and go “look, it’s an action movie!” You also shouldn’t be treating it at times as cerebral if you don’t do that the entire time (it makes your audience overthink the parts that make no sense), and you shouldn’t be treating it at times like music videos from different genres (it breaks immersion and ruins the flow of the movie). You also shouldn’t be taking characters known for specific key traits and then ignoring those traits. Hey, remember when Batman was supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, and not just the DC version of Iron Man? The plot is a mess. The characters are basically cardboard cutouts. The pacing is a mess. The soundtrack is a mess. At times, the camerawork was a mess.
But ya know what? I’ll give kudos to one scene: when Superman is evil and the Flash starts trying to go super fast to get an advantage, and everything is basically standing still for him, except you see Superman’s eyes tracking the Flash as he starts turning his head to watch where the Flash is going. That scene was well done. And yes, the movie was so bad that of the four hours, I can tell you what single part I went “oh, I like that”.
Oh, and as an aside, I think it’s important for me to note that I don’t dislike Zach Snyder. I enjoyed 300, and though I didn’t realize Suckerpunch was also his work, I unironically love that movie and am happy to discuss it and defend it. However, I am not a big fan of DC, and specifically, I cannot stand Superman (much like how I dislike Wolverine the more powered up he gets). Superman is a Mary Sue. There, I said it.
Delete