ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021)

ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021)

(Adventure, Action, Drama) [R]

I don't care how many demons he's fought in how many hells. He's never fought us. Not us united.

So if you read this blog you know that I gave JUSTICE LEAGUE a 7 out of 7. For me, that was an enjoyable film and I was able to fill in any gaps in my head that were needed. We also get introductions to the league that I thought were all pretty solid. However, that movie was NOT what director Zack Snyder envisioned. This movie is. It’s 4 hours and 2 minutes of storytelling. It’s basically the Loch Ness Monster of film because millions thought this either didn’t exist or NEVER would. So how was it?

In this one, we still get the same basic plot we had in JUSTICE LEAGUE. Steppen Wolf has come to earth now that Superman is dead. His goal is to take over the earth for Darkseid and win back the affection of his master who kicked him out of the band so to speak. In order to do this, he has to get 3 mother boxes. They have basically a ton of power and yield to whoever owns them. Meanwhile, Batman (played by Ben Affleck the best Batman thus far) is trying to get a group of superhumans or aliens together to fight this oncoming threat foreseen by Lex Luther. Can the league form in time to save the world, or will it be too late?

I am not going to give away major plot points in this review but in a 4-hour film pretty much every character is fleshed out better than in the original. We also get some insight as to Aquaman’s (played by Jason Momoa) background that was missing from the original, but a TON more on Cyborg (played by Ray Fisher). In fact, Cyborg’s role in this movie is light years more critical in this version than it was in the original. There are also ideas in BATMAN VS SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE that are far more fleshed out in this movie than we have ever gotten in the past. We also get a slight but important introduction to a few major characters from the comics we hadn’t seen before. That is all I am going to say about that. 

Gal Gadot is top-notch as usual as Wonder Woman and where Henry Cavill is utilized as Superman is just far superior to what we got prior. Ezra Miller is good as The Flash, but I am not a fan of his work outside of the DC universe. This feels a lot more like what we’ve come to expect out of the director's cuts of the previous Snyder films. 

Snyder’s color pallet is markedly different. His focus on greys and blues is almost legendary at this point. In this movie that doesn’t change at all. With the 4 hour run time, this movie feels a lot more like something epic in the vein of LORD OF THE RINGS. Just in the sense that there is a ton of exposition and the characters are given a lot more depth. A LOT of this movie wasn’t even in the first one and Zack went out of his way to ensure that nothing he didn’t shoot ended up in this version. He didn’t even take a paycheck to ensure that what we got was exactly what he would have done with this movie if he had been in charge. There are entire sequences missing as well. We don’t get the family that Barry saves late in the movie even introduced for instance. 

Overall this movie is far superior to JUSTICE LEAGUE but it is also a “time investment”. I can’t wait till this comes out on BLU-RAY because this is a great Saturday chillaxing in front of your projector or TV feature presentation. For people that want quick and dirty, the original might be more for them, but if you are in the mood for a masterpiece, the Zack Snyder cut is everything the hype says it should have been.  

Clearly, this is a 7 out of 7 like the last one for me, but this 7 out of 7 is a vast improvement over a version I already loved. This one also made me cry, so there’s that.

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