Despite how most of the world despised the Justice League movie back in 2017, I never hated it. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. It was no easy feast to pick up something someone left behind and deliver a complete cut of the movie without impacting the end product at all. I think Joss Whedon did a good job given the circumstance. But then the call for the Snyder Cut and then all those later reported drama on set between some of the cast members and the crew had, in my opinion, completely demolished what’s credibility left for the theatrical release. That said, I don’t really care much about those as part of the audience, and since acquiring the Blu-Ray upon its release, the Theatrical Cut of the Justice League has frequented my TV screen, well, quite frequently.
After three years, after all the hoo-has and dramas, the Snyder Cut was finally announced. There are fanfares, fireworks, trailers, hype and every bit of whatever you can think of. With DC Fandome happening during this pandemic period, more information and tit-bits were dropped in the form of more additional scenes from the trailer. As per usual, more hype and every bit of the trailer was analysed, torn apart for scrutinization, then put back together for deeper analysis. The hype is real, and seriously, the artificial excitement is suffocating.
To say that I am not remotely interested will be a lie. But I am not as excited as maybe most people are. Zack Snyder is a great film maker, that’s beyond discussion. He is great in materialising his vision to his audience. He could make seemingly impossible characters into characters that could leap off the pages where they were given birth to. However, is Snyder Cut a good thing for Justice League as a property? I am not so sure.
Apocalypse is coming all over again.
Zack Snyder is well known to have really dark themes for his movies. From Watchmen to Batman Vs Superman, they are really dark superhero movies. For me, from a film appreciation point of view, I think Watchmen was a great movie with great production value. But from an audience point of view, I did not enjoy it. For me, it was overly depressing with twists that made it even more depressing. Yeah, I know this is kind of the premise for the Watchmen series, but then I always questioned myself, ‘the world is depressing enough, do I want to go into the theatre for an additional dose of depression and pay for it?’
If I want to stick to the DC properties, I did like Man of Steel. I think Zack Snyder did great justice to that character with Henry Cavill. I think the previous iterations of the life portrayal of Superman did not really investigate the character deep psychology enough. Smallville attempted that but then it has many seasons on TV to do that. Man of Steel managed to redo an origin story that has great emotional and psychological depths. However, it is not a very upbeat superhero movie, which is fine at that stage as there are only that many ways you can redo a well-known superhero origin story that has been done a million times.
Then came Batman Vs Superman, which in all honesty, up to this date I still hated. The best bit of that movie was the introduction of Wonder Woman, and set the stage for Suicide Squad (which was also a disappointment) and the first Justice League (was shocked to find out The Flash was played by someone else though). ‘Hate’ might be too strong a word for Batman Vs Superman, because it did have some of the best superhero scenes in the DC franchise – who would ever forget the Batman infiltration scene to save Martha and how Wonder Woman made her first entrance (which I hope was not spoiled by the trailer). However, there were just so many things that do not make sense for me at that time. If you want to find out more you can read my previous blog on this.
With the original Justice League, I was looking forward to it, as it will be DC Extended Universe (DCEU)’s first team up movie. I did worry that it was rushed as you still haven’t met half of the other characters yet so it has a lot to do to actually get the audience acquainted to them. And then Zack Snyder left the project because of family tragedy. Joss Whedon was asked to finish the project at a very late stage with limited budget. I found it extraordinary that he could meet the deadline and release date. Probably because of that I didn’t expect much. And with no expectations I was pleasantly surprised with the final product that has a complete story arch. Is it over simplified, yes maybe but then what else can you do with all the limitations you have and your name at stake?
However, hard core Snyder fans were unhappy with it. They wanted the Snyder Cut. For me it was a surprise because Batman Vs Superman was severely criticised as too dark for a DC movie, so why would people want an even darker version of Justice League? I guess, people always wanted things they couldn’t have. I never doubt that Snyder has a complete vision for the properties as he had talked about it in the past, but having a Snyder Cut release could be a two-edged sword that could improve or destroy the DC franchise, which seems to be in a really multi-dimensional situation.
Again, to say that I am not remotely interested would be lying. Otherwise I would not have consumed all the news about it and now writing about it. I think it is good that they decided to turn it into a miniseries instead of full-fledged theatrical release. Snyder would have enough time to tell the story he always wanted to tell with minimal further undermining of Joss’ hard work at a hard time. Also, it can calm the fans once and for all. The fact that it is on HBOMAX in the States (which I suspect would be Foxtel in Australia), the release will be more limited, so only hardcore fans would be paying additional subscription to watch it.
I do wish well for the Snyder Cut, but personally I think I will wait on the reviews and news once it came out first to decide whether I would watch it. For me, it is more about why would I destroy an originally enjoyable experience to experience 6 hours of depression about the same set of characters? The truth is Synder’s movies are very difficult to unsee them once you have seen them. So, I learnt now to be more cautious about whether I want to see an alternative version of something I liked already.
This will not be the sentiment for a lot of other people, but then film watching is a personal experience after all, right?
