WARNING: This article contains many spoilers for both versions of Justice League
Section 1: A Tale of Two Movies
I feel uniquely-suited to this moment.
After all, I’m one of the lone defenders of the 1998 version of Psycho. That’s not because I think it’s as good as the original, it isn’t. However, I find it interesting how very different it is from the 1960 version. The two movies not only use the same script, Gus Van Sant purposefully used the same shot list in his remake. And yet, largely because of how the characters are played, the two Psychos are very different films.
So it’s no surprise that I feel drawn to Justice League: the Snyder Cut, or “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” as it’s currently labeled on HBOMax. I’m drawn, not because I loved the original, but because the original was such a flawed movie. It’s frankly absurd to spend $70 million on a movie that was already released and was already a commercial failure (and that’s the low-end estimate of what it cost to bring Zack Snyder’s Justice League to life).
This alternate version should not exist. When people originally demanded a “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, they were demanding something that never existed. Snyder left before there was a final cut of the movie, and certainly before most of the special effects work had been done. It took a massive expenditure to make this a reality. With so many quality scripts struggling to get a green light, it’s honestly a little insulting that Warner Bros would spend so much on a vanity project like Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
But here we are.
And truthfully, there’s reason to believe that there’s room for this movie to grow. After all, Blade Runner was widely panned on its release. It was a commercial failure. It took more than two decades for that movie to get its due. These days, it's hailed as a prescient science fiction masterpiece, largely thanks to a leaked workprint version which led to a deceptively labeled “Director’s Version” that really wasn’t what it advertised, but came far closer than the movie that had been released in theaters more than ten years before.
Twenty-five years later, Ridley Scott was finally able to finish Blade Runner the way he intended. The resulting film is beautiful and heartbreaking and brilliant. That, too, was a Warner Bros. movie. Until very recently, the studio has had a reputation for being the studio that worked with its creative people, not against them. With all of that in mind, I decided to rewatch Justice League before diving into the Snyder Cut.
Let’s begin:
(the following section was written before watching the Snyder Cut. If you only want to know my reaction to that, skip to the next section below)
Section 2: Frankenstein’s Superhero Movie
The plot of Justice League is simple: A villain named Steppenwolf comes to Earth looking for three McGuffins…I’m sorry, Mother Boxes, metal cubes which have the power to destroy the Earth if they’re combined together. Batman has been assembling heroes into a team after Superman died. He tries to lead that team against Steppenwolf and save the world. Along the way, they decide to revive Superman.
If Justice League had been released before 2005, it might’ve gone down as one of the best superhero movies in history. People still look back on the first X-Men films with rose-colored glasses. Spider-Man 2’s reputation is similarly unblemished. Honestly, though, both movies have massive flaws that modern superhero epics have learned to overcome, such as the jarring disconnect between grounding the characters and telling such a fantastical story. This is a trick we take for granted these days, but it took a lot of trail-and-error to get right. For a long time, films based on comic book characters were expected to have a surrealistic aspect based on their source material. Look at Ang Lee’s Hulk for a painful example of this kind of storytelling.
Justice League sometimes feels like a throwback to those kinds of movies. I’m reminded how those older superheroes lived in a strangely blocked-off corner of the universe, one that simulated normal life without ever feeling real. Consider as Peter Parker’s ethnic neighbors in Spider-Man 2, the strangely empty Gotham streets of Batman Returns, or the dive bar Wolverine fights in during the beginning of X-Men.
Characters in Justice League occasionally approach the real world, but they never stay there. Lois Lane and Martha Kent commiserate over coffee in what is almost a real workplace. Later, Wonder Woman meets Cyborg on a dirty street in a bad part of town. However, there’s no one on these streets. No cars drive by. No one in the neighboring apartment building shouts out their windows when the power goes out down the entire block. It all feels strangely disconnected from the real world.
There are other flaws, too. Virtually every DC superhero film ends with its main character fighting a large, de-saturated CGI blob of a monster. Justice League is no exception. The only movie that featured an interesting villain is the underrated Man of Steel, which is the only DC movie before this that felt like it was trying to do something really different with its characters. Even 2017’s well-made Wonder Woman is a photocopy of the first Captain America film with a less interesting villain.
With its mediocre antagonist and a poorly-constructed simulacrum of a world, Justice League always struggles to feel like much of anything. Rival comic company Marvel has long understood something that the people at DC continue to miss: it’s hard to relate to gods. As soon as Marvel took control of their own movies, the characters became more grounded.
Some people might scoff at this statement in a post-Avengers: Endgame world, but go back and watch the first Iron Man. Or Thor. Or Captain America: the First Avenger. Most of those movie’s screentime is devoted to making its characters feel like real people dealing with real problems. This allows the wish-fulfillment of Captain America to work. In Iron Man, it lets us feel sympathy for a jerk like Tony Stark.
Justice League has rare glimmers of strength and character. A scene between Batman and Wonder Woman stands out, as he discusses his own fears and weaknesses, apologizing to Wonder Woman for being too aggressive. Another great scene finds Batman admitting to Alfred that he's haunted by the idea that Superman might’ve been more "human" than he is. After all, he explains, Clark Kent tried to live a far more normal life than Bruce Wayne ever has. Sadly, these character moments are few and far between. Batman and Wonder Woman are joined by Cyborg, Flash, and Aquaman, but all three feel more like sketches than fully-developed characters. The main villain is Steppenwolf, a forgettable lump of muscle and sinew who growls with the voice of a much better actor than the part deserves.
And when Superman is revived?
Wonder Woman goes to great pains to reassure Batman that he isn’t responsible for Superman’s death. However, the revived Superman sure seems angry at Bruce for something.
It’s never explained why Superman is semi-evil upon his resurrection, or why a man struggling to recall his identity would actually care about seeing Lois Lane if seeing his friend Wonder Woman had no effect. If this movie had any semblance of what Superman’s life had been, if it used flashbacks or Lois herself early on, then maybe we’d see what Superman does. As it is, this all plays like nonsense to artificially separate our characters until the “thrilling” climax.
The final set-piece of the movie is a boring mishmash of CGI monsters and mediocre humor. I’ve read that Cyborg actor Ray Fisher took great umbrage at being asked to say “Boo-yah,” the character’s catchphrase in his most popular iteration, Teen Titans. However, the line is delivered in such a subdued, quiet manner that it’s probably easy for most people to miss it anyway, and Fisher’s delivery robs it of any joy that it might’ve had.
This was a compromise movie, and you can feel it in every frame. Cobbled together from two sets of footage, from two different directors, and held together by Scotch tape, it's honestly surprising how well it works. Considering the circumstances, it could've been a lot worse. It's not good. But it isn't really bad, either. It's just...there.
Still, this is a movie trapped in an age before Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight forced heroes to live in the real world, despite being filmed almost a decade later. Our real champions have moved on, and their films are better for it.
How will the Snyder Cut hold up to that? Is it any better?
I have no idea.
I promise, I'm trying to keep a genuinely open mind. Scroll down to see how it went:
Section 3: A Test of Character
Five hours have passed.
The first half of the Snyder Cut uses a lot of the same footage, much more than I expected. Lines are changed occasionally, one missing here, another added there. However, the first twenty minutes are very similar, save Lois Lane’s trip to Superman’s shattered memorial.
The introduction of the Amazons and their Mother Box is broken into two scenes, with a passage of time between those moments heavily-implied. This helps because the theatrical version often felt horrendously rushed.
The terrorist attack on London’s Old Bailey, where Wonder Woman saves a group of hostages, is played with a bit more violence and brutality. One terrorist used to offer a line, “this was supposed to go quicker,” after Wonder Woman gets rid of his bomb and he realizes that he’ll have to kill his hostages by gunning them all down. Without that line, he’s harder, less sympathetic, which is an
interesting change that is neither good nor bad. It makes sense for a terrorist, but the other line did, too. Moments later, there’s an insert shot showing him switch his gun from single-fire to full automatic as Wonder Woman blocks one of his bullets. This small moment helps make sense of a beat that didn’t quite work in the theatrical version. And once everyone is saved, the scene ends with Wonder Woman telling a frightened girl she can be whatever she wants. It’s a good moment of empowerment, and helps flesh out Diana a little bit more.
Watching the Amazons provides even more character improvement. Here, they’re clearly nervous around the Mother Box (we’ll talk about these later), even frightened of it. It helps to give the movie’s McGuffin a sense of actual menace which was sorely lacking in the original. Now, as before, a battle with Steppenwolf ensues. Seeing the Amazons moan in pain as they die is uncomfortable, and adds a sense of actual loss and sacrifice, a significant improvement from the blandly bloodless clutter of the theatrical version.
Still, for every two steps forward, there’s one step back. An excellent sequence features Barry Allen, the Flash, save a young woman’s life. But his heroics are undercut with a dumb slow-motion shot of him grabbing a hot dog from mid-air and stuffing it in his pocket. It’s all in service of a moment that follows the action where Barry uses the hot dog to win over a dog that disliked him, but it’s wholly unnecessary. We saw the hot dog cart being plowed over, and we know the Flash can do things so fast that we don’t see them. However, Snyder doesn’t trust us to make the connection unless it’s laid out in painstaking detail.
In regards to Cyborg, he was essentially superfluous in the theatrical cut. The Snyder Cut attempts to add more depth and heart to the character, but it only half-succeeds. The problem is that his father, played by the stellar Joe Morton, is rarely allowed to show us that he cares for his son. It’s fine that Victor doesn’t see it, that’s part of his character. But we need to see it more. Furthermore, on a purely aesthetic note, Cyborg is poorly-designed. He’s too awkward-looking to be menacing, and he’s not grotesque enough to sell the brutality of his transformation.
Furthermore, we’re led to understand that Victor feels like his transformation into the Cyborg was a monstrous betrayal by his father, a destruction of his human self. We ought to see the real horror of that transformation more than we do, along with the lingering impact of being turned into a living machine. Can he not eat? Does he sleep? Show me something to explain his existential crisis! Instead, there are numerous scenes of Cyborg staring out a window at empty streets. It’s a poor excuse for character development.
Considering how much weight he’s expected to carry in the second half, the lack of proper grounding here is a massive problem, and a missed opportunity.
For his part, Morton does a great job with what he’s given. However, the fact remains that his most emotional moments are played out via an audio-recording over the painfully drawn-out epilogue. This alone is a glaring indictment of how his great talent was wasted.
Aquaman’s story plays out mostly the same as it did in the theatrical cut. There are still some weird moments that feel out of character. Arthur Curry cares deeply about the oceans, even if he’s conflicted about his people and his heritage. So, it’s curious that both versions of the movie have him callously shatter a whiskey bottle on the ground as he leaps into the water. The moment seems to be telling us that Arthur is a world-weary badass, but it comes off making him a particularly major asshole, as he’s supposed to care about what goes into the water. An added scene with Willem Dafoe didn’t need to be here. It adds nothing.
Later, Steppenwolf arrives to steal the next Mother Box. The increased brutality, which worked so well with the Amazons, feels over-the-top here. This is partially because we know that the Amazons are tough, physical fighters. Atlanteans? Not so much. A previous scene shows Steppenwolf torturing several unfortunate guards, which is how he learns the Mother Box’s location. It highlights Steppenwolf’s sadistic tendencies, though we’re hardly convinced that the Atlanteans pose him much of a challenge. The interrogation scene works, the fight doesn’t. Steppenwolf’s blandness and the weightlessness of CGI physics rob any tension from the moment. There’s a general sloppiness that runs throughout both versions of this movie, undercutting most of the action. It’s not a problem unique to Justice League, but it’s especially true of it.
And while this may be a small point, I have to ask: why doesn’t Steppenwolf need help breathing underwater? This is the Atlantean super-ability, but he swims nearly as fast as they do and never worries about drowning. They could have added an interesting dimension to the fight, and it would’ve explained why Steppenwolf is in such a hurry to leave once he grabs the Box, despite having handily wiped the floor with everyone here. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s never explained and it distracted me during what’s meant to be an exciting set-piece. I don’t need much. A breathing mask or even some kind of force-field over the bottom half of his mouth would’ve gone a long way here. It’s just another example where it feels like things weren’t really thought through.
Then there’s Batman. Compared to the theatrical cut, he’s lost a lot of the good character work that was used to bring him down to Earth. Yes, he’s still very sorry for the part he played in Superman’s death. However, he never feels as relatable as he did in the theatrical version. The two quiet scenes I mentioned in Section 2 were so obviously Whedon’s work that I never expected them to be here, but they are missed.
That being said, I liked that he and Diana have a stronger working relationship in this version, one that carries through most of the film’s first half. Diana continues to get new moments to flesh out her character, such as a scene where she investigates the fiery arrow her mother used as a warning. This scene is especially strong, and does
a better job than any other scene in either version to sell Darkseid as a lingering, evil presence.
As in the theatrical cut, Diana narrates a dramatic flashback to the alliance of Men, Atlanteans, and Amazons against an invading alien horde. This time, it’s Darkseid, not Steppenwolf, who was finally defeated. This change is great. The flashback is significantly stronger what we saw in the theatrical version. It’s more cohesive, and one of Snyder’s real strengths as a filmmaker is making certain figures seem larger-than-life. Given a literal pantheon of Greek Gods to play with, he crafts the best action sequence in the entire movie. This fight feels raw and visceral and intense, as it should.
Sadly, nothing that follows lives up to that promise.
Section 4: A Film Divided
At the two-hour mark, our heroes storm a series of underground tunnels beneath Gotham Harbor. This same sequence was seen in the theatrical version, and I was astonished by how few changes were made between the two. In Zack Snyder’s cut, the scene arrives with more urgency. We’ve learned more about these people and how they fit together. It’s taken us twice as long to get here, but it was worth it. And it actually feels like there’s more momentum this time, since this version has the fight so close to the one in Atlantis. It no longer feels like Steppenwolf is dragging his heels. His minions bring him immediately to the humans they’ve captured related to the final Mother Box, which serves as a nice payoff to the Atlantean guards being interrogated because we know what happens when he doesn’t get the information he wants.
However, this is also a case where Snyder should’ve been willing to at least keep a few of Whedon’s contributions. One of the best moments of the theatrical cut comes during this sequence, when the inexperienced Flash looks at the bad guys and starts to have second thoughts. He explains that he’s never really “battled” before. He prefers to push problems to the side and run away. Batman instructs Barry to focus on saving one hostage’s life.
“What do I do next?” Flash asks.
“You’ll know what to do,” Batman tells him.
Over the next few moments, Flash indeed saves a hostage. We see how the moment empowers him, and he starts to discover the hero inside himself. This culminates in a beat where he throws himself into the thick of the fighting to help Diana reach her sword, before continuing to help as much as he can (which, admittedly, is not very much. But he tries). In the Snyder Cut, this bit of character development is totally gone. Barry looks reluctant, but follows the others in anyway. He still helps Diana reach her falling sword, but the impact of the moment is gone.
After the underground sequence, the Snyder Cut begins to teeter off-balance. For all the flaws mentioned above, the first two hours of Zack Snyder’s Justice League are unambiguously better than the theatrical version. There are still problems (it’s a sincere struggle to take the name Mother Box very seriously, even as a bevy of talented actors repeat the name with such deep inflection. But not even Jeremy Irons can save this, and the intensity never lands). Still, the movie has a better overall sense of character and tone, one that is consistent throughout.
The second half of the movie begins with the discussion about whether or not to revive Superman. It’s probably the least suspenseful thing to argue over, because we all know how it’ll turn out. The theatrical version suffered from playing coy, as Superman was absent from most of the marketing until the disappointing opening weekend convinced Warner Bros to change course.
Now, everyone knows Superman is coming back. None of the suspense building up to this moment works. The sequence leading to the resurrection is better done in this version because it seems more concerned with the character interplay than whether or not bringing back Superman is really possible. But it still misses the mark.
The plan to revive Superman involves using the last Mother Box Steppenwolf hasn’t captured. We already know the Boxes can revive someone, because that’s where Cyborg came from. Yet, despite literally walking right by Cyborg’s father on their way to the reanimation chamber, no one thinks to get advice from the only other person who's ever done anything like this. It’s a flaw that wasn’t so glaring in the theatrical cut because Morton’s Dr. Stone was such a non-character. We forgot he existed, too! Yet, this version of Justice League has spent a lot of time highlighting this father/son relationship and what Victor's revival has cost them both. Furthermore, the previous twenty minutes showed a reconciliation of sorts, and Dr. Stone does help them sneak into the base under the guise of a biological containment breach.
So, why didn’t they ask him to follow them down the hallway?
Reviving Superman plays similarly to the theatrical cut, except for a last-second warning from the Kryptonian computer that, hey, maybe playing with life-and-death is a bad idea with unintended consequences!
Nevermind, they revive Superman anyway.
What follows is one of the weakest sequences in the movie, one that’s nearly unchanged from the theatrical cut. The biggest difference is that Lois is shown stopping by the memorial earlier on in this version, so it makes sense for her to have come here on her own. They don’t need Bruce shoehorning her in via one of his limousines.
Still, it’s a dumb sequence and it’s bad storytelling. Is Superman insane here? Does he have amnesia? Is he evil now? If Superman is, at heart, a decent person, why is his first instinct when being revived to try to murder almost everyone around him? There’s a slight attempt at justifying his actions by having Cyborg’s threat detection system instigate the fight, but it’s utter weak-sauce. Note to hopeful screenwriters: if you’re struggling THIS hard to justify a character’s actions, you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Honestly, it would’ve worked better if they woke Superman up, he flew to the memorial and found Lois standing there, grabbed her and disappeared without a word, leaving the rest of the Justice League to wonder if they did all that for nothing. In essence, that’s the result of the sequence now anyway, but first it does its best to undermine every single character in the movie. I’m frankly shocked at how similar the sequences are between the two versions, because it means that Whedon saw the sequence and decided it didn’t need to be changed. For all his faults, most of Whedon’s changes make sense when you realize he was hired to re-edit the movie to under two hours, and had to make an absurdly unrealistic release date. Of course, while his changes are often understandable, they also resulted in a movie that never really came together. Too much has to be explained by hand-waiving “it’s a comic book” as an excuse.
That doesn’t work anymore. We’ve come to demand more from our superhero movies, and that’s a good thing. Before the revival scene, Zack Snyder’s Justice League didn’t have that problem, either. It had plenty of other problems, but not that one.
The next half hour intercuts two threads: Superman coming to terms with his resurrection, and the other heroes’ struggle to find Steppenwolf. It turns out, reviving Superman allowed Steppenwolf to discover and capture the final Mother Box. There’s a nice sequence here with Cyborg and Joe Morton that is the best on-screen character work either one gets in the whole movie, but it’s sadly short-lived.
Here, the movie is at odds with itself: the heroes are in a hurry, but Superman needs time to come to grips with his resurrection. Henry Cavill and Amy Adams are tremendous, but they reveal the fatal flaw in the structure of this movie: these moments need time to breathe, but the plot demands that everyone act as fast as they can. Clark Kent has just been brought back from the dead. That should carry a huge amount of weight. Instead, the movie forces us to turn our attention back to Steppenwolf, a black hole of personality, as he tries to summon Darkseid to come lay waste to the Earth. Instead of letting characters react naturally, Clark has to interrupt the first hug he’s had with his mother since being murdered and subsequently raised from the dead, explaining that he has to fight another monster.
He seriously flies away a few seconds later: "Sorry, Ma, things to do!"
The final battle ought to showcase Snyder’s strengths, right? We get some glimpses of Darkseid, and the fight occurs at night instead of during the day. Superman wears a black suit for…some reason that was never really clear to me.
Well, I mean, the reason is that many people think that Black Suit Superman in the comics looks cool. And, yeah, he did.
But why does the character of Superman, this version of him, who seems obsessed with the idea of spreading hope, choose the most dour version of his costume to return to the fray?
It’s yet another thing that no one bothered to think through. It looked cool and that was their only consideration.
Most of the final battle is pretty similar to the theatrical cut. There’s some extra stuff with Batman and some mounted laser gun emplacements. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Cyborg have more time as a trio, and that does work well. The Flash still feels largely shoehorned in.
The battle over the Mother Boxes plays differently, and it honestly does feel cooler when Superman arrives in this version. The DC universe has done a lot to play up Superman as almost god-level powerful, and that pays off perfectly. Once Supes arrives, Steppenwolf never has a chance.
Sadly, this leads to another moment where the movie decides to get in its own way. It manufactures a reason the Flash can’t reach the Cyborg in time to give him the “charge” he needs to take control of the Boxes (seriously, this film’s plot is incredibly weak). It results in a weird scene where the characters lose and the world is destroyed.
That should mean something!
But no worries! The Flash just runs faster than he did before. Problem solved!
In the end, our heroes defeat Steppenwolf more soundly here than they did in the theatrical cut, and they send his defeated form back through the portal to warn Darkseid not to mess with Earth.
It’s a more satisfying conclusion. Seeing Darkseid’s reaction is nice, too, setting up a future threat that will put this newly invigorated team to the test. It feels like the Snyder Cut might end on a real high note.
Then, the Epilogue begins.
Section 5: Don’t Overstay Your Welcome
Yet again, Snyder can’t get out of his own way. There’s a nice montage of our heroes returning to their separate lives, each one changed by their experience. However, these moments were in the theatrical version, too, and they were cut tighter and not interspersed with a thoughtful, but far-too-long voiceover. While allowing the earlier character moments more breathing room was the right call, it gets tedious once Steppenwolf has been defeated. This is exacerbated by an extended vision/nightmare that Batman has of a world where Superman has turned evil. It’s implied this is the future they face if something bad happens to Lois Lane.
[clutches pearls and gasps]
But it’s not scary, it’s not tense, and it’s not effective. The much shorter scene with Darkseid announcing his plan to conquer Earth “in the old way” was MUCH more intimidating.
Also, the less said about the return of Jared Leto’s Joker, the better. It’s just terrible.
Another scene introduces Martian Manhunter in a bad imitation of Marvel post-credit teases. Manhunter was shown very briefly earlier in the movie, in a scene which made little sense but didn’t kill the pace of the film. The finale scene, set over a romantically picturesque sunrise, is poorly-written and pokes yet another hole in the movie’s paper-thin plot: where the hell was Manhunter when there was a massive world-killing goliath with an army of flying demons trying to destroy the Earth? He might’ve been handy to have around!
In the end, Zack Snyder’s Justice League remains a seriously-flawed movie, but it’s at least a cohesive one. For better or worse, this feels like one person’s vision. Some of the bad choices that existed in Batman vs. Superman are back here (at least Whedon’s version saved us from desert Batman and his post-apocalyptic nightmares). However, a lot of the movie works better when the shackles are taken off. Given time to let his characters grow and evolve, Snyder allows them to be more fully-realized than the cardboard cutouts seen in the theatrical version. In that cut, this was a story about Batman and Wonder Woman; everyone else was a secondary character. Here, the Justice League feels more like a team of equals. If this had been trimmed to three hours (with most of that trimming coming from the second half), this could have been a solid-but-imperfect springboard to a DC-Cinematic Universe to compete with Marvel.
And yet, for all its improvements, it remains hampered by a plot that feels more than a decade out-of-date. The Mother Boxes are hard to take seriously, and I don’t know why Darkseid wants an anti-life equation, or how an anti-life equation works. Is it just a spell? Is it an object? Is it some form of incantation? I am ok with not over-explaining things, but the movie needs to give the audience something to have a better sense of what the threat is.
And some characters remain horrendously crippled by this poorly-constructed plot. For example, it’s revealed halfway through the movie that the “anti-life equation” was lost when Darkseid was defeated in the battle several thousand years before. You’d think he’d remember the place where he suffered his most violent defeat, the one planet where he almost died. But somehow, he didn’t know where it was. It’s only because of Steppenwolf that he realizes it’s been Earth all along!
The thing is, you don’t need this anti-death equation nonsense at all! You could merely say that Darkseid was hesitant to return until Steppenwolf went to retrieve the Boxes. Steppenwolf is a terribly bland character, but his motivation in this version is crystal clear: he has fallen out of favor and is trying to win his way back into Darkseid’s good graces. The Mother Boxes [chortle] offer him this opportunity. Darkseid is told by Steppenwolf that the alliance which defeated him has ended. Seeing how Earth has changed, and personally witnessing Steppenwolf’s defeat, should be all the motivation a homicidal demigod needs to come back for revenge.
But Justice League insists on adding dense, incredibly stupid mythology to cloud what are otherwise-straightforward character motivations. This happens to hero and villain alike.
This movie could’ve actually been pretty good. The script needed another rewrite or two, but there are already plenty of good pieces here. However, Warner Bros was so impatient to catch up with the Avengers’ financial success that they failed to capture what makes the Avengers work: we care about the characters, and the stories flow from that. The weakest of the Marvel movies are the ones that lose sight of that.
As our villain, Steppenwolf is simply too generic to support a movie of this size, and his army of parademons are little more than a wave of blobs waiting to be slaughtered. His cruelty is more palpable in the Snyder Cut, but he remains a thinly-sketched outline of an antagonist. In a post-Thanos world, you have to do better.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League improves on the theatrical cut in many ways, but both are irreparably flawed. Both struggle with a weak narrative and uninteresting villains, not to mention those ill-conceived McGuffins. A good editor could improve it, but you’d still have to reshoot several sequences to get anything close to the strength of Marvel’s Avengers.
Frankly, enough energy has been spent on Justice League already. Hopefully, now we can all move on.
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