Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021).
If you were tasked with conquering 50,000 worlds,
you’d have permanent sadface too.
**spoilers below**
I personally found ‘good’/‘bad’ aspects to just about every single thing in this. Sadly, gone is Batfleck’s exchange with Barry Allen about saving ‘one person’. Instead we have super-serious recruiting scenes (Aquaman's being a prime example) and Batsy miraculously NOT dying even when there’s multiple instances where he clearly should’ve (apparently now Alfred can make Bats' gauntlets immune to Superman's heat vision. WTF?). Being one of the seemingly few who DON’T think the sun shines out of Henry Cavill’s butt, I continue to be unimpressed with his Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman who all seem exactly the same to me/like there's no clear differences in these identities (speaking of, are his and Bruce's secret identities now public knowledge since characters use their names all willy-nilly?).
Not until Disc 2 does zombie Supes beat up all his teammates, then he just glares/grunts his way through scenes until Lois Lame appears. The only part I liked was his reunion with his mum who really should’ve been the one to snap him out of his zombie state instead of dull-as-dishwater Lois. Seriously, Clark&Lois scenes bore me to tears/are like watching paint dry. Martha had a nice emotional scene earlier about what it was like to lose Clark…oh, wait, that was just Martian Manhunter posing as Martha. Nevermind. And in case Snyder hadn’t made it clear he hates bright colours, Supes now dresses only in a black suit which some might deem ‘cool-looking’ or whatever, but it’s just another example of how afraid Snyder is to have his Superman be inspiring/like REAL Superman.
Thankfully, one character who IS inspiring (especially to kids) is Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, who provides an entertaining rescue scene and remains generally awesome in amongst all these angst-filled grim/dark/broody characters. Unfortunately, Snyder can’t resist the urge to punish her for being one of the stand-outs by killing her (not once, but TWICE. The first being in a vision of a possible future and the second during the climax of the film...although it's undone. I personally wouldn't watch a DCEU that doesn’t have Diana/WW in it). At least he allows her to get satisfying payback against Steppenwolf for killing so many of her equally awesome Amazonian sisters in another exciting (albeit bloodier/with lots of horse violence) action sequence.
People have praised Victor Stone's/Cyborg’s expanded role here, but I saw nothing much different to how he was in ‘
Josstice League'. He's still Cyboring (I didn’t think it was possible to have a more humourless character than Batfleck or Superman), now there’s just MORE of it. Flashbacks showing him playing football and with his mum (who believes cheating is fine so long as it’s her SON doing it) were, I guess, intended to make us *care* about his character, but all I was paying attention to was that his mum wasn’t watching the road before their fatal car accident, his dad gives him the highly questionable power to invade everyone’s privacy (what ethics?) and Victor takes time out from helping Barry save the world to chat with a vision of his dearly-departed family.
I’ve seen people reacting like Snyder stripped away everything that was ‘annoying’ about Barry/Flash from Whedon’s JL and made him totally different. Um...what? He’s still guilty of the hyper-speak, ‘funny’ one-liners and taking his sweet time saving people just because he CAN (kinda creepy how he strokes Iris West’s hair and grabs a wiener before saving her life). I never hated Ezra Miller’s Barry/Flash beforehand, but I saw no evidence of people’s claim about this version being ‘different’/’better’. Yes, he gets to be the hero of the film at the end along with Cyboring (though, annoyingly, it kinda renders all the others pointless/useless), but I always think how his superspeed being accompanied by electricity surrounding him seems really inconvenient (what if he had to save someone inside a metal container? Would they get electrocuted?). Thankfully, Barry’s “Oh sh--!“ reaction to zombie Supes glaring at him remains.
Aquaman's like a Cyborg/Flash hybrid, both serious and kinda 'jokey'. After telling Bruce he wants nothing to do with him, he eventually comes around to helping and has some mildly amusing exchanges with Barry (including doing his own version of the evil monkey from
Family Guy who lives in Chris’ closet and dramatically points). I guess when this movie was being made they hadn’t figured out how Atlanteans were going to speak underwater, so every scene with them talking requires being inside air bubbles (the few instances where they communicate in the water, it sounds like dolphin/whale sounds). Mera, who sports a different look and accent from the
Aquaman film, gets one instance of being awesome (draining blood/other bodily fluids from Steppenwolf), but then is disappointingly forgotten about until the epilogue.
Speaking of, people complained about the LotR trilogy's 'multiple endings', but this movie’s already lengthy runtime is made even longer with a drawn-out conclusion that involves a ‘Knightmare’ sequence about presumably what the world will become if/when Darkseid takes over. Batsy, Cyboring, facial-haired armoured Flash and Mera have for some reason teamed up with Joe Manganiello's Deathstroke, and it’s clear that all the fish jokes that were intended for Aquaman have been saved for Jared Leto’s Joker (who’s undergone a makeover, but is now more pretentious than ever) to direct at Mera (it also sucks that Harley Quinn's apparently departed in this future). Lastly, there's a tacked-on final scene involving Martian Manhunter. You know what would’ve reduced the film’s runtime considerably? Less slow-mo sequences (which Snyder apparently believes even a seed from a hamburger bun deserves).
Regarding the villains, I guess Sad Steppenwolf was supposed to be an improvement over the previous version (but now he's just a meme), while Darkseid gives Thanos a run for his money as biggest-big-bad-who-mostly-just-sits-on-his-butt (though Ares kicks said butt in a flashback which also features what appears to be a leftover from Snyder's
300 movie among other things). On the whole, I think this 'Snyder Cut' is okay, but the hype's unwarranted. It's definitely the Snyderiest Snyder movie that ever Snydered.