Justice League - the Director's Cut

When I first heard that there was a new version of the 2017 Justice League movie coming out, this time completely under the director's vision of Zack Snydor, I wasn't sure what the fuss was about.

I saw the movie in 2017. I watched it specifically to see more of Wonder Woman, who wowed me when I saw the movie by the same name.

The 2017 Justice League was underwhelming. It's not a movie I've watched more than once.

The movie version that came out in 2017 was "finished up" under Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, because original director Zack Snydor has personal issues come up (I believe he lost a child), and Whedon finished the film.

If the new version of this movie showed me one thing, it is how much a director actually impacts a film. I mean, I have the extended director's cuts of The Lord of The Rings trilogies, and they add depth and interest (and length) to the films, but they did not change the meaning of the entire movie (although The Two Towers is helped tremendously by the additions to the extended version). After all, Peter Jackson did the theatrical release and the director's cut, so it was his vision in all releases.

The Snydor version of Justice League, just released on HBO Max (and maybe in theaters, I am not sure) is magnificent. It's a completely different movie with just a few scenes that I recognized from the original.

It more than made up for the lukewarm Wonder Woman: 1984 film that came out at Christmas.

The Snydor cut has Wonder Woman all over the place, along with back stories for the other superheroes. The stories actually made sense.

This version was dark and deeply intense. No cartoonish clowning around, no off the wall jokes. This was how this movie should have been from the get-go.

The villain was an actual character, not a caricature as in the first release. He had motive and his actions made sense.

Whedon messed up, and I didn't even know it until I saw what this movie should have been - and now is.

This new version gave truthful homage to the hope of Superman and his rebirth after he died in Batman v. Superman, Dawn of Justice (2016). 

The new version filled plot holes that were in the 2017 Justice League film and the whole thing made more sense.

Of course, it is also nearly two hours longer than the original film. We watched it over two nights, two hours on Saturday night and two hours on Sunday night.

I sat on the edge of my chair most of the time, and I don't do that often when I am watching a movie.

It's been a few years since I watched the theatrical release of Justice League, so maybe I am forgetting parts of what was a ho-hum movie. I believe it was a box-office bust and not the money-maker Warner Brothers had hoped.

If Snydor had been able to do this particular movie, they'd have had a hit on their hands.

I know many people do not watch movies or TV shows based on comic book characters. That's fine. I don't watch sports.

Comic books and I parted ways a very long time ago, so there are many changes in the way things are now in DC and Marvel that I haven't kept up with. The multi-verses, for one thing, where there may be two or three heroes of the same incarnation acting in different ways. Plus there are new superheroes, gender changes, etc.

But when I was a young girl, I spent hours devouring Captain America, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Justice League of America, the Black Widow, Daredevil (he was my favorite, along with the Black Widow and Sue, the Invisible Girl in the Fantastic Four). Wonder Woman in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was reading these comics, was given short shrift and often left behind as clerk girl, especially in the Justice League comics, so I never warmed to her as much as I did the Marvel comic women. I didn't read much Supergirl, either. In part this was because I pooled my coins with my brother and my two uncles when we walked up to the Orange Market to buy comics, and they generally went for the more male-oriented comics, with an occasional bow to my desire to read the female superhero ones.

The pull of superheroes is a desire to see justice done, I think. It's also touches on a secret desire that everyone has, i.e., to be special, different, and important enough to make a difference. I think deep down, many people have that urge, to be more than just the grocery clerk, or even the nameless face of some corporation.

Perhaps we all see that the world is dark and terrible, and we secretly want it to be better.

We can't all be superheroes, but we can, obviously, leave a mark and/or make a change. This new version of this movie shows that nothing is static, and the visions of certain people make for better entertainment than the visions of others.

That doesn't mean, though, that we're not all superheroes.

In somebody's eyes, I hope we are all superheroes, if only for a short time.

Anyway, if you like superhero flicks, check out the Snydor cut of Justice League. It's a great remake.