(upbeat electronic music)
- What's up, Wisecrack?
Michael here to tell you that dreams really do come true.
After nearly four years of fans
yelling at studio execs over Twitter,
Warner Brothers finally released the much hyped
Snyder cut of Justice League.
And spoiler, it's big.
No, like really big.
The film clocks in at just over four hours,
aided of course by a heavy dose of slow-mo.
Now, a few years back, we put out a video
analyzing what the original film got wrong,
which you can watch here.
In it, we talked about how the main conflict of the film
was diluted by character motivations that felt artificial.
So instead of getting a movie about a team
of super-powered misfits overcoming their differences
to stop the big bad, we got, well, this.
- Well, I believe in truth,
but I'm also a big fan of justice.
- So how does the Snyder cut hold up in comparison?
Honestly, pretty well.
Sure, it's certainly not perfect
and didn't earn universal acclaim,
but there seems to be a pretty widespread consensus
this once mythical film righted many
of the original's wrongs.
How did it do it?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack edition
on Zack Snyder's Justice League.
What went right and spoilers ahead.
But before we get into it,
I wanted to take a second to tell you
about Wisecrack's movie podcast, Show Me The Meaning.
It's where we nerd out about some of our favorite films,
from the newest releases to timeless classics
to the occasional deep cut you may not have heard of.
It's hosted by Austin, Ryan, and Raymond,
three guys who would likely have healthier relationships
if they didn't spend as much time
re-watching John Carpenter films to figure out
what they're really saying.
But hey, their loss is your gain.
Episodes drop every other Friday.
And you can also catch a live stream
of every episode on this very channel.
So if, for some reason, you're not already subscribed
with your notifications turned on, maybe do that.
And definitely subscribe to Show Me The Meaning
on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher
or wherever else You listen to podcasts.
And tell them Michael sent you for a 10% discount.
Oh, it's free.
Well, still, tell them I sent you
so they know I care about them.
Now, back to the show.
First, a quick recap.
Now that the Man of Steel has finally kicked
the Kryptonian bucket, these pesky little machines
called the Mother Boxes think it's finally safe
to reactivate and call home to Steppenwolf.
Once our shark-headed villain collects all three,
he'll be able to turn Earth into a primordial hellscape
and add it to his master Darkseid's collection of planets.
To stop Steppenwolf, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince
must assemble a plucky band of heroes.
It's got all your favorites,
including a brooding Aquaman and also a brooding Cyborg,
a socially awkward Flash.
- This is a person who looks exactly like me
but who is definitely not.
- And even a brief cameo by this brand new
floating green dude.
- And some have called me the Martian Manhunter.
- [Michael] Of course, nothing comes easy
for our ragtag heroes.
And when confronted with a literal destroyer of worlds,
the group is left with no choice but to resurrect Superman,
which doesn't go off without a few hiccups.
- He's confused.
He doesn't know who he is.
- But now that the Justice League has their MVP back,
they decide to take the fight to Steppenwolf.
With a little help from some backwards time travel,
our group manages to deactivate the mother boxes
and close the portal of the dark side.
Oh, yeah, and Wonder Woman also cuts a guy's head off.
So to see what went right with the Snyder cut,
let's compare it apples to apples
with what went wrong in the theatrical cut.
And what went real wrong was something
playwright David Edgar calls dramatic action.
It works like this.
Any scene can be boiled down to two basic components,
a project and a contradiction.
A project is essentially a character's goal in that scene,
and a contradiction is whatever gets in their way.
Pretty simple, right?
For example, in the Snyder cut,
we see Barry Allen applying for a job at a pet store,
only for the best lit hamburger
in cinematic history to get in his way.
The project here's can be summed up
as Barry wants the job.
The contradiction is,
but a car crash threatens to ruin the interview.
Importantly, having a contradiction ensures
that a scene never ends on the same note as it starts.
And that's what makes dramatic action, well, dramatic.
Barry, for example, must use his powers to save a woman
from what can only be described as a literal sausage fest.
Afterwards, he flashes back to the interview
with hotdogs in his pocket to comfort the scared puppies,
seemingly securing his new job.
So how does dramatic action explain
why the original cut of the Justice League was so trash?
And how does the Snyder cut go about fixing this?
Well, if you parse through most of the original film,
you'll notice a lot of the projects and contradictions
in the key scenes felt downright forced.
Oftentimes, a character's project or goal in a scene
doesn't really jive with what we know of them.
For example, in the original cut,
there's a scene where Bruce proposes
reviving Superman much to everyone's displeasure.
- Bruce, no.
You have no idea what kind of power you're dealing with.
- [Michael] Bruce's goal, i.e. the project of the scene,
is to convince everyone to bring
his new bestie, Clark, back to life.
But this project doesn't really square
with the Batman we know so far.
After all, he just spent an entire movie
trying to kill the Man of Steel.
But it's not just Batman who suffers
from lazily constructed projects and contradictions.
Look at Aquaman, who spends half the film
not wanting to get involved in the looming fight
only to completely change his mind
over the course of two minutes.
Wanna know a lazy contradiction?
Having Mera show up for a single scene
to drop some random backstory
and conveniently change his mind.
In both these instances, it's almost like the original cut
is trying to cram an entire character arc
into a single scene.
In the process, the film seemingly botches
either the characters goals or the problems
that get in their way, which probably goes a long way
in explaining why the film was full of lines like this.
- Oh, I wouldn't count on the tribes of men.
We tend to act like the doomsday clock as a snooze button.
- But I'm happy to report
that the Snyder cut is a different beast entirely.
Unlike the original, this film takes its time
to develop its character, which helps explain
why it's twice as long as its predecessor.
As a result, projects and contradictions
don't feel as contrived in this version.
Let's revisit that Aquaman scene again.
You might not be shocked to learn
that there was a decent amount of backstory
omitted in the theatrical version.
Included in that backstory is a scene with Vulko,
a chief adviser in Atlantis.
In this scene, Vulko tells Aquaman that his people
are under attack from Steppenwolf.
But instead of rallying against a common foe,
Aquaman's brother, the King, has been rallying the troops
against insurgents, leaving the mother box unguarded.
So yeah, it's a pretty big context.
- Go to the stronghold of Atlantis.
Protect the box.
The time has come.
Take up your mother's trident.
- [Michael] When you take this impassioned plea
into consideration, Mera's words this time around
seem a little less contrived.
- It would have been her responsibility
to follow that monster to the surface and stop him.
Now, it's yours.
- [Michael] Well, Aquaman is only the tip of the iceberg.
Snyder goes to extra lengths to make sure
most characters have properly fleshed out arcs.
And he does so without twisting the projects
or contradictions of a scene.
To see what I mean, let's look at two characters
who feature much more prominently
in the Snyder cut, Flash and Cyborg.
Now, as we noted in our previous Justice League video,
in the original, Flash was given a pretty lame
emotional arc that was brought up
and resolved in a single scene.
- It's really cool you guys seem ready
to do battle and stuff, but full transparency,
I've never done battle.
- [Michael] So, project, Flash is scared
to enter his first fight.
And contradiction, Batman convinces him.
It was pretty underwhelming, especially since
this performance anxiety manifests nowhere else in the film.
But things are different with the Snyder cut.
Firstly, the film scraps this dialogue altogether,
instead opting to show us
how this fear plays out in every battle.
I mean, seriously, every time Barry gets
so much as a scrape, he jumps out of the speed force
and gets all teary-eyed.
But secondly, and most importantly,
the Snyder cut takes this combat inexperience
and uses it to craft a proper emotional arc
that spans the entire film,
one that doesn't need to twist Barry's goals
and the obstacles he encounters in order to make sense.
For example, look at the film's
amazingly cinematic conclusion,
in which Barry gets injured at a key moment.
As a result, the unity is achieved
and life as we know it ends.
- It's too late.
- [Michael] Pretty cool, right?
But Barry understandably wants to stop this.
So he'll have to run faster than he's ever run before
to literally turn back the clock.
- Just gotta go faster than the speed of light,
far beyond the speed of light.
You gotta break the rule, Barry, and you gotta do it now.
- [Michael] So the project of this scene
could be summed up as Barry needs to stop the apocalypse,
and the contradiction would be,
but he'll need to overcome his injury
and his own physical limits to do so.
Importantly, both the project
and the contradiction here feel organic.
They also speak to his development as a character,
from scared nerd to real superhero.
At this point, we've seen Barry struggle
with getting hurt as well as his reservations
about approaching the speed of light.
- I don't like to break this rule,
but when I approach the speed of light, I...
Look, crazy things happen to time,
but if I do it, I create massive electrical power.
- [Michael] Add in the fact that while Barry is attempting
to break the very laws of physics,
he thinks about how he's making his father proud.
And you've got a genuinely rewarding scene.
- Your kid was one of them, Dad.
One of the best of the best.
- But Snyder's four-hour CGI bonanza
isn't content to only give the Flash an arc.
It also gives some much needed screen time
to an overlooked hero, Cyborg or Victor Stone.
Now, without getting into the nitty gritty
about how Josh Whedon apparently treated
Cyborg actor Ray Fisher like garbage,
it's fair to say that the original cut
didn't have much love for the character.
But the opposite can be said about Zack Snyder's version.
As with the Flash, we see the film develop Cyborg
without having to twist the projects
and contradictions of each scene.
Throughout the film,
we watch Victor struggle to forgive his father,
the man he unjustly blames for his mother's death
and more justly blames for turning him
into a half man, half robot.
He starts off the film completely unwilling to listen
to any paternal advice.
- Let me speak to you from my heart.
Not as a scientist, as a father.
- [Michael] At the same time,
he also hates what he's become.
- But whatever happened to you, you have gifts now.
- Gifts?
What part of this looks like a gift to you?
- [Michael] But after his dad sacrifices himself
to superheat the mother box, essentially turning it
into a thermal tracking device for the Justice League,
Victor must come to terms with the truth.
He loves his father,
and he must embrace the hero he's become.
In the film's conclusion,
we see both of these journeys come to a head.
As Flash supercharges Victor,
he must confront the mother boxes
and his own personal demons.
- You don't have to be alone anymore.
We'll be together again.
- [Michael] The project of the scene is,
Victor wants to stop the unity,
while the contradiction is,
but the mother box has offered him
both his family and his body back.
Of course, Victor doesn't give in to this temptation,
a decision which ultimately saves the day.
- I'm not broken.
And I'm not alone.
- Now, you might notice how
with both the Flash and Cyborg, their emotional journey
stem from and directly influence the plot.
If Barry didn't overcome his weakness,
and if Victor didn't learn to accept himself,
then Darkseid would have added Earth
to his collection of planets.
And perhaps more than anything else,
this interplay between plot and character
was sorely missing in the original cut.
Case in point, remember the mother box of men,
the one held by Victor and his father?
In the original cut, this mother box was stolen
offscreen by Steppenwolf,
while the rest of the team
was getting a Superman-themed beat down.
- He has the last one.
- [Michael] And honestly, it was pretty frustrating.
It felt like the heroes completely forgot
what they were doing, but in the Snyder cut,
our heroes don't forget about the mother box.
After jump starting Superman,
the box lands near Victor's dad,
who then works to protect it with some help from the team.
And just when all hope seems lost,
Victor's dad valiantly sacrifices himself
so the team can track Steppenwolf to his lair.
Moments like these where character and plot move in tandem
are what all cinema strives for.
And it's a much welcomed inclusion.
Of course, we're not saying
that Zack Snyder's Justice League
is a perfect film because it's not.
In fact, it calls to mind one of the best pieces of advice
for writers and filmmakers alike.
Kill your darlings.
That is, no matter how much you personally love
a 20-minute epilogue where the Joker
makes a reach-around joke to Batman,
- You won't kill me.
I'm your best friend.
Besides, who's gonna give you a reach-around?
- You gotta kill it for the sake of a clear, concise story.
And it seems like Snyder was wholly unable to trim the fat
or even just cut a sequence
of our team walking up the stairs.
Did we really need to see that?
But the point is that the actual cut of the movie
tried to do too much while also cutting
crucial character development
and ended up doing everything poorly.
Snyder left in more than any other mainstream filmmaker
would dare and made a seriously interesting
albeit flawed movie.
(women singing folk song in Icelandic)
And to be honest, we think it turned out cooler
than most movies out there, anyway.
But what do you guys think?
Is Zack Snyder's Justice League
a shining piece of visionary genius?
Or is this a masterclass
on why all good creatives need a time limit?
And what do you make of the future of the DCEU?
Drop us a line and let us know in the comments.
Huge thanks to our patrons for all your support.
Smash that subscribe button
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and don't forget to ring that bell.
And as always, thanks for watching.
Later.
(upbeat music)
The best what?
- [Man] Best lit.
- Best lit hamburger in cinema history.
- [Man] Yeah.
- Okay.
(woman laughing in the background)
We'll do it.