Hello, I m Adrian, and I honestly never thought I would be able to make this video.
The studio heard the fans after years of asking, and they delivered.
The Snyder Cut is real, and we now have it in the form of Zack Snyder s Justice League
which premiered on HBO Max earlier this year.
I finally got around to seeing it, and as you can imagine, I have quite a few thoughts
on it.
Before we begin, this is your SPOILER WARNING The most memorable parts of the movie for
me were all the crazy good action scenes involving Wonder Woman.
She is the absolute and undisputed star of the film.
Her extended bank heist scene was incredible, her various battles with Steppenwolf were
really well done, and even the action scene which involved her people was a standout part
of the movie.
All these sequences were finally allowed to breathe and engage in that traditional Zac
Snyder excess of visual spectacle.
Furthermore Wonder Woman actually behaved and fought like the strong Amazonian she is.
This was diametrically opposed to her portrayal in Wonder Woman 84, where she appeared to
fly even before she learned how to fly.
Furthermore, when she did get to fight without her sword and shield, she basically relied
on her lasso of truth for the grand majority of her attacks.
This in turn led to her combat and locomotion look like something out of a Spider-Man movie,
and not a Wonder Woman film.
But in Justice League, she uses her lasso to subdue her enemies, not attack, and relies
on her fists and legs, as well as her sword and shield, for combat.
Staying on this discussion of the action sequences, every single one of the action beats in the
film benefited tremendously from all that added runtime.
Aside from the aforementioned Wonder Woman sequences, we also got an amazing and epic
flashback battle against Darkseid, an incredible rescue and battle sequence in the tunnel,
and the final battle of the film was superb, with the Batmobile sequence being one of the
standout parts of that ending.
And the fight of everybody vs Superman was much more meaningful now that it had all the
added context behind it.
The additional and extended shots in the fight were also much appreciated.
I ve always been a fan of the Batmobile from Batman vs Superman, and while I didn t really
like the bulk of the Justice league batmobile version, it was still awesome to see it in
action with all the extended shots.
You can immediately tell that Snyder was back in the directors chair with how he framed
and cut this action sequence.
And since were on the discussion of Batman, I might as well talk about Ben Affleck s performance.
In short, it was miles ahead of the performance seen in the 2017 version of the film, aslo
known as the Josstice League.
He no longer seemed bored or disinterested as I remarked on my review of said film.
He was very much in character, there was plenty of nuance, and it seemed like an extension
of his performance in Batman vs Superman.
His face didn t look stressed out, and his body type matched Bruce Wayne's much more
than it did in Whedon s reshoots.
You could tell Mr. Affleck was still all in at this point, and wanted to be in the movie.
His performance no longer seemed contractually obligated at all, he seemed like he was genuinely
dedicated to it.
Furthermore, in terms of character, all those added scenes of Batman seeming like he was
going to give up on the Justice League from 2017 were no longer present.
He brought them together, and he will keep them together.
He wasn t just going to give up after the biggest battle they ve ever had and leave
everything to Diana, the way all those added scenes made it seem in the 2017 version of
the film.
However, I must admit that I was a tad disappointed that within that colossal 4 hour running time,
there wasn t at least one dedicated fight scene for poor ol Batman.
Granted, he was dealing with overpowered Parademons, but even so, it s easy to write up some sort
of excuse as to why he has to go beat up a room full of henchman in some building.
I legitimately thought we were going to get something along those lines due to this black
and white picture Zac Snyder posted on one his Vero account a while back.
I thought that was a still from his Justice League cut.
But clearly it was a still from the warehouse fight scene in Batman vs Superman, because
I find it really hard to believe that given this 4 hour runtime he would leave an additional
Batman fight scene on the cutting room floor.
And to add to that, Batman unfortunately spent most of the time in this film getting into
his nightcrawler, his batmobile, or picking up a gun and firing it.
In other words, he went from mostly being a hand to hand combat guy to someone who needs
weapons and high powered equipment.
And although it makes sense from a logical perspective since he is dealing with superpowered
enemies, it would have been nice for him to rely on his hand to hand skills instead of
just his tech for at least a scene or two.
That being said, that post apocalyptic stinger at the end of the film was a fantastic surprise
for me.
I luckily hadn t seen any trailers up until that point, so it came as a complete shock
to see Jared Leto return as the Joker.
And the dialogue between the two was more than we had every gotten thus far in the DC
Extended universe, if you can even call it that at this point.
In any case, it was really fun to see the two characters interact and the dialogue between
them was both entertaining and shocking.
I never thought I d see Batman dropping an f bomb like he did, but I think it was well
used within the scene and worked perfectly between these two legendary characters.
And the other stinger featuring Deathstroke was fantastic as well.
And the fact that the grand reveal was Batman s identity just leaves the door open to setting
up the much rumored Ben Affleck Batman solo film.
This worked so much better than him randomly dropping a line that they should create a
league of their own, when we had just gotten a film that was supposedly about the bad guys.
But lets move on to the other half of the the worlds finest, and that is Superman.
The black and gray suit looked absolutely fantastic.
And it was great to see Henry Cavill s performance that was much more reminiscent of his work
in Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman.
He wasn t as brightfully cheery as he was in Jostice League, but it made more sense
contextually within the film.
Jeremy Irons as Alfred is also one of the coolest casting choices and I really enjoyed
seeing him perform opposite to the rest of the cast.
He no longer felt as isolated as he did in the 2017 cut of the film and all his added
scenes were superb.
I think he excels in his role as Alfred and I sincerely hope we will be able to see him
in it again if the Batfleck movie does end up happening.
So how do I think it compares to the original film?
I rewatched my original review of the film and pulled a couple things I said from it
to see how my thoughts have changed or stayed the same.
I called the original film an entertaining and breezy ride.
And obviously this new film is still extremely entertaining, but it is nowhere near as breezy.
But I don t mean that in a bad way.
The Snyder cut has got more heft, more meaning, and that all important context.
The original film had scenes that didn t exactly flow together, and now it s perfectly explained
why.
For example I originally remarked that the original Steppenwolf, while having zero depth,
served his purpose as a means to an end.
In the Snyder cut, he is no longer a villain that has zero depth.
His origins and motivation to enact his nefarious plan are all greatly detailed and outlined.
The next big contextual gap in the original Justice League was how stupidly easy it was
for Steppenwolf to obtain the third box.
All he did was pop in a random parking lot, and pop right back out with it while the Justice
League just kind of stood there and let it happen.
It made zero sense that they would just let him take the final mother box and leave it
completely unguarded after reviving Superman.
As It turns out, it was Cyborgs dad who saved the day, first by taking that motherbox as
soon as he spotted it to his lab, and second, superheating it so the team could easily find
it s location.
This even cost him his life, leading to a very dramatic end to his distraught relationship
with his son.
It s 100 times better than just having the box just taken, and it explains why this plot
point made no sense in the original cut.
Joss Whedon needed that dad to be alive, so the dad couldn't take it to the lab and sacrifice
himself.
Therefore, all that was left to do was to make it seem like Steppenwolf just took it
then and there, cutting down any need to shoot additional scenes and getting them to the
final battle quicker.
Returning to Batman, it was odd to see the film without his opening scene from Josstice
League.
Granted, now that they dropped the whole motherboxes burnt in from an exploding parademon, as well
as them being drawn to fear, it didn t make sense to have that entire sequence.
However, I just missed seeing Batman doing this thing.
Even if it is just skulking around at night or using his grappling hook or interrogating
a thug for information.
Of course, the dialogue still reeked of Whedonisms and batman just talking to Alfred within earshot
of this thug made no sense.
But again, I missed an additional Batman scene.
Not another Bruce Wayne scene.
The score in the new film was also nothing short of fantastic.
I really enjoyed the direction they took in several of the action scenes.
The music was epic but foreboding and distinct at the same time.
I watched it with my mom and she remarked on how good the orchestral score was as well.
Something we both agreed on was that we weren t huge fans of the leitmotif they picked for
many of Wonder Woman s scenes.
I feel that hearing the lady singing her oooooooo s everytime she does something epic underscored
the epicness of the moment, ironically enough.
I also remarked in my original review that we will never know if the Snyder Cut is better
until we see it.
And now that we have, is it?
Absolutely.
As elaborated previously, all those random logic gaps of what just happened, why is this
happening are completely gone.
It was like watching the original cut of Batman vs Superman and his directors cut, the logic
of each scene worked and you're not left trying to do mental gymnastics to make sense of things.
Action scenes also benefited greatly.
Every extra shot, and every extra piece of choreography was awesome.
And because of the greatly expanded scope of the story, each action sequence had more
meaning to it as well.
Ben was also 100 percent at his A game in portraying Batman, although I did miss that
opening Batman scene - Even if it was a bit goofy.
That being said, I did not miss the random family in peril at all.
In the original justice league they added them so The Flash could have a clearer save
the day scenario that didn't involve manipulating time as we know it, but now they weren't needed.
I also didn t miss the extended Aquaman gag with the lasso of truth.
It was funny sure, but it underscored the importance of their mission.
It felt like it was trying to be a Marvel movie where everything is usually very lighthearted,
no matter the circumstances.
An interesting byproduct of this entire Snyder Cut movement is that, in retrospect, you get
to see how Whedon tried to tell a 4 hour story in only 2.
Lots of sacrifices needed to be made, just not Cyborgs father.
And even though you could still end up with a 2 hour movie with all the main action beats
that feels good enough to skirt by, it wasn t memorable.
It wasn t meaningful.
And with barely passable context, although entertaining, it was completely forgettable.
All that being said, I still feel a bit burned that there was no followup to try to match
or even exceed that awesome warehouse fight scene from Batman v Superman.
But I m hopeful that with the success of the Snyder Cut, maybe Ben Affleck will be happy
to make that movie that he wrote all those years ago.
So what did you think of the film?
Let me know in the comments below along with what other review you would like to see.
Thanks for watching, make sure to subscribe for more awesome content, and see you next
time!