Riddled with continuity errors and plot holes and plagued by the notorious CGI removal of
a super-stache, the theatrical release of Justice League was a huge disappointment for
many fans; however, the Snyder Cut has finally been able
to fix a long list of mistakes, errors and unanswered questions from the Joss Whedon
version of the movie.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan, and in this video I'm explaining the top 17 DC
plot holes and problems fixed in Zack Snyder's Justice League.
Of course, spoilers ahead so take care.
The theatrical release of Justice League was vague and short on details about the Mother
Boxes and why they had only awoken after Superman's death.
Even worse, the Whedon reshoots ended up contradicting the timeline established in Batman V Superman
for the experiment that Silas Stone performed on Victor because in the theatrical release
Silas didn't get hold of a Mother Box until just after Superman's death.
"It was shelved till the night Superman died.
Then she lit up like Christmas.
They brought it to S.T.A.R.
Labs where my father recognized it as a perpetual energy matrix."
This is inconsistent with BvS where Wonder Woman saw footage of Victor's transformation
into Cyborg with the Mother Box before the battle with Doomsday and subsequent death
of Superman.
The Snyder Cut instead remains faithful to the original timeline and establishes that
well before Superman died, Silas Stone found a way to harness the energy from the Mother
Box.
"Victor's father activated a Mother Box more than a year ago when Superman was still alive.
Didn't call out to Steppenwolf.
None of the boxes did.
Not until..."
"Not until Superman died."
"It's like they were afraid of him?"
That line also explains that it was very specifically Superman's death and the powerful, anguished
death cries of the Kryptonian which we see in the opening scene of the Snyder
Cut that awaken the Mother Boxes to send a message out to Apokalips, as Diana later explains
to Bruce: "Something woke the box my people guard.
It called out to the dark place... to one of Darkseid's conquerors."
Something introduced during Whedon's reshoots on Justice League was the idea that Parademons
can sniff out fear.
Batman used a criminal's fear as bait to catch a Parademon at the beginning of the movie,
and Steppenwolf mentions it when he's threatening the hostages from STAR Labs.
"The stench of your fear is making my soldiers hungry."
This creates a plot hole though because at that moment the Justice League are hiding
just outside the room where the hostages are being held and Flash reveals that he's petrified.
"I'm afraid of bugs and, uh, guns and obnoxiously tall people."
Which begs the question, why didn't the Parademons sense Barry Allen's fear and discover him?
On top of that inconsistency, this fear concept is used in the final battle against Steppenwolf,
when he becomes suddenly afraid of the Justice League after Superman and Wonder Woman destroy
his axe.
"No!
This cannot be."
"You recognize that smell?"
"Fear."
"Get off me!"
This ends up being a rather disappointing way for the movie's big bad to go out,
especially in comparison to the final battle in the Snyder Cut which is much more epic
with Superman first slicing off one of the villain's horns
and then the team killing him and sending his head through the boom tube to land at
Darkseid's feet.
Thankfully the whole Parademon fear subplot and resultant plot hole has been completely
removed from the Snyder Cut, and instead the only significant mention of
fear is this badass moment after Steppenwolf arrives in the Amazonian stronghold:
"I will bathe in your fear."
"Daughters of Themyscira, show him your fear!"
"We have no fear!"
A cryptic moment from Bruce Wayne's Knightmare that's never been fully explained is when
Future Flash arrives to give Batman a message: "It's Lois Lane!
She's the key!"
In the Whedon reshoots, it seemed this was partially explained when Batman arranged with
Alfred to bring in Lois Lane as a back-up in case Superman's resurrection went wrong:
"Diana was right about the risk.
If the plan goes south, we're gonna bring in the big guns."
Although in both versions of Justice League, it's Lois who arrives just in time to calm
Superman down, in the Snyder Cut, this has nothing to do with Batman, Lois is simply
making her final visit to Superman's memorial by herself.
In fact, Snyder has said that the Flash's warning from the future about Lois Lane is
referring to something much bigger and several scenes in the Snyder Cut elaborate on what
he's hinting at: "Barry Allen was right here and he said to
me, 'Lois Lane is the key.'
"She is... to Superman."
"I think it's something more.
Something darker."
We know from Cyborg's premonition that Lois will die and the epilogue scene between Batman
and Joker also reveals that Batman was somehow at fault for her death, which led Superman
to go to the dark side.
"You, need me to help you undo this world you created by letting her die."
The Snyder Cut also includes an interesting additional scene with Lois where we see she
has a pregnancy test in her bedside drawer, which she then picks up and goes to use in
the bathroom.
Following on with the baby theme, there's a notable difference in the Snyder Cut in
the final scene at the Clark family homestead where Lois is carrying a baby basket into
the house rather than the removal box seen in the Whedon cut.
Snyder in fact has said that Lois's pregnancy is something the studio had asked to be removed
before he stopped work on the movie in 2017.
A debatable plot hole that some fans have noticed in the Whedon cut of the Gotham Harbour
tunnels scene is that it shouldn't be possible for the Flash
to move people around safely at super-speed when they aren't wearing a protective suit
like him.
The Snyder Cut resolves this issue specifically by not having Flash move anyone around in
the tunnels and instead he simply zips back and forth
showing people where to go and later on he uses his super-speed to rapidly move a stack
of rubble that's about to fall onto the hostages when they get out of the tunnels.
The dangers of the Speed Force are also clearly shown in the Snyder Cut scene where Barry
Allen's shoes disintegrate as he turns in them at super-speed when he goes to rescue
Iris West.
It goes without saying that Snyder's Justice League restores Henry Cavill's stacheless
Superman scenes, doing away with the dreadful opening sequence
from the Whedon cut where the Avengers director seemed so desperate to be acknowledged for
his hard work on the film that he included this sign.
But more importantly fans finally got to see Superman in his iconic black suit from the
Death of Superman comic book storyline, which had been teased before the theatrical release
but was never delivered.
The Snyder Cut also connects to and elaborates properly on the Knightmare scene from Batman
V Superman, part of a much larger storyline and something which was essentially ignored
in the theatrical cut of Justice League, leaving fans wondering what the point of it
had been.
The Snyder Cut on the other hand begins to answer some of our questions about that enigmatic
dream from BvS.
The first revelation comes in the premonition of the future that Cyborg sees just before
Superman is resurrected in the Kryptonian ship.
In that vision, we see a dark future of a dead Wonder Woman with Darkseid arriving to
conquer Themyscira; the death of Aquaman at the hands of the Dark
God; and a grieving Superman holding the charred
remains of Lois Lane as he's about to be brainwashed and taken over by Darkseid.
The Snyder Cut's epilogue also continues Bruce Wayne's dreams of a post-apocalyptic future
as we see the Dark Knight forced to work with his enemies Deathstroke and the Joker.
This scene is also interesting because for many fans it's a marked improvement on Jared
Leto's Joker that we saw in Suicide Squad.
The tattoos on his head which were generally disliked have gone or are at least covered
up, and this scene now confirms his involvement
in the death of Robin, which was alluded to in Batman V Superman via the graffitied costume
in the Batcave.
"Why you sent the Boy Wonder to do a man's job?"
This scene, which Snyder added in reshoots specifically for this Cut, is also a nod to
his idea for a Batman and Joker film which would explore the death of Robin, something
the director has admitted is unlikely to happen now.
A character who got completely short-changed in the theatrical version of Justice League
was Cyborg.
It seems he was the main character who suffered from the crazy studio mandate that the movie
had to be a maximum of two hours long, which seems especially ridiculous given that
in the Whedon cut screen time was given over to adding a random Russian family in order
to supposedly make the conflict more relatable to ordinary people.
In the theatrical version, Cyborg wasn't an especially interesting character
and his backstory was extremely underdeveloped with just a few slight references to the accident
in which he lost his mother and the reason that his father experimented on him.
In fact, Ray Fisher has even said that almost every single scene of him in the theatrical
cut was from the Whedon reshoots.
The Snyder Cut thankfully revolutionises our view of Cyborg, putting him as Zack Snyder
himself has said, at the heart of the story.
We get to see Victor Stone's kindness, his troubled relationship with his father,
him learning to use his powers and becoming a crucial part of the team from fixing Batman's
Flying Fox to confronting his own insecurities in order to defeat the Mother Boxes.
On top of that, watching his own father sacrifice himself in order to place a tracker on the
third Mother Box is a particularly emotional moment and adds another layer to the character,
in sharp contrast to the Whedon version where Silas Stone is still alive at the end of the
movie.
Another character who gets more development in the Snyder Cut is Barry Allen, with this
version setting up the Flash's upcoming movie much better.
Barry saved the world when he reversed time allowing Cyborg and Superman to separate the
boxes before they formed the Unity.
We also saw him reverse time briefly during the Superman resurrection scene when he didn't
quite reach the Mother Box in time to charge it initially.
This ability in the Snyder Cut together with the first mention of the multiverse in the
DCEU movies so far, and the Joker discussing alternate timelines with Batman in the epilogue,
set the stage for the Flashpoint movie in a more satisfying way than the theatrical
version did.
And although Barry is still the comic relief among the group in both versions of the film,
gone are some of the worst parts of Whedon's reshoots such as Barry drawing on a prison
visitor's face, the tedious brunch jokes and, of course, the moment where he falls on top
of Wonder Woman, a tiresome joke that Whedon obviously finds
so hilarious that he recycled it from Avengers: Age of Ultron.
We also lost several other cringe-worthy Whedon additions such as Martha telling Lois Lane
that Clark said she was "the thirstiest girl he ever met"
and Aquaman calling Wonder Woman 'gorgeous' while under the influence of the Lasso of
Truth.
And there's an interesting technical fix to the scene where the Justice League break into
STAR Labs.
In the theatrical release, the date of birth of Barry's fake military profile is November
2010, which at the time of the film's release, 2017, would have made the character only 7
years old.
In the Snyder Cut, the date has been fixed so that the birth year is now 1997.
Also much improved and fixed in Snyder's Justice League are the villains.
Steppenwolf's design has been vastly upgraded together with his backstory and motivation
for collecting the Mother Boxes.
It was a really intriguing added detail for his armour to change with his mood and even
retract entirely when he prostrates himself in front of Darkseid.
Steppenwolf is still a big CGI villain in both versions, but his character is much better
developed in the Snyder Cut, which makes the final battle with him and
the way the Justice League defeat him much more satisfying than in the theatrical version.
But on top of that, the Snyder Cut also properly reveals the real big bad of the movie and
of the Snyderverse as a whole, Darkseid, who was referred to but never properly explained
in the Whedon cut.
In the Snyder Cut, Darkseid also replaced Steppenwolf during
the extended and much more satisfying flashback to the invasion of Earth when the Amazons,
Atlanteans, Gods, Green Lanterns and men successfully resisted and repelled the villain and his
minions.
Something that puzzled many fans at the end of the theatrical release is how Lex Luthor
managed to escape from Arkham Asylum.
The Snyder Cut doesn't fully explain this but does give a hint in the much longer epilogue
scene with Luthor and Deathstroke on the boat.
"I heard you were a few clowns short of a circus."
"I was, thank you, until the good doctors at Arkham helped me find some much needed
clarity."
This clown reference may hint that the Joker was involved in Luthor's prison break
and the mention of doctors here might also suggest that Luthor bribed some of the staff
at the facility to send over a bald lookalike into his cell while he escaped.
Another unanswered question from the theatrical cut some fans have wondered about is how Aquaman
knew about the Atlantean Mother Box.
The Snyder Cut's restoration of a deleted scene between Arthur and Vulko helps clear
this up: "The snatchers have come from the dark place.
They're looking for it.
The Mother Box our people guard is not safe.
Go to the stronghold of Atlantis."
Likewise for Wonder Woman, the inclusion of a deleted scene where Diana visits the Shrine
of the Amazons explains how she learned about Darkseid's previous invasion of Earth.
The Snyder Cut isn't entirely faultless though and there are a few inconsistencies that this
version of the film seems to have introduced in particular how it relates to the Aquaman
movie.
For example, Mera has a very strange British accent which is completely at odds with the
American accent she had in the Whedon cut and the Aquaman film.
"Where the legends say Atlan's trident was forged."
"He's as shortsighted as he is cruel."
And then there's the way Aquaman tosses his shirts into the ocean and smashes whiskey
bottles by the shore but complains about rubbish being thrown into the sea in his own movie.
Now, did you spot other problems that the Snyder Cut fixes or any new plot holes in
this version of the movie?
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Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!