Zack Snyder’s Justice League, as it appears this week
on HBO Max, isn’t the movie Zack Snyder would have finished or released in
2017, even under ideal conditions in the absence of personal tragedy or woeful
studio mismanagement. It wouldn’t have been 4 hours long, because the studio would
never allow that and theaters would flat-out refuse to show it. It wouldn’t
have been presented in a 4x3 open matte aspect ratio, save for the tiny handful
of real IMAX theaters still exhibiting IMAX 70mm film. It would have had a
different score, as Tom Holkenborg, originally commissioned to score the film
by Snyder before being replaced with Danny Elfman for the Joss Whedon-directed
theatrical cut, threwout his original 2017 compositions and started from scratch for Snyder’s
reconstruction. It most definitely would not have been rated R, though the two
or three f-bombs used to give it that ‘edgier’ rating don’t amount to much. And
most importantly, it would have been made by a different person, at a different
moment in time, with a different life experience. The Zack Snyder of 2021 is
certainly not the Zack Snyder of 2017, as could be said of all of us, and it’s
impossible to know which among the thousands of decisions that go into crafting
a film, even after shooting has ended, would be different with the passage of
time.
All of this is to say that I don’t think it was ever
pre-ordained or written in the stars that a Zack Snyder-directed Justice
League would be a great movie. It certainly didn’t seem likely after the
raging dumpster fire that was Batman v. Superman, and it’s impossible to
know if the conditions that helped tank that effort would have similarly doomed
any version of Justice League released in 2017, no matter who oversaw the
final project. Yet whatever weird alchemy led us to this point – an
unprecedented blend of studio incompetence, personal tragedy, mountains of fan
pressure (some positive, some toxic), a struggling streaming service desperate
for attention, and finally a director coming back to old work after a few years
on the bench – the Justice League that is now streaming on HBO Max is
something special. Special in ways that are clearly evident in all the original,
unused footage unearthed for this release, like the formidable quality of the
cast and their surprisingly compelling interactions, completely buried or
obscured in the theatrical version; and in ways that definitely wouldn’t have
surfaced in 2017, like the durational aspect of the project, the stunning open
matte presentation, or Holkenborg’s phenomenal score.
And perhaps something more intangible still, something
hidden between the cuts and unquantifiable – a sense of true artistic hunger
from all involved, a big studio superhero epic constructed, in this final
form, almost entirely as a labor of love, without consideration for profit
maximization, theatrical screening shifts, or satisfying studio notes. Zack
Snyder’s Justice League is defiantly, aggressively singular. I suspect it
will infuriate some, enthrall others, and leave many cold. For my part, I was
from the beginning stunned, and still am as I type these words. This is by a
mile the best film Snyder has ever made, a remarkable artistic evolution bringing
what he’s always done well to the fore, excising much of what’s held him back,
and demonstrating a marked capacity to grow. The notion of the ‘Snyder Cut’
has, for four years, struck me as impossibly silly. Now that I have seen it, I
would be very sad indeed to imagine a superhero movie landscape without it. The
entire genre seems so much more exciting by the possibilities this movie reveals.
Read more after the
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