2021-03-19

Zack Snyder finally released all four hours of his JUSTICE LEAGUE, and I have... thoughts (but NO SPOILERS)

Yes, I've watched all four hours of this thing. And no, I won't be spoiling any of it here, so you're safe. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order.

1. Four hours is way too long.

Snyder loves his lingering shots and his slo-mo, and I can't fault him for it; most of the individual shots look good, and definitely convey the director's very strong style and an aesthetic which is well-suited to that kind of epic-ness. But a movie needs to be more than just a series of epic shots, and Justice League mostly isn't, which becomes a problem when the connective tissue joining each epic shot to the next isn't particularly strong. Much like Michael Bay, Snyder seems to be a slave to his own style, either unable or unwilling to pick up the pace even when the story he's telling clearly calls for a brisker pace. The "Joss-tice League" theatrical cut was certainly flawed, to be sure, but it was also a fast-paced showcase for the superhero action.

Of course, some of that four-hour runtime is devoted to fleshing out the story, which definitely needed it. So I guess I'll tackle that point next.

2. The story is better-developed, but also still a nonsense mess.

Part of the problem which has plagued the DC Cinematic Universe is their rush to catch up to what Marvel was doing... without actually taking time to understand what Marvel was doing.

Marvel took multiple films to introduce us to the Avengers before jumping straight to the Avengers. DC jumped straight from Man of Steel, to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, to Justice League... and only then released Aquaman. Wonder Woman and Justice League were released only a few months apart. Half of of the main cast here are characters we haven't seen before, fighting enemies we haven't seen before, for reasons which weren't set up before, and also featuring a enormous cast of supporting characters which we also mostly haven't met or spent much time with.

To say that this poses significant narrative challenges would be something of an understatement. Whedon handled this by breezing past it without lingering, occasionally dropping a joke along the way, and basically just leaning into the essentially nonsensical nature of it all. Snyder, on the other hand, resolves this narrative gap with scene after long, lingering, slo-mo scene of exposition.

The result is a story that, yes, is better-structured and makes more sense. But it's still full of nonsensical elements that are part and parcel of DC Comics' Fourth World/New Gods source material, none of which really make any more sense when explained by Snyder, and there's just no way around it: every exposition scene pretty much stops ZSJL in its tracks. The slow pacing doesn't do much to build a sense of momentum in the story to start with, and the amount of exposition needed to make it work does not help with this.

Did I mention that this movie is four hours long?

3. The action scenes are action-packed, and also mostly mediocre.

I've mentioned the slo-mo a couple of times already, so I'll try to make this the last time. Action scenes in ZSJL are almost all filled with wall-to-wall slo-mo, and it's a mess. Scenes have no geography, it's impossible to keep track of where everybody and everything is in the space, or even how many enemies the heroes are still facing, and everything is in fucking slo-mo.

Slow motion can be very effective when used infrequently, to accent a specific moment, or to highlight specific types of event... like The Flash's super-speed. If it had been used only for those moments, it might have worked; but it isn't, so it doesn't. It just pads the run time of a move that's already (say it with me now) four hours long.

This is perhaps the most baffling thing about ZSJL. Snyder is, if anything, an action specialist; his action scenes in 300 and Watchmen, were perfectly cromulent examples of the type. But the action scenes in BvSDOJ were not great, and the action scenes here are equally mediocre.

4. The effects work is better... but still distractingly bad at key moments.

Back to the action scenes for a moment. One of them is a modified version of the hostage scene from Joss-tice League (not a spoiler, you already knew this scene existed). Unlike every other action scene, though, this one isn't just groaning under a heavy slo-mo burden -- it also features moments where Wonder Woman's actions are weirdly sped up. This is the only time it happens, and the effect looks terrible.

Also, there are key scenes of The Flash running which clearly involve dangling Ezra Miller from a harness in front of a green screen, rather than either (a) dangling an experienced wire-work stunt performer in front of that green screen, and then doing a face replacement, or (b) giving Miller the months of training and rehearsal he would have needed to do the wire performance himself and really sell it. Wire-work is hard, Miller clearly does not have it down yet.

5. The tone is definitely more consistent throughout.

The theatrical cut of Justice League suffered from inconsistent tone; Snyder's footage was all shot with this epic-scale, Wagnerian drama in mind, while Whedon's forte is fast-paced action interspersed with a mix of quiet character moments and light humour. Those two things don't mix well, so Joss-tice League see-saws back and forth between the two, almost a random.

Whatever its other faults, Zack Snyder's Justice League does not have a tone problem. Moments of levity are few and far between; the operatic melodrama that Snyder seems to love is front and centre the whole time. I wouldn't say the movie flows better, because it doesn't really flow at all, but the movie's tone is pretty much the same from start to finish.

About that lack of flow, though...

6. The movie's sense of time is wildly inconsistent throughout.

And no, I'm not just talking about the slo-mo here, although that doesn't help. Pacing is a serious problem with this film, basically from start to finish. 

Scenes where the League is rushing to save the day against a ticking clock are thoroughly undermined by slow, meditative scenes of character development for Superman. It's nice that he finally gets some character development, after mostly not receiving much by way of that in the previous two films, but the ticking clock, race-to-save-the-day moment should be the point in the movie where all the slow character scenes are over with, and any remaining character moments come in the form of action beats.

Also, a ticking clock needs to involve something with a set period of time in which it happens, giving the heroes a deadline against which they're operating. ZSJL actually has a literal ticking clock scene earlier in the film, just to show you how it works, before forgetting entirely how this works in the film's climax. A ticking clock that will run out in a few minutes is suspenseful; a ticking clock that might run out some after some indefinite amount of time passes, with no visual indication of how much time actually remains... isn't as much.

Did I mention that the action scenes were kinda mediocre?

Also, there are jarring time-jumps from one shot to the next that don't help at all. Months of story time will pass literally between one shot and the next, with essentially nothing in the film to cue the viewer that this has happened. 

Is this story unfolding over a matter of months, or days, or hours? I think it's months, but there are moments where scenes that appear to be separated by days are intercut with scenes that appear to be separated by only hours, so who knows? And please don't say that Zack Snyder knows, because I'm not seeing any evidence of that.

Did I mention that this is a four hour long movie?

7. Other nit-picks

  • There's way too much belated franchise building in this film, especially given that none of it will bear any fruit at all. Harry Lennix killed it as a certain DC comics character, though, even if that character was only being introduced here for the first time, was only barely in the film, and probably won't be seen ever again. Lennix is a fine actor, and deserves to work more.
  • The Knightmare scene, by contrast, is still a distracting mess that has nothing to do with this story, and does not belong in this film any more than it did in the previous one. It's a longer and fuller vision of the Knightmare future, and it's less of a distraction when it happens, but it's still jarringly out of place -- and also one of those examples of a bad intercut that I was referring to.
  • Batman still uses way too many guns in this movie, which is still all the way wrong. Also, I never again want to hear Batman utter the words, "I will fucking kill you," ever again, in any context, under any circumstances. There's deconstruction, and then there's just wrecking shit for shock value, and Snyder goes for the latter here.
  • I know that comic-book Flash can run faster than light and turn back time in the process, but if film Flash is going to do shit like that, it needs more setup... probably at least one solo movie's worth of setup... which will almost certainly not happen now. Also, having the Flash breaking his one unbreakable rule is the sort of thing that can only land if you make more than one mention of what that rule is, and show us why he doesn't break it, before it becomes something that the entire plot of the movie hinges on. It's called the rule of threes, people, not the rule of one-and-a-half.
  • I don't like Superman's new suit. Again, Snyder is appropriating imagery that he's cherry-picked from the comics, but not bringing along the story beats that went with that imagery, which is especially baffling here since the comic he's filching from deals with a nearly identical story beat. Even if you wanted to give the new suit a different reason for being, at least show us what that reason is, rather than giving us no reason for the change at all. One more quick shot, e.g. of Jor-El wearing the suit that Superman shows up wearing in the next scene, would have been enough. Cliche, perhaps, but still enough.
  • Steppenwolf is still a stupid villain. He's better here than in Joss-tice League, with actual motives that make some kind of sense, and improved CGI, and his action scenes make him seem like more of a credible threat, but he's still a stupid villain.
  • The 4:3 aspect ratio adds nothing of value here. It's not terribly distracting, either, but it really does end up being just one more over-indulgent touch on a product that's already stuffed rather full of them.

So... that's Zack Snyder's Justice League. It's too long, and it's too slow; it's better-structured and more cohesive, but still confusing and essentially nonsensical; and its serious pacing problems and subpar sense of action scene geography, and of the story's chronology, transform what should have been an exciting adventure into something of an endurance challenge. It's not bad, and I can understand people liking it better than the theatrical version, if only because of its better structure and cohesiveness, but the fact that it exists is, for me, much more interesting than the film itself. The extra helping of franchise-building dead ends that could have been, and should have been, cut completely in order to keep the run time in the realm of sanity, don't help either.

C+

There a plenty of good individual moments in this film, and plenty of well-composed shots, and most of the best moments and best shots from Joss-tice League were absolutely lifter from Snyder. I do like that Cyborg and Flash get more to do in Snyder's version, too; Whedon really gave both characters, and both actors, short shrift in his version.

So... should you watch this? 

I'd say, "only if you were already interested." Much like the rest of the DC Cinematic experiment, it's entertaining enough, but it's not great, and you're not going to be missing out on some crucial part of the pop culture zeitgeist by skipping it. If you do decide to dive in, remember that the pause button is a thing, and one of the joys of watching a movie of this length at home is that you can stop for bathroom breaks, drink refills, and snacks at any time. 

Don't break it into multiple watch sessions, though; pace yourself, but pick a time when you have four straight hours to spend, and watch its entirety in one go.

No comments:

Post a Comment