The latest trailer for the upcoming Snyder Cut of Justice League packed plenty of things we’ve come to expect from the filmmaker, from scenes of widespread destruction and slow-motion action, to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.
But more importantly, the teaser delivered what Snyder has long-promised, showing footage for expanded storylines on two of its main heroes: the Flash and Cyborg. After the trailer reveals the notorious and powerful Darkseid (whose presence was teased in a dream sequence in 2016’s Batman v Superman), we see Flash running through a ruined wasteland and saving a pedestrian from a car accident. Although it hasn’t been confirmed, the woman he appears to save looks like Barry Allen’s longtime love interest and future wife, Iris West.
Cyborg’s scenes are not nearly as light-hearted. The trailer shows him digging in a cemetery, limping away from the Flash, and watching his father disintegrate before his eyes. Knowing that a large portion of Cyborg’s plot was cut due to reshoots, it’s encouraging to finally get a glimpse of the arc that will hopefully see the character in a more central role than the one he was given in the theatrical cut.
Provided that post-production goes well, fans will finally get to see the version of the Justice League that features Darkseid, Black Suit Superman, expanded storylines for its heroes (and maybe another reprise of “Hallelujah”) on HBO Max in 2021.
Nope. Still a big nope.
I admit to being curious about the expanded Flash and Cyborg material. Some moments in the trailer do look engaging, but I’m reminding myself that Snyder has always been good at creating isolated images and moments; where he fails profoundly is putting them together into a coherent narrative. I doubt this will be more than a curiosity, and there’s no way anything could live up to the rather preposterous hype that’s grown up around this project.
No interest. I say that as a huge DC fan. I thought this chapter had ended. Admittedly, I’m still not 100% on-board with their film slate and I’m more of a TV person, but I wanted them to just… move on. Revisiting this period of DC superhero movies was always going to be a hard sell for me, regardless of budget or scale.
@3/Geoffrey: Well, it’s not like they’re going to make a habit of it. Basically this only happened because COVID shut down film production and this gives them something new(ish) to release in the meantime.
Just going by the trailer, I like the melancholy feel. You hear that music playing and you know that they’re going to fight but you don’t know they’re going if they’re going to win. If they do, you know it’s going to cost them deep. The big picture is worth it but, On a personal level, winning may cost about the same as losing. The movie may or may not be able to live up to that, but I want to see them try.
First up, I’d like to say I’m happy to see fans accomplishing something worthwhile, as opposed to say, driving actors off social media. And not just for promoting the Snyder Cut, but also for raising money for suicide awareness and prevention.
The song choice seemed odd until we get to “And even though it all went wrong”. Love the various hero shots, really eager to see Kiersey Clemons as Iris West. Also great to see Ben Affleck giving a damn after his checked-out performance in the reshoots. Some of the CGI was a bit rough, but it’s coming out next year, so there’s plenty of time for more rendering.
@6/Almuric: Raising money for causes is great, sure, but like I said, I don’t think it was fan action alone that made the Snyder Cut happen. If COVID hadn’t shut down new production and left a void in WB’s release schedule, this never would’ve happened.
@7. Oh yeah, the pandemic certainly figured into it, but I doubt it would have even been considered without the fan movement.
@8/Almuric: Maybe not, but fan petitions are a dime a dozen, too commonplace for this one to be considered decisive. Fan campaigns are never enough in themselves, because this is a business, not a charity, so the fans only get what they want in those cases where the money works out, which is decided by other factors than fan interest. For instance, it’s a myth that Star Trek was saved from cancellation by a letter-writing campaign. It was only on the bubble, not yet cancelled, and it got renewed the same way most shows on the bubble get renewed, by the producers agreeing to budget cuts (which is why season 3 had fewer episodes, fewer guests and extras, and very little location shooting).
Yawnstice League.
But why on earth would Snyder choose 1.66:1??? It makes zero sense as an aspect ratio. There’s no history to it in the DC films. BvS was in widescreen. It’s such a weird choice, especially for an action movie. Makes me think that Snyder is just making a decision to do it because it’s “different” not because there’s a logical reason for it.
For some reason, they’re going to release this as four 1-hour “episodes.” Just weird.
@11/hihosilver28: Apparently 1.66:1 is called “European widescreen” and is not uncommon. Kubrick used it a lot, as did Disney animated films.
https://shotonwhat.com/distributed-aspect-ratio/1-661
@12/Austin: Since it’s an online streaming release, I think it makes sense to do it as a four-episode miniseries rather than a single four-hour movie. Who’s going to sit still that long without a break when watching in their own home? Besides, that way it fits in with the format of all the TV series streaming on the same service.
I assume the four one hour sessions are to break up the bad enough to make it more palatable as it is too toxic and horrible for 4 straight hours. like watching Dawn of justice is great if you watch just 5 minutes a week.
I don’t think it’s a bad choice to go dark, the problem is none of the movies were light first (except maybe Wonder Woman).
I’m thinking something along these lines:
1) rich guy dresses up as a bat because of his own deeper problems, police don’t take him too seriously, would prefer he disappear and let them do what they are supposed to do. (Keaton-ish Batman?)
2) amazon from a mystical island fights patriarchy and her crazy half-brother who started WWI.
3) fast guy catches bad guys and deals with the problems of being fast.
4) superman shows up and it’s great to have a real super-hero to protect people, but then he attracts some super bad guys and people start to have doubts about all the superheroes because maybe they cause more problems than they solve.
5) Lex decides to singlehandley remove Superman from the world, first by manipulating batman (but he’s smart enough to dodge the trap) then by creating doomsday. The movie is not called BvS and the plot is not solved by anyone’s naming coincidence.
6) Apokolips arrives and the world finds out that evil is out there in the universe and doesn’t give two sh**s for humanity and yes, we really do need superheroes.
Start light, things get questionable around supes movie and real questionable in the lets kill supes movie, then hell YEAH we need superheroes when they unite to defeat evil from beyond the stars.
@13/ChristopherLBennett
I didn’t mean to give the impression that 1.66:1 makes no sense as an aspect ratio. I poorly chose my phrasing on my last comment. I meant to say that it makes no sense for an action movie. Thanks for the link, though. I think it’s fascinating to see films categorized by aspect ratio. For me it doesn’t make sense because all of Snyder’s other films have been in 16×9 or wider, and none of the other movies in the DC universe have been 1.66:1, so even for a stylistic choice, it doesn’t make sense. Also, all of the movie was shot and blocked for its original release, which was 1.85:1, so he’s cutting information out of the frame in how it was blocked. Unless it was always meant to be 1.66:1, which means that the studio screwed up the first release and I still think it was a dumb choice for an action movie. Either way, 1.66:1 doesn’t make sense to me for a comic book movie. I do think that the aspect ratio has a lot of uses in other films and genres, though.
@2:
I doubt this will be more than a curiosity, and there’s no way anything could live up to the rather preposterous hype that’s grown up around this project.
Yeah, same here.
I’m certainty curious to see what Snyder’s original vision was (and the expanded Cyborg and Flash stuff does look great). But, also harbor no illusions that this will magically ‘fix’ the DCEU. It doesn’t change that WB rushed to the team-up movie to emulate Marvel Studios and it became a self-fulfilling failure.
@18/Mr. Magic: The DCEU has already been fixed by the decision to move away from forcing a continuity to happen and focus instead on making strong standalone movies. After the successes of Aquaman, Shazam!, and Birds of Prey and the promising trailers for Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad, it’s rather disingenuous to talk about the DCEU as if it’s still broken. Justice League was the last gasp of that era and it was three years ago. The Snyder Cut is not about changing the franchise, it’s just an afterthought, a last revisit to an era that’s already ended, like the Superman II Donner Cut before it.
@18, Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I was speaking too broadly.
And yeah, I’m also definitely encouraged by the production slate from the DC FanDome this past weekend.
Frankly, the best fix to the DCEU was removing Zack Snyder from it. After all, the only unmitigated success produced in his tenure was Wonder Woman, which he had limited influence over, yet everything the DCEU has released since parting ways with Snyder has been decent to excellent. His partisans blame Whedon for the problems with JL, but I find that disingenuous; the only reason Whedon was brought in was because WB found Snyder’s version unworkable, and Whedon could only do so much to fix it without starting over entirely from scratch. Which is why my expectations for the Snyder Cut are extremely low, and why I don’t believe they’d ever have released it if the pandemic hadn’t left them starved for content. Honestly, I have cynical moments when I suspect they’re doing this as a “so there” gesture to show the “Release the Snyder Cut” contingent what a mess it actually was and why they were right not to release it before.
@21, One thing I’m curious about is how much of an impact the Snyder Cut’s going to have on Ava DuVernay’s New Gods movie.
We know Darkseid and Desaad will be appearing in Snyder’s film, so will casting be kept consistent? If Apokolips does appear in flashback or Present Day sequences of the Snyder Cut, will the look of the Apokoliptic aesthetic (Parademons, technology, weraponry), also be kept consistent in DuVernay’s film?
I think a lot of it comes down to which version of Justice League Warner Brothers decrees is the canonical one moving forward. I’m just resigned that we’re likely going to get a visual reboot akin to the changes to Asgard between the first Thor and Thor: The Dark World.
@22, does it really matter? It seems like the DCEU has taken a storytelling approach where either everything or nothing is canon (or, a multi-worlds approach, if you prefer). The 3 most recent Jokers are completely different from each other. The new Batman movie and Flash movie seem to take place in different continuities. Sounds like Suicide Squad is getting a reboot although they’re keeping Margot. Would it matter if the Snyder story introduces a different Darkseid than New Gods?
(It’s more jarring in MCU because they are supposed to be telling one cohesive story. I don’t get that vibe any more from DCEU, even if they were going for that originally.)
@22/Mr. Magic: According to Snyder, the theatrical JL is still the canonical version in the DCEU. He refers to the Snyder Cut as the “Elseworlds” version.
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2551132/zack-snyder-used-the-perfect-word-to-explain-why-his-justice-league-isnt-dceu-canon
That’s probably part of the reason it’s being released as a TV miniseries instead of a movie. The movie canon is still the movie canon; this is basically a reallllly long DVD bonus feature.
@24:
@25/Austin: Isn’t it obvious why? They’ve made several movies since then that were made to be consistent with the version of JL that was actually released.
Besides, I will never understand the magical thinking of people who think that just because the theatrical cut was flawed, that somehow guarantees that the version WB rejected is somehow this wondrous revelation waiting to be unfurled. If the final version was so weak, the rejected version is probably much worse, or they wouldn’t have rejected it. I mean, they released the disaster that was BvS, but this was below their standards. That hardly suggests it’s some undiscovered work of brilliance.
@25,
Yeah, expectations are a funny thing.
I’m actually reminded of the Bruce Timm Justice League cartoon and the first Injustice Gang episode they did, “Injustice for All”. It’s airing famously got delayed for the better part of a year (for reasons network reasons beyond their control) and I remember many people built it up in their heads as this titanic brouhaha to end all brouhahas. And when the two-parter finally aired, it actually turned out to be a small scale, quirky deconstruction of the super-villain team-up. And I remember the reaction from some quarters was unhappy, let-down and even pissed.
Same thing here. I think too many people built up Snyder’s Cut as this magical, mystic, culmination and I’ll be curious to see their reactions and whether it was really worth getting it.
@26 – I think you missed the humorous attempt behind my comment…it wasn’t to be taken as a literal question.
@28/Austin: I’m just puzzled and annoyed by the attitude, even expressed in humor, that the rejected Snyder version somehow deserves legitimacy more than the theatrical version. As I said, I’ll be amazed if it isn’t far worse than the version we got.
@29 – I have the same doubt. My comment was directed toward the absolute garbage that is the canon JL movie. Like, what’s so worthy of that crap being considered canon? I was poking fun at that aspect.
@30/Austin: First off, I kind of like JL. It was flawed, yes, but it was actually entertaining and not infuriating or painful to watch like every previous movie except Wonder Woman. Unlike MoS, BvS, or Suicide Squad, it’s a movie I’d enjoy seeing again, even with its imperfections. I find the hyperbolic hate directed at it quite bizarre. It’s not great, but it’s much, much less awful than most of what came before it.
Second, “canon” is not and has never been a value judgment. It’s merely a description. A canon is a comprehensive and complete set of works, whether defined by story continuity (the Star Trek canon) or authorship (the Shakespeare canon). It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a work is good or bad, since any large canon inevitably contains plenty of both.
The only context in which “canon” has meaning as a designation of worth is in the broadest critical sense of those works considered most definitive and essential in a genre or a body of art — the canon of film noir, the canon of French literature. But that’s a totally different sense of the word than its use to mean the continuity of a single series. The canon of superhero cinema in that sense would include films from many different series and creators — Superman: The Movie, Batman (1989), The Incredibles, the first two X-Men movies, the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies, etc. Classifying the best and most essential superhero movies is a completely different undertaking from cataloguing the movies included in a specific cinematic continuity, and the one shouldn’t be mistaken for the other.
I’ve always liked Snyder. For all his shortcomings: style over substance etc etc… certainly a lot more than Michael Bay.
I was always a big Whedon fan as well, but I think he was the wrong choice for the reshoots & completion of JL. Just like when they tried to fix Suicide Squad to be more Guardians of the Galaxy-ish.
I’m mostly in this for a reduction of the evil that is the CGIed off mustache, which made the original movie un-rewatchable for me and was extremely distracting in the theater.