We’ve come quite a long way from the days of discontented fandom ranting to this, the moment when we can finally say that the long-aggrieved awaited Snyder Cut of 2017's Justice League is truly, definitively coming to HBO Max. To the presumed pleasure of fans everywhere, the streamer announced that the 4-hour long movie Zack Snyder’s Justice League (which was once a 4-part miniseries, we guess?) will begin streaming March 18. In celebration of this milestone, Warner Bros. also released some very on-the-nose movie posters, one of which features a battle-worn flag firmly planted in a mountain of rubble. And what a battle it was—those billboards didn’t pay for themselves.
At this point, the Snyder Cut can only improve upon the first film’s extremely rocky legacy. Since the summer, actor Ray Fisher has been very vocal about his negative experience with Joss Whedon, who took over directing duties when Snyder stepped away from the project for personal reasons. With supporting messages from some of Fisher’s fellow co-stars, Justice League has been largely surrounded by stories of discrimination, workplace abuse, and an internal investigation—all of which have only bolstered the calls for Snyder’s version of the now-maligned film.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Determined to ensure Superman’s (Henry Cavill) ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) aligns forces with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) with plans to recruit a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat of catastrophic proportions. The task proves more difficult than Bruce imagined, as each of the recruits must face the demons of their own pasts to transcend that which has held them back, allowing them to come together, finally forming an unprecedented league of heroes. Now united, Batman (Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash (Ezra Miller) may be too late to save the planet from Steppenwolf, DeSaad and Darkseid and their dreadful intentions.
And here are those film posters we mentioned earlier. Again, very on-the-nose stuff here.
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At this point, the Snyder Cut can only improve upon the first film’s extremely rocky legacy.
This will still be shit.
It makes me both angry and sad that I will be watching this. With all of the nearly infinite amount of streaming “content” in multiple forms to “consume,” I will end up watching THIS. I hate myself.
If there’s any reviews from reviewers I trust that are “surprisingly positive” than yeah, maybe. Maybe. But otherwise it’s a hard pass.
And that’s $100 Million for a rough cut of an unfinished cut of a movie that Snyder Tribalists insisted was a finished movie somehow flushed down the toilet. Especially if they actually think this version of Darkseid looks good…He looks like he was made in 2002 for the PS2.
Sack Znyder
I liked Darksied better when he was Thanos. At least he had that killer rocket powered Lay-Z-Boy.
Actually Thanos’ design is a ripoff of Darkseid’s. And, if there’s one thing Darkseid loves, it’s breaking into people’s houses to sit on their couch.
Funny story there: Jim Starlin, who created Thanos, gave him that big chair after being inspired by Metron, one of DC’s New Gods characters. Starlin basically wanted to give Marvel its own Darkseid, but he didn’t want to make it obvious so he made him look like a different New God.
Starlin’s editor, Roy Thomas, took one look at the Thanos drawings and said, “Beef him up! If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!”
Doesn’t the whole villain with a floating throne thing go back to Kang the Conqueror in the 1960s?As for the design of Snyder’s Darkseid, it’s not a good Darkseid, but by making his helmet look like a metal beard and giving him a pole weapon, they’ve managed to make a pretty decent Terrax for a PS3 Galactus game…
He also looks like his chest was scorched by a toilet seat.
Like many of us, he was ultimately defeated by Chipotle.
He looks like a melted Ultramarine miniature.
Weird Al should have done the voice, like he did on Teen Titans Go.
Looks like a bad version of Kratos from a rip off God of War.
God of Bore.
To be fair the CGI and designs in most of the WB/DC movies are often really shitty considering the money spent. I still think Doomsday in BvS looked like a troll left on the reject pile from the Hobbit movies.
Yeah, you’d think one of the two major superhero comics publishers, backed by one of the largest movie studios on Earth, could afford CGI that doesn’t look like rejected clips from The Asylum….
I’ll check it out as a curiosity (Synder at least has a thematic / stylistic consistency instead of just bland) but yah the most infuriating thing was people insisting that the Synder Cut was totally finished and locked in a vault somewhere. Although I think even in the Synder version of the movie before he left, it was always meant to be lighter in tone than Batman V Superman. The very first comic-con trailer pre-Whedon had the Bruce/Barry quippy meeting that is in the final movie.
Ah, yes. Darkseid. Who famously needs to carry a weapon. Like how Galactus has that revolver in his hat.I know this is just being petty at this point, but what is there left to say? I wish it came out tomorrow so I never have to hear about it again.
O. Kay.Dude’s legit chromaphobic.
Passerby: “Superman, didn’t your heat vision used to be really colorful?”Superman: [snaps passerby’s neck] “Do you bleed?”
Fuckin’ SRSLY.
Re: the neck-snapping thing, didn’t Superman straight up murder a de-powered Zod at the end of Superman II? Like, what’s the problem there?It’s the same thing as people whining about Batman killing people, when 89/92 Batman was murdering henchmen left & right. I’m no Snyder apologist but what the hell?
The reason people complain about Batman and Superman killing in the Snyder films is context. Zod’s neck snap could’ve been a powerful moment in a better Superman film, and Snyder films it as if it is. But it’s undercut by the rest of the film, where he’s chucking Kryptonians through buildings and generally acting with little to no concern for the collateral damage he’s causing.Meanwhile, despite Superman dropping Zod into a pit in SII (an act which in the original version of the film was undone by Superman turning back time) throughout that film he’s extremely concerned about civilian casualties, which handicaps him in his fight against Zod & Co. in Metropolis, prompting him to run away in order to draw the fight away from a civilian population. In contrast, in Man of Steel, Superman takes a fight from the Kent farm, out in the middle of nowhere (population: 1 woman and 1 dog) and flies through what seems like miles of empty farmland, blowing up some sort of power plant or fuel refinery and a 7-11 on his way to bringing the fight to Smallville’s main street (population: way more than the Kent farm). It’s hard to present the neck snap as a big deal when for the last half of the film, the only life he really seems to give a damn about is Lois’s (in his enthusiasm for punching Zod in the Smallville scene, he actually leaves his mother behind with Zod’s goons).As for Batman ‘89, plenty of people complained at the time about Batman blowing up the chemical factory and causing Joker’s death. The best that can be said about is that at the time successful comic book movies were really rare, so they got a lot more latitude, and that at least the grimdark vein that Burton was tapping into in those movies was a contemporary development in the comics, as opposed to 20+ years stale when Snyder got his hands on it. Again, context is big. In BvS, Snyder really wanted us to have the “shocking” experience of seeing Batman using guns (the one thing Burton wasn’t allowed). So he gave it to us 4 times, wrapped around a couple of other scenes where he kills dozens of folks with vehicle-mounted cannons and by Stuntman Mike-style vehicular homicide. Two of those gun-toting scenes could have been legitimate “Oh shit!” moments, like Snyder intended them to be, if Batman wasn’t just a murder machine throughout the movie, and if the other gun scenes had been cut. The Knightmare scene might’ve had real impact if it wasn’t undercut by the other scenes, because it would’ve meant that things got so bad between now and the future that Batman’s using guns and murdering people. And the climax of the final fight, with Batman shooting the tank of the Russian’s flamethrower, would have been effective if we hadn’t seen Batman using guns and killing people throughout the movie. But because Snyder has to underline his point over and over again, it all goes over like wet fart, none of it is special or interesting, because Batman doesn’t mind killing, and has in fact spent 85% of the movie trying to murder Superman. At least the killings in Batman ‘89 were effective, dramatically speaking.
Fair enough. Cheers!
So, it’s a lighthearted comedy, huh?
I’d love to see this fucker tackle a rom com.
He did. It’s called Sucker Punch.
Where did this whole “black and white means grim seriousness” meme come from? There are hilarious movies like the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” that are in black and white!
YES! HIS GIRL FACKIN’ FRIDAY!
to me i think it’s the most baseline BLACK & WHITE = OLD, OLD = IMPORTANT, IMPORTANT = BEST.it’s like the movie equivalent of doing a school project and dyeing the paper with tea bags so it looks old.
But Duck Soup was made by actual film makers who liked people.
As Mark Kermode says….
Just what I wanted in a superhero comic book adaptation: Less color!
I look forward to the day we all forget about this. It’s within sight! Probably a couples months after of rehashing, but eventually! To celebrate –
If there’s one thing Snyder loves it’s appropriating stuff made by Jews into pseudo-Christian nonsense…
What the still frame of this scene fails to capture is that it’s taking place while he’s literally asking a priest how one man could give his life for the world.
In my opinion it’s the worst scene in the movie for the fact that the priest Superman is talking to is never seen again for the rest of the movie. It is literally his only scene. Hell, this is meant to be an intimate moment for Superman and they spend it with a guy the audience has never met before and will never see again until the end of BvS. Wouldn’t it have been better to talk with Space Dad or any of the other characters the movie has already established rather than go for Christ Symbolism?
I think they briefly, passively establish that he was one of the kids Clark saved in the school bus, and that act is what pushed him to dedicate his life in service to God.It is a very bad scene in a movie that is made of bad scenes, but I’m going to give “worst scene” to Jonathan Kent actively walking into the tornado to prove a point to Clark. That point: In movies, dog lives matter more than dad lives.
I have always wanted to have a version where it’s Cohen doing Jeff Buckley’s cover. I have a feeling it would either be phenomenal or the worst thing ever. Sadly the world will never know.Also, perhaps for the best, as both Cohen’s original and Buckley’s cover stand alone as greatness in their own right.
Upvoted for many reasons, but largely for Leonard Cohen singing “Hallelujah”.
Now that there’s a release date, you can mark your calendar – everyone will forget about this roughly four hours and three minutes after it’s released.
It’ll still be overblown crap, only with more homoeroticism and less faux feminism
What’s the delta on slo-mo?
Awesome. A seriously profound moment in movie history, and that’s not even counting whether the film will be any good (it totally will, Zach has these characters on lock).
I can’t wait to see the lipstick on this pig.
Looking forward to, I’m guessing, mid-to-late April, once the reviewers and snarky gadflies have finally tired of dunking on this for being a turgid, incomprehensible mess, the white hot Snyder-fan rage at said reviewers will have dimmed to a slow burn, and we can all stop thinking about this stupid piece of shit.
At which point Fischer will release another vague accusation and meaningless ultimatum and there we go again. Seriously, his drama carried the publicity, free publicity, for this film noone cares about. I hope the pr dept paid him.
I wish. What’ll happen is it’ll be terrible and the snyder fans will chose not to accept reality and spend years formulating arguments as to why it’s actually brilliant. That’s going to be the worst part. This is the chill part right now.
That’ll be a treat, Liebkartoffel.We’ll just have to brace for excessive nerdrage first, as they attempt to justify a bloated four-hour long joyless mess as some form of “Cinematic Triumph”….
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
The end is nearly in sight and we can move on from this curiosity. Those of us in territories without HBOMax will have to….find a way to watch this.I’m sure we’ll all be mega happy when we see the final product.Right?
Honestly, I just want to move on form hearing about what Zach Snyder is doing. Let this this be his last quixotic hurrah before he moves onto straight-to-streaming indie projects.
Mr. Snyder, have you met Mr. McG? He will show you around your new digs.
Sadly, you know that as soon as this dies down, we’ll start getting hour-by-hour updates on the “real, ultimate Snyder Cut that HBO Max was too scared to let him release!” Now if they’d just pony up another $125 million…
It being four hours, based on my watchings of BvS and Justice league, it should only take me between 5 and 8 viewings to actually finish this movie!
I don’t think iv made it through the original cut of JL. I may have done and just blotted it out as a traumatic memory
It goes by quicker if you keep a bucket near your couch, to save time spent running to the bathroom to vomit…
Mandatory GIF for every Snyder article. I love how the guy whose neck is being “snapped” is trying his best to make it look real. I suspect Zack only surrounds himself with yes-men who constantly tell him how awesome and talented he is.
Bro! Bro’s got talent, bro!
“This is your BEST work since 300, BRO!”
Snyder’s expression looks like he believes he invented this move and it’s never been used thousands of time before.
I really don’t understand why that neck snapping move is so common. Visually it’s very boring, and it’s been done to death. In a PG-13 movie I guess it’s bloodless and quick, but it also turns up all the goddamn time in R rated movies and their equivalents.
truly the most embarrassing thing
Have you considered that maybe they like the idea too?
I can’t ever get over how red Superman’s cape is in that GIF.
Costume designer’s like “Don’t look at me—I know what Superman’s cape is supposed to look like.”
I’d buy that for fifteen dollars a month!
At this point, the Snyder Cut can only improve upon the first film’s extremely rocky legacy.Are you sure?
It’s only January, and that sentence is already the most naively optimistic thing I’m going to read on the internet all year.
depends! if your metric for good is ‘long’ then definitely.
don’t forget showing how Superman is better than all us mortals..
The biggest lie anybody ever told was “it can’t get any worse.”
Zach Snyder is so crap, he ruined OWLS, how is he supposed to fix a movie that’s already a train wreck?
Betting that this is going to be even worse is way safer than any stonks
4 Hours 4 Moustache
Thanks, but I’m… ummmm… washing my hair that night.
For four interminable hours.
looks like a fun superhero romp!
In my experience when a creator treats Darkseid and his minions as generic evil aliens rather than engaging with any of the actual themes and ideas of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World it is a surefire sign that they’re a fucking hack.
Will THIS Superman movie by Snyder actually like Superman?
No. He’s said as much elsewhere – that he’s still on a journey to becoming the classic Superman and we won’t see it in this film. Three films in, that journey should absolutely be complete. Maybe Snyder should just say that he doesn’t like the character of Superman and his is just set in the brooding, dark badass mode.
When you break it down, his Superman lacks any motive or agency to to be Superman outside of “My Space Dad told me to!”.
Given their characterisations in the films its hard to believe he’s motivated by the selfless moral upbringing the Kents provided.
MA KENT: You don’t owe this world a thing, Clark![Deleted scene]MA KENT: Well, I mean you kinda owe it the powers that make you indestructible and super strong. And able to fly. And then there’s the whole lasers-out-of-your-eyes thing, never really understood how that works. Come to think of it, it also gave you a home after your own planet was destroyed…[CUT AWAY TO SHOTS OF BRUCE WAYNE DOING P90X]MA KENT: …and that Lois is pretty hot, too. Bet they don’t make ‘em like that on Krypton…
Maybe this was actually a masterstroke on WB’s part. I remember when the Superman Returns sequel was failing to get off the ground the general consensus was that Superman’s sunny optimism was passe, and audiences just found him too dull. After Man of Steel it was “who is this stiff?!? Bring us back our happy boy scout!”
This is my main problem with Snyder’s Superman, he doesn’t seem to like the character. Which begs the question why did he want to make a film about a character he seems to hate?
Don’t be silly! It’s ZackSnyder! — far as he’s concerned, Superman should be a sociopathic remorseless killer.
So real talk time
When this sucks real bad, which it will because the source material was bad and Zach Snyder is a trash director, will angry skinhead incel film critics on the internet pretend it was good because at least someone listened to them? Like, are we looking at the alt right’s 2016 Ghostbusters here?
Now united, Batman (Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash (Ezra Miller) may be too late to save the planet from Steppenwolf, DeSaad and Darkseid and their dreadful intentions.
Or it’ll end exactly like the theatrical cut, with a CGI fight between those characters and something.
I truly do not understand how Warner Brothers spends so much money on the DC movies yet the CGI looks like such absolute dogshit. It’s been true of all of the Snyder DC movies, but even in Wonder Woman 1984 there were multiple scenes where the CGI was so atrocious it pulled me out of the movie.
I think the problem is that directors and producers of these big-budget blockbusters don’t seem to realize that there are just limitations to what CGI can portray well, no matter how much money is thrown at the film. Granted, I’m not an expert on the subject, but it seems like CGI has a problem with living things—people, animals, monsters, etc.—in its current state. We have got to get away from this notion of CGI as a replacement for practical FX. It can often be better used as an augment to practical FX.I realize this is a bit tautalogical, but it helps to think of CGI FX this way: If you didn’t notice it, it’s good CGI; if you did, it’s bad CGI. There is actually quite a lot of CGI work in modern filmmaking–dressing up background shots, filling out crowd scenes, enhancing explosions–that we don’t even notice as CGI because it works so seamlesslessly with the practical shots.
I look forward to the day when I don’t have to hear about it anymore.
When David Lynch said his Twin Peaks reboot was an 18 hour long movie. I thought OK it’s David Lynch he thinks its a movie its a movie. But when Snyder says its a 4 hour movie. I think no it’s not it’s a tv show, we already saw the movie.
If this is actually good, I’ll eat my hat.
Some of the cosplayers I follow on social media are gushing over this. I might watch it…maybe..but I can only take so much of Snyder’s Randian view on superheroes.
“At this point, the Snyder Cut can only improve upon the first film’s extremely rocky legacy.”Ummm… are we sure?
Jesus, the artwork looks as fascist as hell. I have no doubt teenage Zack Snyder jerked off to a coffee table book of Albert Speer architecture and weight lifting magazines.
Adult Zach Snyder does that too
I know the one picture is of a film canister but I keep seeing a manhole cover and keep thinking the Ninja Turtles are going to join the movie
Captain America is fascist as hell too.
“At this point, the Snyder Cut can only improve upon the first film’s extremely rocky legacy.”
Fuck yourself, you Snyder fuck.
So it’s going to be a “Snyder Cut vs Falcon & Winter Soldier” weekend, eh? Yeah, don’t act like we don’t all know why they plugged this into the Thursday before the next Marvel premiere when they could have gone a week earlier and had no competition during the Disney+ week off between MCU series…
allowing them to come together, finally forming an unprecedented league of heroesOh, I’d say it is quite precedented.
Ughhhh… those posters are terrible. I certainly can’t see them MAKING a person want to see it. Hell, I had a tenth of a percent curiosity to maybe check it out, but those posters made me have a baby barf in my mouth so yeah, there goes that tenth of a percent
Imagine if WB had taken the money it’s frittering away on the Snyder Cut & used it to fund more No way filming the last three scripts costs more than $70 million.
This
comment looked right when I typed it, but it got scrambled & lost
the hyperlink when I hit publish? It looks correct in my dashboard &
when I hit edit, although refreshing after editing changes nothing?
WTF, Kinja?Anyway, save Swamp Thing! It’s the new Martha.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2020/12/23/swamp-thing-makes-my-heart-sing
God i wish. The rest of the season was probably about as done as the Snyder cut was anyway.
I will watch it and with a semi open mind (Still so mad over B v. S and not even the Martha thing). But my guess it goes from the Justice league movie that was a bland 80/90s movie of the week on NBC from Whedon to now a Dark Gritty over the top violent movie with tons of easter eggs and is a slog to get through.Maybe it’s amazing but there is like a 1.3% chance of that.Can we just Flashpoint already so we can reset the DCU and just keep Wonderwoman, Aquaman, Shazman and Flash from their movies?
You seem unduly optimistic about this Flash movie.Aquaman I could take or leave. I thought the movie kinda sucked, but I liked the jellyfish dresses and the Mary Poppins Kraken, so some points for trying to be fun.
Yep, it at least tried to be big dumb fun. Same reason I didn’t mind the theatrical Justice League.
Synder has nothing to do with the Flash so I am hoping it is good. Flash is an easy character to make likeable but who knows with the ways things are going.I strangely have more faith in Flash being decent than I do in Spiderman 3 being good as Flash to be is easier to do the insane time travel shit.
lolololol the tattered flag, the rubble, the greyscale, the rubble, the film canister for a movie digitized and color graded to within an inch of its life, the RUBBLE, the 13-year-old’s Algebra notebook doodles aesthetic, the R U B B L E hahahahaha
Grey wreckage.That’s the posters because that’s his brand.
What’s with all the “fallen” imagery? The JL hasn’t even formed yet and we’re marketing it as a crumbled entity?
Right? It’s the movie DCU in a nutshell – they skip steps. They tried to form a “cinematic universe” without doing the work Marvel did, and then they go right to “oh no, the Justice League is gone” without even having them formed.
Hell, they already killed Superman.The MCU waited *ten years* to play that card eith Stark/Rogers.DC couldn’t even make it two movies.
Sure, I’ve got some subliminal snark on any article about this movie, but I’ll swear, when I first looked at those images, I thought it said ‘steaming’ …
MCU fans: “All superhero movies must conform to MY idea of good whether anyone likes it or not”
Also MCU fans: “Zach Sndyer is so fascist!”
What the #Syndercutters love about him is his subtlety.
My gawd this site is filled to the brim with unnecessarily ignorant hateful film school “please buy my screenplay” hater assholes
Snyder really missed the synergy he’d have had with his base if he’d released it 01/06/21
Still about 3 hours short of Sátántangó. Step it up, Snyder.
Hate to break it to everyone, but if the movie that was released was not any good, a “director’s cut” of the same movie is…not going to be any good.Is a director’s cut going to make people forget that in this franchise everyone kind of hated Superman before he died, then suddenly everyone is all sad in JL that he died? Will it have a brand new villain? Or that it will not introduce three new characters with zero foundation before the movie? NoThe issues with the movie are script related and foundational. It is not an editing problem