In 2017 WB brought the Justice League to the big screen for the first time ever. After Zack Snyder departed from the project in Spring of that year after the untimely death of his daughter Autumn, superhero movie faithful Joss Whedon stepped in to complete Snyder’s vision. The movie we saw in November 2017 was clearly Frankenstein's monster of a movie with half-written ideas, lazy execution, and a studio mandated two hours to cram it all in. Many people walked away enjoying it more than the previous Batman v Superman, and Man of Steel, but Zack Snyder still had the directing credit despite it obviously being a massive departure from his visual style. When rumblings surfaced afterwards that there was potentially a secret cut of the movie that reinstates Zack’s story and vision, many of his crazed fans took to the internet to try and bring it back to life. For too long we saw those fanatics harassing corpo-heads, social media accounts, and anyone who denied it’s potential existence. Even myself, a Snyder fan, believed it was too good to be true because it simply betrayed modern Hollywood tactics regarding release schedules, box office, and marketing. Now, nearly four years removed from the last time we’ve seen a new Zack Snyder movie, and his cut of Justice League has been released on HBO Max for everyone to stream the four hour epic that he promised us in the wake of BVS. It’s signed, sealed, and delivered personally by Zack Snyder in a theatrical, expansive 4:3 aspect ratio, and promises were kept. In stunning fashion, Justice League (2021) is an entirely different movie barring the general premise of the story. This time around the characters are deeper, the story broader, emotions more intimate, and the visual flair of Snyder weaving an intricate web between it all. It’s a movie that contains the same bells and whistles that most of these stories have, but it is resurrected by someone who cares deeply about the material, what inspired it, and how it brought him various forms of catharsis.
The socio-political cynicism of BVS forced Superman to exist in a very specific reality. Despite his attempts at saving the world once, his acts were still brought into question by people who lived in the shadow of fear (expressed through the presence of Batman). In the end Superman commits the most selfless act anyone can and dies to save the world, and this is the launching pad for Justice League to continue that story in a world without it’s guardian. Unlike the 2017 version of Justice League, every single element of this story now has emotional and narrative meaning than it ever had before. The mother boxes are no longer empty McGuffin’s, characters interact with each other and their respective surroundings naturally, and there isn't an underdeveloped story between a surprisingly simple plot for the allotted runtime. Where most superhero movies continuously jampack their two hour movie with so many plot points to make it seem like something is happening, Justice League is interested in allowing the story to sprout from the characters, and it gives this movie the emotional depth it’s eager to explore. For the first time in a while, maybe ever, a superhero movie on this scale feels intimate. There is a passionate direction from Zack Snyder that is wrung out from the heroes in his sandbox. Where most of these movies thrill based purely on large-scale action, Justice League takes it’s time considering how the characters influence (or are influenced by) the action.
This starts with the first major action sequence in the movie that isn’t too different from what we saw a few years ago. Wonder Woman stopping a few hired goons from blowing up a bunch of innocents now feels powerful and meaningful. She bends a knee to look upon a frightened little girl and reassures her that “she can be anyone she wants to be”. Which is where Justice League gives all of it’s attention. It’s not concerned with being a spectacle first, it’s concerned with telling a story to service the spectacle later. Which is something that feels like the competition has homogenized. Forcing movies to be made in a specific way, to abide by structural clichés and uninspired storytelling. This is anything but that. For a four hour movie it is astonishing how efficient and precise every decision feels in the script and how that’s translated onto screen. When you look at this and consider how WB wanted to mandate a two hour runtime, it is impossible to see how any version of that would be better than this. Which is four hours of Zack Snyder flexing his creative muscles and having fans maniacally screaming, “I told you so!” All of the seeds planted in the previous entries, the foreshadowing whether its blunt or not, this is the conclusion of a vision. A vision the likes of which we haven’t seen since Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan. Stories where they instill a perspective fueled by passion for the material to form their own cinematic language for that respective roster of characters, and then completely deliver. Every square inch of this movie exudes a feeling of overwhelming passion from the director’s chair, and it comes out through the centerpieces of this story. Cyborg, Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Batman are uniquely defined, but share mutual pains rooted in their respective worlds. Characters who were human once, and then burdened, gifted, or cursed with larger than life responsibilities to carry on their shoulders, and how they move forward and live with that amongst each other. In some cases this is influenced by their past and how it affects their role in Justice League, or they discover something in this that pushes them to pursue their purpose in a later installment. It’s the type of franchise based, blockbuster storytelling that does just enough to tell it’s own story, while also laying the groundwork for future entries.
In an age where superhero movies have managed to maintain being the apex of pop culture in the movie business, and transferred to television just as well, Zack Snyder’s Justice League feels like the right movie for a sub-genre that has lost creative steam. Even with something as monumental as Avengers: Endgame or Infinity War, movies that big have never felt driven to explore what these heroes mean within the context of the story. Not that all mega-blockbusters have to, but where has the emotional drive that isn’t based on recognizable iconography been? Why have these movies struggled for nearly 10 years to implement emotionally taxing moments birthed out of actual character development? There are a few, but they’re so distanced that when something like this comes along it feels like we’re spoiled. This movie is emotional, full of heroes filled to the brim with humanity and exploding with charm and wisdom, and that isn’t something studios assist with. If the 2017 version is any indication, it’s that studios are scared of tentpole movies being as big and loud in it’s quieter, slower moments, as the spectacle. Audience members flock to see these movies because they give us a thrill, a never before seen ride, but we only care when the director is allowed to. It is so blatantly obvious that Zack Snyder is overwhelmingly passionate about these characters (perhaps to a fault for some), but how often do we see a movie in this subgenre take the time to let characters express to each other the pain that lives inside of them? How often do we really feel like the movie we’re watching isn’t littered with studio notes, think tanks, and processes that force them to be incubated and ready to hatch on release day? Zack Snyder’s Justice League stands high above so many of these other movies because it is anchored by a broken heart, and you feel it in every hour. Zack’s camera work has always been a strength, but I don’t think any of his movies have ever looked as good as it does here. His ability to elevate his heroes beyond the most basic form of recognition is utterly remarkable and will leave many people speechless. Never has a superhero felt more alive than Clark Kent standing in a corn field as a butterfly dances around his fingertips as the sun gives life to both of them. A pristine visual embodiment of how Zack Snyder has always viewed the mythology of superheroes and the stature they carry as heightened surrogates of humanity’s greatest strengths and weaknesses.
In an article released in late February on Vanity Fair (found here), Zack Snyder chronicles many of the obstacles he faced in 2017 and onwards that paved the way to Justice League (2021). In the article he gets personal about his relationship with his late daughter Autumn, and recalls their relationship being the inspiration for his vision of Superman. As an adoptive father, he says that he is “so invested in the story of Kal-El because of how he became Superman thanks to the care of Jonathan and Martha Kent”. He mentions that the movie “absolutely would not have happened” without her, and that she was the only “dork” in the family and a very creative writer. A writer who wrote stories about “characters battling with things from another dimension that no one can see”. With this in mind, and many audience members who are immigrants from another country viewing this version of Superman in a similar light, I believe that Autumn has always been his biggest inspiration for making these movies. Superman’s journey from Man of Steel, through Batman v Superman, and into Justice League, is a journey about living in a world that reiterates that you don’t belong, until you realize that you do. Zack’s approach to Justice League may be the most mature and honed in of his DC movies, but it wouldn’t work as well as it does without everything he established before. This trilogy is about identity, socio-political influence, and family. These are all present in some capacity in other superhero movies, but the texture and consistency is visible and palpable because he understands how to harvest the meaning within.
At the end of the day, this is a wonderful tool of a movie to explore the significance of studio mandated film-making and how it suppresses the artistic voice of the director. If that’s all you view it as then that’s all right, but the emotion constantly bubbling over this four hour epic that unifies a surplus of themes and ideas with identity and family at the forefront is an achievement. There is no way this movie should work on any level that it does, but because it has an emotional investment and catalogue of inspirations to draw from, it feels like something the genre has truly never seen. Narratively, the beats are all there and expected, but the camera exists within this world with such life that allows it’s frames to pound with the beating heart it has, that overcomes its natural shortcomings. When we look at the road to get here, what pushed Zack to the sidelines as his passion project was put through a meat grinder, my heart breaks for him. Especially when we look at what Joss Whedon and WB erased from a movie highlighted by character flaws and how they don’t define being a hero, or a person. How the past forges the present, and what we choose to do to broaden the horizons of the future. A future full of friends, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers from different walks of life with their own history to share, and road to pave. How the absence of those people in your life inspires you to be the version of yourself you want to be.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been and always will be his baby. He wouldn’t have returned to it if it wasn’t going to bring him the catharsis he desperately needed after losing his real baby. This was for Autumn, and Zack Snyder made a tribute to her that harmonizes about the value of her life that she never felt like she had. She was his hero, his inspiration, and artistically expressing that in a blockbuster of this scale is the sign of a man who adopted an entirely new form of cinematic language because of her.
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