Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ on HBO Max, Four Hours of a Spurned Director’s Unapologetic Vision

Zack Snyder’s Justice League arrives on HBO Max with so much baggage, we’ll be unpacking it for eons. You probably know the story — a family tragedy forced Snyder from the helm of 2017’s Justice League, giving Warner Bros. the opportunity to have Joss Whedon rework it into a lamentable money-losing awfulness. Whether Snyder’s version would have been as bad, we don’t know, but we DO know his Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were mostly crap. Time passed, as it always does; Snyder teased that his cut of the film existed; fanfolk lost their minds and loudly made demands; Warner threw $70 million (good money after bad? Who knows) at Snyder to put together his version for the streaming platform. He finally could indulge his own vision, which included the villain Darkseid, some F-bombs, bursts of R-rated extreme violence and a newly filmed scene with Jared Leto’s version of the Joker in it. It’s also famously four hours long, which is a big ask for people who didn’t fire off #ReleaseTheSnydercut hashtags like Rambo on the killing field. And now I’ll attempt to determine if this thing is worth watching, which may require a bit of Supermannish fortitude.

ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Remember when Batfleck was almost a viable notion? Remember when Superman (Henry Cavill) died at the end of BvS? God, it was so long ago, and this movie only asks that you try. So anyway, in a BvS reprise, we see Superman eat the reaper’s scythe again, and his death reverberates via CG concentric circles in every corner of the earth, even in underwater realms thought long lost. A title card: PART 1: DON’T COUNT ON IT, BATMAN. A joke! (A joke?) Bruce Wayne, better known as Batman (Ben Affleck), knows some seriously cosmic trouble is brewing, and also knows he can’t stop it alone. He really needs friends, but for a gig like this, you don’t just join a gym or a mug club. He goes over some hills to a distant wherever to recruit Aquaman (Jason Momoa), who respectfully declines and, with a GTFO flourish, dives his tatted-up abs dive into the ocean. A female admirer sniffffffffffs his sweater and one imagines it just REEKS of sea anemones. (Don’t worry, Aquaman will come around, and you know that’s not not a spoiler.)

Cut to a sad Ma Kent, Clark Kent a.k.a. Superman’s mom (Diane Lane), who has packed up the U-Haul and moved on from the farm, foreclosed upon by the bank. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is grieving too, visiting Supe’s grave every day, a series of monolithy stones in the middle of Metropolis. At this point, there’s about three hours and 40 minutes to go, so hold on for dear life, friends! The evil space gentleman known as Steppenwolf (allegedly Ciaran Hinds’ voice I think?), now wearing a suit of armor made out of 55,000 roofing nails, clangs his f—in’ axe against some shit then takes it upon himself to acquire three glowing AI MacGuffins known as motherboxes, and wouldn’t you know, they’re all in the possession of the pals and relatives of three main characters in the movie: Aquaman’s Atlanteans, Wonder Woman’s (Gal Gadot) Amazon clan and Cyborg’s (Ray Fisher) scientist dad, Silas Stone (Joe Morton). Why does Steppenwolf want to do this? Because assembling the three motherboxes will grant him the power to take over the world by covering it with CGI, therefore pleasing his master Darkseid (voice of Ray Porter). Such an act will move Steppenwolf from Darkseid’s bad seid to Darkseid’s good seid, and oh, is Steppenwolf so very needy and insecure, for he once betrayed his master and oh so desperately desires Darkseid’s approval.

Did I mention all this farting around by cosmic gargoyles is exactly what Batman foresees? I mean, another totally different multi-dimensional outer space conflict could probably fit into four hours, but Jebus knows we only need one such thing. Bats and his loyal butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) gradually warm themselves to WW, Cyborg, Aquaman and the Flash (Ezra Miller), who takes an hour to show up despite his superspeed abilities. They agree to work together to fight the oncoming apocmaclysm, maybe with a press defense and pick-and-roll plays that’ll open up Diana for some threes.

Steppenwolf nabs two of the stupidass cubes while they’re not looking, though. Stopping Steppenwolf without the Man of Steel is a non-starter, though. Is there a plot device the five members of the league of extraordinary heroic individuals could use to rip Superman from the great warming peace of death? Like Cyborg’s as-yet-unstolen-by-Steppenwolf motherbox, maybe? If you’ve already seen Josstice League, you might know the answer, but NO SPOILERS of course! By the way, I forgot to mention Willem Dafoe and Amber Heard show up to play Aquaman’s friends, Billy Crudup is the Flash’s dad and J.K. Simmons is Commissioner Gordon. There’s also a roughly 77-minute sequence devoted to Alfred’s tea preferences and several other title cards breaking up the narrative (one of which is a Humpty Dumpty reference), because you just can’t cram four hours’ worth of plot into this review, so I’ll stop here.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Subtract 14 minutes from this and you’ve got Lawrence of Arabia (aka #TheLeanCut).

Performance Worth Watching: Cavill wins the day by actually SMILING here, in a Zack Snyder movie. Miraculous!

Memorable Dialogue: Darkseid’s right-hand ghoul DeSaad crafts an accidental metaphor for student loan debt when he tells Steppenwolf the big boss’ demands:

“You still owe the Great One 50,000 worlds.”

Batman assumes many multiversal realms of eternal torment for sinners: “I don’t care how many demons he’s fought in how many hells. He’s never fought us.”

Steppenwolf gets the who-writes-this-shit award: “I have come to enlighten you to the great darkness!”

Sex and Skin: Obviously no time for any of that!

Our Take: Right off the bat (NO APOLOGIES FOR PUNS) let’s just say that improving upon Josstice League (aka #TheWhedonCut) isn’t a Herculean task. It’s not the nadir of superhero films, or even DC films (Green Lantern and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace spring to mind), but the reality of it affirmed the stories of its troubled production: It looks less like a war between virtuous defenders of Earth and nasty intergalactic titans, and more like two directors’ visions in mighty conflict, with the Mxyzptlkian meddling of studio suits further stirring the chaos. This is a long way of saying it sucks eggs, and even Snyder skeptics are likely to fire up ZSJL with at least a modicum of hope for a better experience. (Even more objectively, movie aficionados will see it as a mostly unprecedented project — a crazy studio investment in the vision of a spurned director, inspired by audience demand — and approach with curiosity.)

I’ll leave the parsing of differences between the two movies for nitpickers, and simply report Snyder’s assertion that he didn’t use a single frame of Whedon’s footage. So we’re seeing a whole heap of new stuff, stuff from different angles, stuff from excised subplots, stuff shot in 2020, stuff setting up future stories for movies that’ll never happen, stuff with a different tone than the mess Whedon failed to corral. The latter point is a bone of contention with Snyder’s DC work — you know, his stultifying, grimfacedly serious rendering of upbeat all-American hero Superman, to the point of unintentional comedy — but in ZSJL it’s less prominent, and likely unsustainable for four hours anyway. That isn’t to say it’s cheerful, just more palatable, even for this very, very long sit.

Funny thing is, Snyder’s signature OTT extremity is far easier to swallow when it’s buffered by ZSJL’s many narrative distractions, which include fleshier backstories for Aquaman, the Flash and Cyborg (including the EXTREMEST football game in the history of film, won thanks to Cyborg’s heroics); multiple instances of Steppenwolf’s sniveling; plenty of fan-service easter eggs and DC character cameos; something about the Anti-Life Equation, which I interpreted as Darkseid’s plan to conquer all life in the universe with an algorithm, possibly just like the one used by Facebook; and needle-dropping Nick Cave’s torchy “There is a Kingdom” as Aquaman’s theme, which is either awesome or absurd or upsetting, I can’t tell which. The scattered, rhythmless approach isn’t without its stumbling blocks — it waters down the Lois Lane and Ma Kent subplots, essentially sidelining the movie’s strongest actors.

Snyder’s signatures are still intact in the serviceable action, endless greenscreen work, constant cornball posing and the persistent and profligate slo-mo that keeps his stylistic visual everythingness consistent and regular, just like your recommended daily fiber intake. In spite of its 242-minute heft, the movie’s never really boring, although not boring doesn’t automatically mean it’s always good. Some of it is laughable, although just because we’re giggling doesn’t mean it’s meant to be funny. I think what I’m trying to say here is, not boring + giggles + action = entertainment — and that entertainment is surely a product of Snyder’s consistent oversight, and possibly proof that he learned a little something from the shorter, but far sloggier BvS and Man of Steel. It’s worth mentioning again that Superman actually smiles in this movie, which in the context of a bleak Snyderian reality, feels like life-replenishing rainshowers after a decade of drought.

So there’s something to be said for tonal and aesthetic consistency. That isn’t to say there’s any standout scenes or sequences here — just a lot of stuff that inspires the critical proclamation, Well, THAT was an unnecessarily destructive display of inexplicable aggression! Speaking of which, the movie is pointlessly R-rated; a decent amount of bad-guy blood splatters and there’s two or three F-bombs dropped, which is a shit-or-get-off-the-pot scenario Snyder doesn’t resolve. But unlike the previous Justice League iteration, we’re not the ones uttering the profanity.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Do the math: Zack Snyder’s Justice League ain’t half bad, which means you have at least two good solid hours of entertainingly excessive extravaganza-ism. And truth be told, it endears us to these heroes enough to make me a little sad that this is the likely conclusion to Snyder’s DC Universe plans. Wonders never cease.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max