So I watched the Snyder cut.

What a gigantic waste of money, time, and effort for anyone involved. This includes the people that made the movie and the ones who watch it.

The film is incredibly boring. I am actually rather impressed at how not fun this movie is, and this is the 2nd attempt! I went and saw Justice League in the theaters and was not impressed then, but out of a cultural curiosity wanted to know why everyone had been so excited. Then I came across a bunch of reviews that were hyperbolic in their positivity, so I would like to give the community a PSA: the Snyder Cut was a polished turd.

positive notes: The Flash is entertaining at times. I laughed out loud a few times at his dialogue and his awestruck interactions with the other heroes.

Aquaman: Also pretty good. Momoa takes a traditionally lame ass character and makes him seem like a formidable force that could go toe to toe with anybody in DC.

Wonder Woman: The introductory scene against the terrorists has some pretty cool shots.

Those people who say Jared Leto redeems his Joker.... are wrong? I dont know wtf they are talking about.

Ok. That's it really. I wouldn't watch this film if I were you. Especially if you watched the original Justice League. Just lipstick on a pig.

Just putting this out there for anyone that's on the fence, I quite liked it. It's far from a perfect movie but as a DC fan it scratches some good itches. I thought BvS was a good Batman movie and a bad movie movie, thought OG Justice Leage was the worst superhero movie since batman forever, and sat for the full 4 hrs here.

@sahalarious: I also have to take issue with the "lipstick on a pig" statement, as this film is unrecognizable from the Joss Whedon cut. Cyborg is pretty much the focus of the film, and flash is substantiated greatly as well. Just about nothing survived the theatrical version.

I'm in agreement with the movie being trash. I keep hearing that this movie is substantially different from the Snyder/Whedon cut (calling it just the Whedon cut feels very disingenous, because...), this movie is almost the exact same movie as what came out in 2017, just tonally more consistent (not consistent, just more consistent) and twice as long. Here's what's new, not counting existing scenes which have become extended:

• Flash gets one more scene, which is extremely creepy and would ruin his character were the Flash not already insufferable
• Cyborg gets a full character arc. This isn't good, but it's the only character arc in the entire movie, so that's something
• Steppenwolf is now a snivelling whiny suckup for Darkseid, which is his motivation for getting the Magic Cubes
• There's a lot of Lois Lane scenes that are bad and take like 20 minutes to close minor plot holes from 2017
• There's a second epilogue scene that is hot trash

Anyone who didn't like Justice League 2017 is not going to like this movie. It's fundamentally the same movie, with more slow-mo, folk chanting (did Snyder get a bulk deal or something?), and new, different creepy out-of-place jokes from Whedon's.

@sahalarious: i agree with you on bvs, i enjoyed it despite the flaws.

@Asylumrunner: OH YEAH all of those inexplicable musical interludes. Why?????

Minor spoilers ahead

I watched this out of curiosity while doing my laundry and thought it was entertaining. It probably helped that I didn't give it my undivided attention, but I was surprised by how well paced it felt. Each part had a fair amount going on and felt distinct, so the end result was more like binging an expensively made miniseries. Most of the heroes had depth as well as nice moments to shine. I especially liked Steppenwolf, because he was a snivelling whiny suckup; that made his motives more relatable to me than whatever generic "bad guy thing™" Darkseid was on about. It also made Steppenwolf seem more threatening.

I'm a wannabe DC comics fan, don't know much about the lore, never saw the 2017 version, and missed most of the #syndercut drama. Now I want to watch the 2017 film too and catch all the changes. I'm sure that makes Warner Media happy.

That said, there were two parts I disliked:

• As others mentioned, the epilogue scene between Batman and Joker is bad. Jared Leto makes even weirder acting choices than his last time playing Joker, and the dialogue is poorly written. If they're fleeing evil Superman, why are they stopping to see who can hurt the other's feelings more?
• After Wonder Woman removes a bomb early on, the lead terrorist, intent on killing some hostages, drops his unloaded handgun and goes through this lengthy process of grabbing a nearby rifle and slowly loading it. Meanwhile the hostages all cower for several seconds screaming, "Noooooo!" instead of just tackling the guy while he's unarmed. Y'all...just cause Wonder Woman is nearby, doesn't mean you have to let her do all the work.

@serryl:The part of that Wonder Woman bomb scene that really bugged me on top of that was,

As someone who didn't like the original and was extremely skeptical of this version, I actually enjoyed this version a lot more. The Joker stuff was awful, of course. And the fact that Darkseid didn't know that Earth was the planet that had defeated him made no sense. The added stuff with Cyborg was great.

@asylumrunner: Hahaha I nearly forgot that bit! I remember watching the insane amount of debris she made rain down onto the street below and was reminded of Superman destroying parts of Metropolis in Man of Steel. I guess "collateral damage" is a recurring theme for Zack Snyder.

I liked this version of JL a lot more than the OG version. It's got its flaws, but I was into it overall. If anything, in a sea full of marvel/disney stuff, this movie felt like a breath of fresh air.

FOUR HOURS

That's it that's my review. I feel that despite not seeing the film it is just as accurate as any other.

I enjoyed it a lot. Is it breaking any boundaries or re-writing how super heroes should be done? No, but in a way, that is why I liked it. It's a literal telling of mythology in the guise of DC super heroes without the meta commentary and subverting of expectation tropes that every god damn pop culture media wants to do right now.

The smaller details really make it as well like Aquaman being worshipped by a village and the remembrance of Superman make it feel more like these are modern Gods amongst humanity. That's a very DC thing that Whedon didn't seem to care about.

I just get the feeling that Snyder loves and understands super heroes as cultural icons rather than tools to tell other story tropes through. He sticks to his guns in telling a comic book story and I can't be upset about that because I know that's what I'm getting out of this.

I also came away quite positive on it. A solid 8/10.

On the outset you have a 4 hour film which is daunting enough for anyone to sit through, and on the other it's hard to imagine any sort of "re-cutting" could make that original production any better.

..and yet.. it is significantly better, almost shockingly so.

The biggest problem DC had to face was that this movie - ostensibly a big tentpole event for the DC universe - didn't have a nearly long enough run up that it needed. Marvel spent a decade building up their roster of super heroes and dropping tidbits of info in every after credits sequence to help reinforce the Infinity Stones sage - and even then parts of those two final movies were messy and awkward. DC not only didn't spend the time to introduce you to all the primary heroes of the Justice League but also didn't even break this down into two different films like Snyder planned on doing initially and that the story desperately needed. From what I understand a lot of poor planning and bad decision making came from WB and left the creatives to pick up the pieces.

So the 4 hour runtime helps A TON in establishing characters, backstories and motivations. Cyborg who was a non-entity in the original is now one of the strongest parts of Justice League. Flash who was terrible comedy relief is now an essential part of the team. People have real reasons for doing the things they are doing and the audience gets a lot more info on what is happening behind the scenes. Darkseids introduction is still rushed for a baddie of this importance, and compared to the infinity stones the motherboxes and anti-life equation seem a lot more hokey and hard to wrap your head around. That said Steppenwolf now looks a ton better and has an actual story-arc. All of it benefits from the longer runtime which amazingly still seems like it's not long enough for what they are attempting to show.

I'm not going to break down the entire film point by point but I will say that the Snyder Cut is a very good version of that movie. It's still not an amazing film or anything, but it is fascinating from a technical point of view to see the difference in tone from director to director. Some of the Joss Whedon changes are downright baffling in comparison and in certain spots it almost feels like the studio was attempting to intentionally sabotage the original release given the way Cyborg and Flash were treated.

If you hate Zack Snyder then obviously don't watch it. The Snyder Cut is definitely a curiosity more than anything. There are some people that will probably have an extremely adverse reaction to it - the GameSpot 3/10 Review seems baffling to me - but it really does come down to personal taste so what are ya' gunna do ya know.

I still didn't care for any of the dull characters despite the film making more sense, its a really grey too.

Ayn Rand freak has no sense of humour or interest in other humans and makes pretentious, unfunny drivel with absolutely no interest in humans? The shock! Film is dead and empty muppets like Snyder helped kill it. 4:3 for fucks sake! Save yourselves and watch some proper shit before these space fascist wankathons murder your soul.

Start with Sunrise: A Song of two humans and nourish thyself forwards through some decency, people!

thats my review. bunch of sweaty bollocks.

Amazingly Red Letter Media seemed overall fairly positive on it? Some of that seems to be the movie exceeding their rock botton expectations.

Am I ever going to watch it? Ask me two weeks ago and I'd just laugh at you, but enough people who previously weren't into DC movies seem to think it's OK so I dunno. Maybe? Four hours is a lot, even when it's cleanly split into parts.

I enjoyed it - perhaps more as a novelty and experiment than a movie that I'd want to watch in a cinema. While it doesn't rate against the majority of recent Marvel movies, it is a much more cohesive product than the theatrical version.

There are things I could point to that I preferred in the theatrical cut, and vice versa. There are things that could have been dropped entirely. For an evening's entertainment, you could do much worse.

4 hours is a lot to ask for a remake of a movie I didn't really like in the first place, by a filmmaker that I had not enjoy in quite a while.

This movie put together some of the best super heroes and put them in a decent movie that held my attention pretty well. Meanwhile over at Disney they are putting out 3rd tier superheroe movies that do well more so because of marketing than because of quality. I’ll take DC a million to 1 over Marvel.

It's not my favorite of the DC movies, nor of Snyder's work, but it is leaps and bounds better than the butchered version of it from 2017, and an extremely visually striking comic film. I think it works as the next in Snyder's DC work, though it does seem to compromise with a larger audience by being much more of a Comic Book Movie™ than his previous work; subplots that exist entirely for the reason of franchise work, and an epilogue that is basically a commercial for Justice League 2. This kind of thing is extremely tried and tested in this genre, so I get why it's there, but I really appreciated how Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman were very much not what we've been seeing from every other comic movie. That said, this carries through the message of hope from its predecessors, refocuses the narrative on the humanity of its characters, and salvages something damn watchable out of an unwinnable situation.

I'm on the fence of if I'm going to bother watching it, Godzilla vs Kong seems more worth my time this weekend than this thing.

My real question on the other side of this is, when did Snyder become a sought after creative mind? NONE of his movies are amazing, 300 was probably the only one of his I genuinely LIKED. Just judging by his track record I don't know why anyone thought this would suddenly make JL or the DCU great cinema.

Not to say it doesn't sound like it has it's moments. While I don't really care about Cyborg as a character, which from the JL comics I read seemed like a weird choice to even include and INTRODUCE the JL as a group, it's nice that SOMEONE has an arc in that film.

After a year of COVID restrictions / lockdowns and people desperate for ANY kind of new media to consume (regardless of quality), you could take a fat sh*t in a box, slap a Marvel or DC logo on it, and guaranteed someone's gonna like or tolerate it (if only because it's something new to consume.)

Snyder vs. Wheadon is like comparing different kinds of diarrhea to each other: end of the day, they're both sh*t.

As someone who hated the theatrical cut, I enjoyed this quite a lot. Removing all the awful tacked on jokes definitely helped, as did giving Cyborg an arc. The scene with the Icelandic singers was awful but made me laugh more than any of the cut "jokes". I could have done without Jared Leto and some baffling cameos though.

I watched The Snyder Cut.... not sure why, to be part of the zeitgeist I guess. I thought the theatrical cut was terrible and went into this new one assuming I wouldn't like it, but was pleasantly surprised. I like the new action scenes; the Amazonians tossing around the cube was fun and the blood effect in Atlantis was visually striking. I think spiky Steppenwolf looked silly in still images, but in motion his spikes do this weird breathing thing that's appropriately unsettling, and I enjoyed his characterization of disgraced middle manager type.

It's still kind of messy. It ties to have the pacing of a comic book miniseries with title cards where a new comic would potentially begin, but it doesn't work great in a movie and comes off as pretentious more than anything. The soundtrack was all over the place and the leitmotifs for the main characters seemed to be constantly at odds with the rest of the soundtrack. The epilogue was straight up bad. But overall it was leagues better than the original version, and I think most DC fans will be pretty pleased with it.

That's the weirdest thing though. The theme's of this movie run antithesis to Randian ideals of objectivism and the virtue of selfishness. The first thing Cyborg does with his powers is funnel $100,000 from wallstreet into a struggling single mother's bank account. His establishing character moment is being chastised for hacking a fellow student's grades because she was having a difficult time at home. Cyborg's entire character motivation relies on the fact that objective metrics of success are rendered obsolete by real life experiences, and we should help those who have been dealt a bad hand.

How a self-proclaimed Randian made this movie makes no sense to me.

I mean, from a lot of the "jokes' RLM have told over the years I would assume Snyder is more or less their god and they are excited for a chance to admit it.

@reap3r160:

Part of it is that he is definitely an "artiste" in ways folk like Kojima will never be. Dude has vision and consistent messaging and he makes them "work". I don't think anyone can (reasonably) claim he doesn't have an eye for cinematography (but sure as hell not flow).

And the other part is... that consistent messaging and vision increasingly aligns with the crowd that don't fully understand WHY they worship shitstains like Joe Rogan yet increasingly gravitate toward those viewpoints. Lots of glorifying some pretty horrifying characters and actions in ways that you genuinely can't tell if he has an agenda or is just that stupid and naive.

A friend who actually watched the whole mess compared it to Bright (Big Willy Style is a cop who is racist against fantasy creatures) in that it is a sequence of entertaining scenes with absolutely no flow or connective tissue. So great if you just leave it on and glance over when you hear the fun music and bad if you are actually focused on it.

I haven't seen this, or any other recent DC movie besides the first Wonder Woman. So it's possible I would enjoy this. But, really, a four-hour superhero movie? Why? Was it ever really intended to be seen in theaters? Don't people have to, ya know, pee? I don't like this trend of longer and longer movies.

Is he? I just remember them dunking endlessly on Man of Steel and ironically calling him "visionary director Zack Snyder" next to a picture of that hack shot of Superman's face in profile next to a stained glass Jesus.

@wollywoo: Snyder intended for this to be two movies but the studio forced him to make it a single film. This cut is actually being screened in a few IMAXs and it has an intermission around the 2hr mark.

*shrug* I liked it more than the original

Are we talking about the same Red Letter Media? Half in the Bag, Best of the Worst, Rich Evans laughing, that Red Letter Media? I don't know where you got the impression they would be fans of anything Snyder.

@justin258: Snyder tends to have a lot of "dudebro" shitbag fans because of stuff like "Isn't it cool how these white fascists are murdering brown people" kind of movies. And RLM have a long history of "ha ha, transphobia/ableism" style jokes that tends to result in a lot of overlap.

It is not 1:1 but there tends to be a strong correlation. Same with the Rogan shit.

Oh. Well, ignore my comment then.

@wollywoo: I mean it's a good question and the longer answer is that no this couldn't be screened in normal theaters. The way it was originally getting forced into a single film was already doing it a huge disservice because the audience has never met the Flash or Cyborg before. We don't know anything about Aquaman. Yet you are asked to suddenly care about these people and understand their motivations for not wanting to get involved. Studios hold the ultimate power unless you're someone that typically gets a blank check like Nolan, and they typically only harm movies. Ryan Reynolds had to literally leak unfinished Deadpool footage to create a stir online because the studios didn't think it would work at all and didn't want to make it.

The Snyder Cut should be studied as a cultural phenomena in the years to come. There was an incredible amount of hype for a re-edit of a bafflingly boring super hero movie done by a director who made an average movie in 2007 and has made hot trash ever since.

How was Zack Snyder elevated to some sort of auteur whose revision of a two year old average film would salvage the DC verse? Is this just a case of super-hardcore DC wants wanting this to be good and playing into the hype?

Having said all that, I do have a morbid curiosity to watch this because I hate myself and don't value my time.

I mean, I liked it.

I don't mind a 4-hour movie as long as I can watch it in at my leisure, and break it up as needed. I wouldn't go to a theater for this, but I've watched all of the extended versions of the LoTR trilogy multiple times. People spend dozens of hours of their lives every week watching television shows and no one bats an eye because they're broken into smaller pieces. Someone makes a movie (that's available in your living room) that is 4 hours in total and people lose their minds. One season of Ozark is like 8 hours.

Anyways, it's a decent superhero film. Definitely more coherent than the Whedon version and spends more time developing its characters so that you care about them a little. It still suffers from the fact that Cyborg, Flash, and Batman (to some extent) didn't have their own films to build them up. If you think the Marvel movies are trash then you'll think this is too. It's not as well made as the MCU movies, but it is a fun popcorn flick nonetheless

Do you have any examples of this? I'm not fishing for a fight, I'm asking wholeheartedly - I've been watching RLM for a few years now, everyone I know who watches it very much does not fit this description, and I found myself pretty taken aback at this assertion.

I mean zero disrespect to the people in this thread but as someone who unfollowed off-topic to ignore this sort of thing could the mods bump it to off-topic? Unless there's a way to mute individual threads that I am missing.

You could try the "Unfollow this topic" button on the top of the screen. I don't know if that actually helps, as I've never used it.

@brittinius: I think people who don't like Marvel might be more likely to like this. At least depending on what they find unappealing about Marvel. If you're just not open to super hero stuff, then whatever. But if Marvel's tone and direction aren't your thing, DC has a pretty different offering. I'm pretty hit and miss on both Marvel's and DC's cinematic universes, but I think I have higher highs with DC and lower lows with Marvel, generally.

@justin258: Quick google gives https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-critique-of-red-letter-media%E2%80%99s-bigoted-content-see-staff-post.129228/ which is a decent highlights reel. You can get more with other results for stuff like "red letter media racist" and "red letter media transphobic" but resetera does a good job of presenting things AND showing how people will still find a way to defend it because they like it.

Because a big part of the problem is that a lot of us started watching them decades ago when that was "normal" and they get kind of grandfathered in because of that. But they consistently keep going to that well decades later and it continues to get them a LOT of defenders and fans in Certain Circles.

Which is why having an excuse to maintain their "credibility" while saying they love another creator with a similar history of "wait... that is really fucked up. Does nobody else see this? Oh, THOSE people see this and are cheering..." makes 100% sense to me.

I love Marvel movies, I haven't seen the Whedon version. There were a lot of issues and logical leaps that seems unjustified, but despite that I enjoyed the movie and would look forward to a sequel.

Pacing - It "works" as a four hour movie because of how it's broken into chapters it's more like a mini-series. As a mini-series released straight to a streaming service and not a product out in theaters it works okay.

So many things didn't make sense. Most of all, Batman and everyone else so certain they needed Superman to win, only to come up with a plan that centers around Cyborg and Flash that required zero input from Superman. They didn't even need him to defeat Steppenwolf. Aquaman and Wonder Woman had the ability to kill him (and they actually do). Superman would have made the whole thing incredibly easy, but ultimately the team could have done just fine without him, and in fact resurrecting Superman put them on a clock.

It was also strange with how urgent everything was, unless the heroes were actively fighting, they were very slowly and casually walking everywhere. That's something I expect from Star Trek or other TV shows with limited space on their sound stages, not for a blockbuster movie.

But still I liked it.

I was bored at times. The whole movie felt like a compressed MCU phase 1 (hero introductions) pus phase 3 (villain appears, collect the mcguffins, threaten the world, time travel for the win). And so much of it doesn't make too much sense with the nitty gritty details. But I still liked it.

Contrast that with WW1984, and the mess of Star Wars sequel trilogy that constantly threw plotline 180s to destroy any sense of cohesion and consistency, I felt okay watching the Snyder Cut. WW1984 left me so angry. The Snyder Cut was too much story compressed into one product, but it left the world in a place where I wanted to see more and could see a sequel more streamlined with all the set up out of the way.

@gundato: Oof, had not seen that Rich Evans clip about the Women's March before. Not surprising, but really unsettling.

RLM have always skirted pretty close to that "we're so edgy by saying horrible things lol" line, but there was at least that veneer of "well this is just the Plinkett character and he's supposed to be a horrible human being" for a while. Rich Evans, just calling people protesting Trump "childish" in a candid conversation is pretty revealing. Shame.

As problematic as parts of their content are, though, they are no fans of Zack Snyder.

@buzz_killington: I'm glad I'm not the only one who was thinking this. I feel like ever since people started anticipating this Snyder cut that I'd walked into an alternate universe where he actually made a hit DC film to back up this expectation of being a savior to this movie.

It was far front perfect but significantly better than the theatrical cut. I actually enjoyed it more than most MCU movies but that’s mainly because I can’t stand the ‘multiple zingers per minute’ approach of most Marvel movies.

While Snyder definitely has an eye for cinematography, his throwback shots of things like The Last Supper in Watchmen or the Jesus iconography of Superman in BvS are cheesy as hell. It continues here with a flashback sequence, narrated by WW about the various groups of earth coming together to defeat the big. It’s such a fucking cringey attempt at the Fellowship of the Ring’s opening scene.

Another con is definitely the dream sequence/premonition. It felt unnecessary and more of an excuse to shoehorn in Leto’s Joker.

Also, Snyder putting objectivism into his films does get old as that whole philosophy is bunk anyway and his insistence on including elements of it is really obvious.

Thanks for taking my comment seriously, I was trying to find a way to word it so it wouldn't sound like bait of some sort. I Google'd "Redlettermedia offensive" and didn't get all that much and had to step away so I never did any more research.

Anyway, I was looking for examples and got them. Jack Packard seems like he's trying to maintain some composure, downplay drama, argue against Rich Evans, and play a video game at the same time, that's pretty impressive.

Wow guys, it's just a fun superhero movieade for nerds like me,if you see a 4 hour pricetag and aren't into the subject matter you're setting yourself up for a bad experience. The best DC movie is still the delightfully surprising Birds of Prey , but this was fun

I personally thought the Snyder cut was one of the best superhero movies to come out in years, especially when you compare it to the MCU. The film was better than the original Avengers, and on par with Infinity War and End Game in quality. Yes, the movie is 4 hours long, but not once did I feel bored or that the movie was dragging.

I thought Cyborg's character arc was very well done. The relationship between father and son is done more realistically and they don't just show the father being an asshole. They show him as a flawed man who failed his wife and son and does his best to redeem himself.

Wonder Woman was given some pretty cool action scenes, and given how there were hardly any in the film Wonder Woman 1984, it was pretty enjoyable to watch. Batman was also given more action scenes, unlike the theater version which had him brooding all the time accept when it was time to take on Superman.

The Flash and Aquaman had their moments that were also epic in scoop.

The film pretty much achieves what it sets out to do, create 'the band is back together again' storyline and it works.

The only downside I see are: Lex Luthor being under used, and the heroes not fighting Darkside in the end. And while I respect Jared Leto's attempt at being Joker during the ending teaser, seeing Joaquin Phoenix in the role would have gotten me very hyped for a sequel.