In one word: Yes!
Justice league: The original disappointment
So I was kinda pissed off after watching the original Justice League for the first time. Disappointed, to say the least, by this failed effort by DC to reproduce Marvel’s succes with the Avengers. I must have watched all Marvel films five times on average. With Justice League however, once was enough. The only reason I watched it twice was to analyse why this movie was such a mess.
So what happend? How can you make a 750 million dollar movie look cheap and hastily produced? Well, personal tragedy and the more usual interference by the studio Warner Bros. The script was changed drastically before and during shooting and director Zack Snyder stepped out during the post production due to the death of his daughter.
When Joss Whedon took over he did so with a wish list from Warner Bros. He was to brighten up the tone and add humor. On top of that we was to shorten the runtime significantly.
The rest was fail history.
Feel like some kind of rush…job
I’m not a devout film critic but even I could spot the most obvious problems.
Marvel had set up his main characters in individual movies like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. In Justice League we’re meeting half of the team of super heroes for the first time, leaving no time for well build of characters.
The forced humor just doesn’t work and the original dark tone was one of the things I appreciated in DC’s movies like Batman and Man of steel. This however was traded by Whedon for a look that more resembles cartoons from the 80’s.
Also Henry Cavill’s ridiculous upper lip didn’t help. When Whedon had to do reshoots Cavill was under contract shooting Mission Impossible 6. For that movie he wore a mustache that he wasn’t allowed to shave. So his mustache had to be removed with a 25 million dollar costing CGI job.
Justice flop
DC fans we’re not amused to say the least. “This is DC’s answer to Marvel? Say it ain’t so!”
And so they said. When word came out that Snyder himself didn’t see his original vision in the final result, fans and members of the cast started a petition for the “Snyder Cut”. Originally it seemed such a cut had little chance of being realized. But the calls were loud and maybe Warner Bros didn’t want to give up on its chances of reproducing the Avengers’ succes.
And so it was written, so it was done.
The Snyder Cut
Warner gave Snyder a budget of 70 million dollar for new visual effects and edits and reshoots that where done on October 2020.
And now it’s here. Well almost. The Snyder cut will be released on the 18th of march on HBO max. Dutch viewers will be able to watch it via Ziggo on demand.
Time enough to order your giant sized popcorn buckets. The Snyder Cut was supposed to be a four part miniseries but is now released as a four hour movie!
Redemption
So, did the Snyder Cut bring redemption? Yes. At least IMhumbleO.
And yes, 4 hours seemed necessary to achieve that. Characters are now properly introduced, while lame jokes are tossed in the bin. There’s an actual build up and story line to follow now. It felt like watching a new movie all together. Best of all, I never had the feeling that 4 hours was a tad long.
Now I’m just pissed that we didn’t this version from the get go and were ‘forced’ to watch that original release.
