The Justice League of Extraordinary Failures
In college, I had this professor who would often say; “If you must fail then fail gloriously.” Zack Snyder must have had the same professor. In the dictionary of filmmakers, if you look up failing gloriously you’ll find Snyder’s picture. Outside of Dawn of the Dead and to a lesser degree 300, Snyder’s oeuvre is filled with glorious failures. Justice League the Snyder Cut is his epic failure.
Regardless of it’s failures, this four hour long epic is far, far better than Joss Whedon’s janitorial work. For those who don’t already know, Zack Snyder – who directed both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – was the original director for Justice League (also credited as director.) It is his third installment in that trilogy. Due to family tragedy he pulled out during post-production.
Warner Bros hired Joss Whedon to take over and put Snyder’s film together. Warner had asked Snyder to make his version more humorous. After Snyder left, Whedon was asked to accomplish this. Whedon had success directing Marvel’s The Avengers 1 & 2 and one might be excused for thinking he had a vision for those two films.
The first one being better than the second, they’re both very good. Both were very witty. But Whedon often replaces vision with clever quips and sight gags. Whedon does seem to have a strong sense of story, but with his work on Justice League that sense was not so evident. It’s as if he really didn’t have his heart in the film and took what he liked of Snyder’s cut and ground it into a rehash of what he did in The Avengers films.
Only it wasn’t a rehash as much as it was a cheap knock-off of those films. The same formula only without the quality. Intentional or not, Whedon sabotaged Justice League. Almost as soon as Whedon’s disappointing Justice League was released, whispers of an existing Snyder cut whizzed around the internet.
“I am not broken and I am not alone.”
~Victor stone/cyborg~
Fans began campaigning Warner Bros for its release. After four years of this, the Snyder cut has finally been released. Is it better than the Whedon cut? Yes. It is also longer than the Whedon cut. Twice as long.
The Snyder cut is probably four hours long to flesh out his vision for a DCEU. Both Man of Steel and BvS hinted at this shared universe but Marvel spent years building towards The Avengers through multiple films. Not even an epic four hour film (no matter how good) could duplicate what Marvel accomplished over years, through many films. It was a fools errand.
Still, Snyder tries mightily to somehow accomplish it anyway. The result is inevitably failure, but boy oh boy what a failure! What Zack Snyder accomplished with his Justice League is the kind of cinematic filmmaking Martin Scorsese laments doesn’t get made. From the get go, the Snyder cut begins with sumptuous visuals matched by astonishing music. It’s framing, tone, and mythological narrative are nothing short of…well, cinematic!
“I have come to enlighten you on the great darkness.”
~Steppenwolf~
Part of why Whedon’s effort looks and feels like sabotage is easier to explain after seeing the Snyder cut. Who knows why Whedon so downplayed the DC mega villain Darkseid’s role in this tale? Downplayed so much as to virtually cut him completely out of the 2017 release. It might have been at the behest of Warner Bros executives, or a directorial decision attempting to appease those execs wanting a film no longer than two hours. Who knows?
In fairness to Warner Bros, when Justice League was being made this was pre-pandemic and the intention was to release it in theaters and Cineplex’s. Owners of these movie theaters are not so fond of four hour films consuming their seats that would have been filled for the next showing. It’s not as if they could’ve gotten away with charging double the price of admission. It is gruesome how the pandemic helped make Snyder’s four hour opus possible.
The conflict between artistic vision and business has long been a struggle. That the Snyder cut got made and released at all isn’t a minor miracle. It’s a full blown miracle. Such a miracle, the light it shines may blind its onlookers to what ever flaws may fester lurking in the shadows.
Whatever Snyder’s flaws (and there are plenty) there is a majestic beauty that permeates his dark tale. A tale of a rising age of heroes in a time hungry for hope. Where Whedon opened Justice League with a whimsical cell phone interview with Superman by a bunch of kids, Snyder’s opening is as far from whimsical as anyone can get. It’s carefully designed map of what came before and what is about to come. He opens with a look back at the death of Superman. The montage begins amid a swirl of molecules that bring us to that death of Superman. Those molecules and the eerie inner/outer-space feel to it hints at the DC’s universe.
Whedon follows his silly interview with Superman with a montage of unrest and destruction. Riots in the streets, seeming racial divides and as if to slap Snyder in the face, this montage all leads to a shot of a homeless man sitting on the pavement against a wall. Whedon dolly’s around him to show a cardboard sign that reads: “I tried.” This montage plays out underneath a cover by Sigrid of Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows.
I assume Whedon intended to slap Snyder because he is unapologetically an objectivist. Whedon is unapologetically left leaning and the left in general are no fans of the mother of objectivism; Ayn Rand. It’s hard to imagine Snyder would shoot such a scene. What did Whedon even mean by including that shot? Was the hopeless man homeless because of a world without Superman?
Was there no homelessness in the DCEU when Superman reigned? That the homeless were more hopeful when the Man of Steel was alive? It’s a poorly thought out shot and it sure seems like a cheap shot. It cannot have been easy for Whedon to step into another man’s vision and understand it in the same way Snyder did. Still, what was that homeless man all about?
If you take Whedon’s opening montage and compare it to the Snyder cut, there is a clear difference between the two. The more the Snyder cut reveals a distinct vision, the more Whedon’s montage seems poorly thought out. Even the soundtrack helps make this clear. I am a big fan of Leonard Cohen, and Sigrid’s cover of Everybody Knows may be better than Cohen’s. Whedon’s soundtrack to this montage is emotionally manipulative to the point of histrionic. The implication of what might have been by illustrating the chaos that is because of the death of Superman only really hints at Whedon’s contempt for humanity.
“Victor helped her because he has a good heart. What did you do to help her?”
~Elinore Stone~
It’s not as if Snyder hold’s contempt for the downtrodden. Critics of Rand often use this characterization of she and her adherents. However, Snyder treats his audience to two scenes where Victor Stone (Cyborg) is charitable. As Cyborg, he witnesses what appears to be a single mother with two kids discovering her bank account is down to only $11. Cyborg, with no more than a blink of an eye, manipulates the bank account to lift the woman out of poverty and into reasonable wealth. This compassionate side of Cyborg is consistent with the younger Victor who hacked into his school’s computer to change the grade of a poverty stricken and struggling classmate.
Whedon leans hard to the left and has a tendency to favor grand sweeping ideas over facts and the realities of unobtainable ideas. Snyder leans towards the right, or conservative libertarian that does favor facts and the realities of individual effort. If Whedon’s Justice League can be taken as a metaphor for the powerful helping the powerless, Snyder’s can be taken as a metaphor for how individuals can affect others and how they can amplify this effect when coming together.
Whedon’s conceptualization of the world leans towards fantastical beasts and monsters inevitably slayed by chosen ones. Like Buffy Summers chosen one, Whedon focuses on the impossibly powerful Kal-el, king of the seven seas Aquaman, and Princess of the Amazonians, Wonder Woman. Snyder’s vision is more interested in Batman and Cyborg. One of them very human, the other a reluctant human machine.
“You can be anything you want to be.”
~Wonder Woman~
It’s no accident that it is Batman who is at the center of assembling the Justice League. The hero’s he seeks to surround himself with are meta-humans. Wonder Woman a demigod, Aquaman a titan, the Flash an Apollo like speedster and Cyborg, this Frankensteinean monstrosity in search of his own humanity all come with impossible powers. Batman’s power (even his wealth) are entirely possible. Increasingly, Cyborg’s powers are becoming possible too.
Despite what Wonder Woman says, we cannot aspire to be Superman the powerful. We can only aspire to the kind of person who embraces the ideals of Superman. This does not mean we are powerless, only that our powers are different than the Kryptonian’s. Batman exemplifies this notion. While more cynical than Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne embraces the same American ideals.
Realistically, there never was nor probably never will be a benign Kryptonian, demigods and titans. Conversely, in the real world there probably has been and will continue to be some version of a Batman. By this I mean, Ubermenschean heroes who rise above their own weaknesses to become something quite spectacular. This has always been Batman and in Snyder’s cut, this is Batman.
Even when it all is so seemingly hopeless, Batman is someone we can aspire to be. Batman is someone we can become. Where Snyder acknowledges the flaws inherent in Batman, Whedon chooses to cripple him with him these flaws. Snyder’s Batfleck is confident and cool. Whedon’s Batfleck is awkward and unsure of himself. Yet both versions have him at the center of bringing the Justice League together.
Snyder seems to appeal to the hero within us to step up and play the game. Whedon shows us to be hapless bystanders in an operatic battle between forces far greater than ourselves. That we may try to influence the outcome of events, but in the end we’re just helpless souls doomed for homelessness without the assistance of beings far greater than us. This distinction is as stark as night and day and as if to highlight that further, Snyder shoots his cut in much darker tones than the colorful pastels of Whedon’s sunshiny day.
It is interesting then, the Snyder’s purposefully dark and gritty style offers more hope than Whedon’s whimsical and colorful version. By doubling the length of the film, Snyder’s cut gives the audience a much more nuanced and in fact central player with Cyborg. Aquaman, Wonder Woman and even the Flash are those god like beings with powers we cannot realistically aspire to have. Batman and Cyborg are humans of the same coin.
Heads, you get Batman, the hero who willed himself towards awesome power. Tails, you get the trans human cyborg who gained his power via machinery. Increasingly, probably inevitably trans humanism progresses, making it more and more possible for people to become cyborgs. Snyder didn’t elevate Cyborg to such an important player by accident.
Snyder is implicitly arguing that these two heroes represent the best of what we can become. Not because of the powers they’ve gained, but because of their humanity gained. Who knows why Whedon chose to minimize Cyborg’s role in the Justice League? The Snyder cut does a good job in demonstrating why that was a mistake.
Snyder went a little too far in the other direction offering up a few gratuitous scenes that we could’ve done without. We are, however, shown a much more fleshed out machine man struggling to regain his humanity. In Whedon’s version, none of this is evident. Perhaps the biggest problem with the Whedon’s version is that it’s so obviously forced to be something it was never intended to be. Instead of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, Whedon forces jokes into scenes that only fall flat.
Whedon forcefully inserts a family into several scenes. Why? Apparently to underscore how helpless humanity is under the sway of titans and demigods doing battle. Whedon makes the matter worse by concluding that family’s arc with an eye-rolling, groan inducing joke. Sure, people don’t celebrate Snyder for his witty repartee and rightfully so. Snyder does offer up far funnier scenes than Whedon was able to pull off in Justice League.
Snyder has a scene where Superman and Cyborg admit to each other how happy they are to be alive. Shortly after, when fighting the villain Steppenwolf they are slammed painfully to the ground. Both groaning, clearly in pain Superman takes back his admission he’s glad to be alive and both break out in laughter. It’s a funny scene that works better than most of Whedon’s jokes.