Zack Snyder's Justice League | Film Review

When I heard that this was coming out, I went back and read my review for the first version of this movie, the original Justice League. I actually liked it, and saw it purely as entertainment. However, after seeing this one, my opinion about the first has completely changed!   

Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) assemble a team to take down a new enemy, Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds). But will this group of heroes save the planet before it's too late? And can they do it without Superman (Henry Cavill)?

Okay, so I loved this film! So much more than the first one. In fact, it was so good that it made the first one look bad.

For a start, one of my problems with the original movie was that I didn't understand, or even like, the villain Steppenwolf.  The first thing this film does is set up the villain really well. We get more of an understanding into his motivations, and that in turn makes the film make a lot more sense.

This is partly because we spend a lot more time with Steppenwolf this time around. Even though he isn't my favourite villain, it was really nice to understand him more, and to get his backstory. 

I find it so interesting how two identical shots can be so different, and evoke such different feelings. Particularly when it comes to the score, and how this completely flips the tone. Comparing the two films feels like getting a mini masterclass in filmmaking.

The more time spent in different locations, or with different characters, allows so many of these scenes to be so much more powerful than they would be with limited time constraints. I particularly loved the scenes on Themyscira. I wasn't that interested in them in the original film, but in this one we got to see so much more of both the island and the warriors. Again, not only did it make the scene more powerful, but it really allowed the warriors to have the space and time to shine.

 Now, the characters. On a basic level, all of these characters really deserved the extra time that this film gives them.

But then there's Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Watching this film, I find it completely crazy how much of Cyborg's backstory was omitted in the original film - they cut him down to nothing and it's insane! Not only do we get his backstory, but we get much more of an insight into his powers, which was really important to the story. Ray Fisher was amazing, and deserved so much more than the original film gave him.

This was also true of Flash (Ezra Miller). Not only did we get get more of him as a character, but we got a much greater understanding of his powers. And again, it makes no sense that this wasn't included in the original film. 

Speaking of the characters, I also really loved Superman this time around. I liked him in Justice League, but this is what that film was missing. This Superman was the Superman that we fell in love with during Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. This film did the continuation of the character justice.

There have been criticisms of the film's 4-hour runtime (I ended up watching it in two 2-hour bursts), but I found that each scene had so much breathing room, and I really loved that. Often in films everything rushes to a conclusion, and although I'm not asking every film to be 4 hours long, I appreciated that this one could take its time. Not only did this mean that we got to spend more time with each of the characters, but it also meant that the film felt a lot more connected to the films that came before and after it. Everything just made so much more sense.

And again, with the runtime, it takes over an hour and a half for some of our heroes to meet. But the thing is, because of everything we get in that 90 minutes, when the heroes do actually start working together, their team-up felt really earned.

And then there's the epilogue, which felt entirely too long to be an epilogue. For me, it would have been better for the normal trajectory of the story to end in Part 6 - then anything from there could be the epilogue. That way it would have actually felt like an epilogue. 

Now, even with the additions, the bare bones of the story is the same. And with that, I'm not sure if this was a strong enough story for the introduction of the Justice League. 

Overall, I have no idea how Warner Brothers got away with releasing the original film when they knew what Zack Snyder's vision was. It's awful that they decided to put out a sub-par (at best) movie when it could have been what this was.

I know that the original movie was held back by time constraints, and it's completely understandable that it might not be as good. But these two movies feel poles apart in terms of their tones and characters. How did they go from Zack's original idea, to the finished original movie?

Not only do I wish that this had been the first Justice League, but I wish that this story was canon in the DCEU, and I wish that we were getting the sequels that Zack Snyder wanted to make. I loved this film and wish there was more to come!

7.5/10