A second look at Zack Snyder’s BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE & JUSTICE LEAGUE (spoilers)
Seven years ago, I posted a scathing review of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on this blog, which you can read here. In short, I found it an utterly incoherent piece of filmmaking, “a clutter of disparate pieces pretending to be a narrative.” But recently, I saw an online discussion of The Ultimate Edition, as the extended director’s cut is known, asserting that it was a far better, more effective movie. I’d heard that claim before, but hadn’t bothered to follow up on it. Now, though, I have a subscription to Max (formerly HBO Max, the Warner Bros. streaming service), and since I could watch the director’s cut with a click, I decided to give it a shot and see if it was really any better. I posted about it today on the DC Movies thread on The TrekBBS, and I figured I should reprint my comments here, as a followup on my initial review.
The Ultimate Edition is definitely a more coherent and better film, feeling like an actual narrative instead of just a bunch of pieces stapled together in the vague shape of a narrative, and it is effectively directed. It makes Clark Kent feel like less of a MacGuffin and more of a character; the flow of Anatoly Knyazev’s machinations on Lex Luthor’s behalf and Lois Lane’s investigation unearthing them are clearer; and the focus on the civilians that Luthor manipulates into his tools is effective.
But it still has a lot of the same problems, like the pointless intrusion of the future-vision sequence; it would’ve been a better movie overall without the need to set up a Cinematic Universe. And I feel the improvement was mainly to the first half; the second half was still too cluttered, with the gratuitous inclusion of Doomsday. And I feel that there should’ve been at least one more movie before they killed Superman.
So I can understand now why people like the film, at least the expanded version of it, and I certainly have a higher opinion of it now, up to a point. But while it told a reasonably coherent story about Snyder’s versions of the characters, they’re far from my favorite versions. In particular, it seemed to me that many of the problems could have been avoided if Superman had just talked to people, if he’d let himself be a public presence from the start like many other versions of Superman have done, instead of remaining this mysterious, aloof, Dr. Manhattan-ish figure that created so many doubts about his intentions even nearly two years after his debut. Okay, maybe this Clark is just really uncomfortable with publicity, but he seemed to make things much harder on himself by staying silent and letting the media and Lex shape the narrative (and failing to explain himself to Batman during the fight even though he had plenty of chances after his brief token effort at the start). I mean, he lives with a world-famous reporter. How hard can it be to get his side of the story out there?
Basically, this is a story about flawed people whose character flaws exacerbate a situation that could be resolved more easily. That’s a valid way of telling a story, but it’s a pessimistic one, more so than the usual approach to Superman. Snyder’s Clark is a relatable character in his way, but he’s very unsure of himself and not very good at being Superman compared to most of his multiversal counterparts.
Still, I used to think BvS was a fundamentally incompetent piece of filmmaking, but now I see that the director’s cut is actually a reasonably well-made story (with some notable flaws), taking a different approach than I prefer but at least doing it in a coherent and effective way. So that just makes it a question of preference rather than a question of quality. I’m glad I decided to give it a chance. It’s improved my opinion of Snyder’s capabilities as a filmmaker, though his work is still prone to excesses I dislike.
Meanwhile, realizing how badly the theatrical BvS was sabotaged by hamfisted editing makes me more curious to see the Ayer cut of Suicide Squad. I wonder if it will ever be released.
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As for the Snyder Cut of Justice League, I gave in and borrowed that from the library a couple of years ago, but didn’t post about it here at the time. So I might as well add my BBS comments, to supplement my review of the theatrical version.
I liked a lot of the Snyder Cut considerably better than I expected, but it’s still very flawed. Basically it’s 2 hours of reasonably good superhero movie bracketed by 2 hours of bloated, annoying self-indulgence. It’s truly astonishing how little happens in the first hour or so. There are only three words spoken, “Alert the queen,” in the first nine minutes of the film. As for the rest, it has its decent character moments, but they’re so far apart, and there’s so much unnecessary stuff in between them. For instance, the start of the terrorist raid in the Wonder Woman sequence wasn’t needed. They could’ve started with the phone call to the police and it would’ve told us everything we needed; in fact, I think maybe the Joss Whedon version actually did that.
It’s a pretty good Flash movie; the Iris rescue sequence was a really cool set piece, and Barry is a lot of fun throughout. It’s also a fairly good Cyborg movie, although the early part of the Cyborg stuff is too slow and too much about setup (plus the ridiculous montage saying that Cyborg’s computer powers are so great that he literally controls the world now, which is way too much power to give a protagonist, and he never bloody does anything with it anyway). But the later stuff with Victor and Silas is fairly good.
The Aquaman and Wonder Woman stuff are less impressive, though Diana’s tea scene with Alfred is terrific, and Irons’s Alfred is a highlight of the film. Bruce is mainly just there to give speeches about unity and faith, so he doesn’t have much of an arc. I miss the part from the Whedon cut where he taught Barry about how to be a hero — “Just help one person.” Although at least this version actually had them rescuing people (Silas and the other captives), which is vanishingly rare in a Snyder film.
Oh yeah, and there were a few bits here and there about Lois and Clark. It’s pretty ridiculous that they went to all this trouble and risk because they needed to revive Superman to have any chance of saving the world… and then they just went ahead with their plan without waiting for Superman, and he barely contributed anything to it when he did show up. Even saving Victor was irrelevant, because they all got blowed up anyway until Barry warped back time. So they didn’t even really need Superman after all.
The bits that worked with Clark were just little moments of performance by Cavill showing Clark’s gentler, kinder side as his memories returned. Again, Cavill feels right in the role even though Snyder’s take on Superman does not work for me.
Steppenwolf was a better character this time around, and it helped having Darkseid be an actual presence. But I would’ve preferred seeing actors play the roles rather than CGI characters. The facial animation on Steppenwolf was pretty good, but I don’t think the character needed to be animated at all.
The epilogue — from the Luthor scene onward — was utterly pointless, incoherent, and obnoxious. What a stupid thing to put after the movie’s already ended. They should’ve closed out with the scene of the team deciding to build a headquarters.
I think I still prefer the theatrical cut of JL overall. It’s certainly a mess, but an enjoyable one, missing the best parts of the Snyder version but losing its worst parts. I would like to see a fan edit combining the best parts of both versions, if feasible.
