Nobody knows hope like a fan: Hope your favorite author doesn’t disappoint the next chapter, hope a character triumphs, hope the heroes save the day. Hope is burned into the pages of comic book stories, which often hold the belief that good and bad exist in a clear binary file and that even in the darkest of days, a light will always shine through.
I know I’m misleading you and starting this review of Zack Snyder’s expanded Justice League cut with hope when the following sounds more like desperation. And yet hope is at the core of this four-hour marathon of a film – and also what it does not understand.
But let’s start with the story you might already know from the 2017 theatrical release. (This version of the film was adapted from director Joss Whedon, and fans were demanding the restoration of Snyder’s original.) Superman (Henry Cavill) is dead after the events of Batman vs. Superman and an alien warrior Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) is on traveled the earth to collect three mother boxes, sources of endless destructive (and regenerative) energy that, when combined into a “unit”, can destroy an entire world. Batman (Ben Affleck) recruits all the Supers he can find – Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and later a resurrected Superman – to face the upcoming Superman stop apocalypse.
The oversized runtime allows the narrative space to stretch for better or for worse. For the better, there’s an ambitious mythology that reveals the epic Snyder envisioned, restoring world-making details like Wonder Woman’s discovery of Steppenwolf’s plan and the extent of Cyborg’s connection to the mother boxes. Worse still, Snyder also trudges through seemingly endless (and pointless) exposures, adding enough backstory to any Justice League hero to make us invest in these characters so that we care when they finally put on the team jerseys and on the court.
But Snyder has never been one for nuances. “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is divided into six parts (for the six members of the Justice League, understand?) And a tediously long epilogue with enough teasing storylines and new and familiar faces (Deathstroke! The Martian Manhunter! Lex Luthor! The Joker! ) To keep the franchise going until the next end of the world. But right now here is an inelastic orgy of special effects, battle scenes burdened with slow motion attacks that are set on Tom Holkenborg’s relentlessly didactic score. More explosions! More impaling! More beheading! The film seems to want more of everything except the quality it needs most but cannot fully understand.
Yes i’m back to hope The film is peppered with the idea: The first attack on earth was stopped by a union of people, gods, Amazons and Atlanteans in the style of the “return of the king”. So we know that teamwork is the only way to make the dream work. so to speak. And the heroes find out that the chaos didn’t begin until Superman died – his resurrection, they decide, is the best plan of action, not only because of his power, but also because of the hope he represents.
So here comes Superman, our hero ex machina: a white male superman as the standard image of hope and salvation, literally raised from the dead. Despite the other powerful, charismatic heroes on the roster (Gadot and Momoa are still intriguing to watch, even in the most unflattering sequences), Justice League can’t see past the man with an S on his chest.
Fabian Wagner’s cinematography is dark, as if the whole film was shot in the bat cave, infected with Bruce Wayne’s brooding. The few attempts at an airy dialogue and the persistent use of Miller as a comic relief through the film fall in the lead in this atmosphere of the funeral. Even Superman’s new costume makes the Kryptonian look like he’s going through an emo phase. The triumph in battle and the score – along with the shiny action shots – telegraph hope without fully subscribing to them.
But this is where the hope of the narrative collides with the hope of the franchise: the story is meant to give us a world where heroes are brought back to life, where they put their pride, restraint, and self-interest aside to form an alliance. Even an antisocial orphan billionaire in a bat costume says he has confidence in this issue. But what is the franchise hoping for? More movies, more crossovers, more money. Something that can rival the other endlessly multiplying superhero films. Snyder confidently mixes as much history as possible into the timeframe, marking the end with countless dangling threads that could be woven into a larger tapestry of future DC Comics films – had his cut released earlier.
Hope is not established. It cannot be confined to a shadow of a gesture or shouldered by a man whose extraordinary abilities are heralded in the “super” of his name. And it’s definitely not the cinematic equivalent of a four hour video game editing scene.
Spring is coming next week and people are going to the park. People get vaccinations. I probably don’t need to explain what hope looks like now after the year we’ve just had – and indeed it might look different for you. But I know one thing: it doesn’t look like the corpses of a villain and his henchmen at the end of a great saga. It’s something brighter, brighter – so much more than the darkness.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Rated R. Running time: 4 hours 2 minutes. Watch on HBO Max.
